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In anticipation of an upcoming launch of Jeff Walker’s Product Launch Formula 2, I told my list that I was going to offer a solo mailing to one of my lists of over 120,000. This immediately started a flood of emails asking how they could order early… something that I anticipated.

The second flood of emails asked how I had managed to build such a huge database. Rather than answering that second question in individual emails, I decided to answer it with this article.

First of all, I should point out that I’ve been in business online since late-1996, and have been slowly building my lists almost since the very beginning. So, I didn’t accomplish this overnight. Still, I know that you can build a huge list rather quickly if you use the right techniques.

Here are some of my favorite list-building techniques:

1) Put a sign-up form on every page of your websites, except for direct sales pages where it would interrupt the flow too much. Next to that sign-up form, give a powerful reason why they need to join your list, and ask them to take action.

Next to the sign-up form, assure them that you will protect them from spam. Also post a few testimonials as proof of the value your newsletter provides.

2) Write information-packed articles and distribute them everywhere appropriate. I’ve written over 850 information-packed article on the topic of Internet marketing. Those articles demonstrate my expertise, share useful information, and bring visitors to my websites ready to join my lists.

I believe in sharing a lot of cutting edge information in my articles. Many people only drop hints, but I’m not afraid of sharing too much. The reason is that knowledge grows exponentially, and since I’m constantly learning new things, I can never teach you everything that I know.

Since I don’t fear running out of useful information that you will value, my articles are genuinely helpful, and that generates lots of loyal subscribers.

3) Write information-packed, inexpensive ebooks and then allow affiliates to sell them for most of the profit.

I create a steady stream of ebooks - largely expansions of my articles - and then I set up affiliate programs where affiliates earn as much as 100% commission. Money is a great motivator for getting others to send you lots of new “paying” customers and subscribers

My favorite tool for setting up these “ebook traffic magnets” is Sid Hale’s Rapid Action Profits script. This script allows you to set up a system where an affiliate earns INSTANT commissions which are paid directly to their Paypal accounts.

High commissions are a great motivator for people to send you new potential subscribers. When those commissions are paid instantly to affiliates who often have cash-flow problems, it’s like pouring gasoline on a fire.

You’ll find Sid’s Rapid Action Profits System at: http://TheRealSecrets.com/RapidActionProfits/

4) Run pay-per-click campaigns… when the math makes sense. This is something that I don’t see a lot of my competitors doing. However, when I know that my conversions rates or backend profits are sufficient, I often run pay-per-click ads… sometimes even for free items.

With pay-per-clicks, you need to closely monitor your results. You also need a good idea of the lifetime value of a new customer or subscriber. To me, it makes perfect sense to lose a dollar to gain a new highly qualified subscriber.

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice numerous Internet marketers who run promotions where they pay a dollar or more for referrals who simply opt-in to a list. I essentially do the same thing when using pay-per-clicks. With pay-per-clicks you reach new subscribers who may not already be on a dozen other marketers’ lists.

5) Use free giveaways where appropriate. I contribute to, and help to promote free giveaways, when they are well managed and the quality is high. I’ve built large lists doing this and have a friend who got over 5000 subscribers from one of his first giveaways. I’ve written about how I do that many times before.

The key with free giveaways is that you need to offer a gift of high enough value that your new subscribers instantly bond with you. You still have to develop the relationship, but your gift should start it on a positive note.

Many people who participate in free giveaways offer “absolute garbage.” Once their new subscriber downloads their free “gift” and look through it, they HAVE to feel insulted.

My rule is to always offer a gift that’s good enough to sell. I was humored when, in one recent giveaway, I contributed resale rights to one of my new ebooks, along with a rough website. Before the giveaway was even over, at least one fast-acting individual had my ebook set up using the Rapid Action Profits script mentioned in number three, above.

6) Give away free viral ebooks. Write ebooks on topics that you know a lot of people are interested in. In those ebooks recommend specific solutions to problems, and include affiliate links to buy those products. Make some of those links rebrandable.

If the ebooks are filled with lots of useful information, AND they have links that can be rebranded, then you have an ebook that should go viral. People are incentivized to spread it!

In these ebooks, offer some type of a free bonus… perhaps an audio recording, or a template, or free piece of software, but require readers to visit your website to get this bonus. On your site, require them to register, or join your mailing list, to get the freebie.

If the original ebook delivered tremendous value, then the new potential subscriber will have no objection to joining your list. If the free ebook offered marginal value, then they have to assume that your other “gift” will be more of the same, and so they won’t subscribe.

For creating viral ebooks, I recommend using the “Viral Document Toolkit” a next-generation PDF brander created by David Schwartz. The Viral Document Toolkit allows you to easily create rebrandable documents where you can specify links, and text that can be rebranded. You can even specify rather large BLOCKS of text as rebrandable… and even rebrand hyperlinked images! You create a rebrandable ebook, and then pass along the ebook (with most parts locked, but some parts changeable) along with the rebrander tool, to your subscribers, website visitors, customers, etc. Since they can profit from changing the ebook, they happily spread it, and in the process build you a huge list.

You’ll find the Viral Document Toolkit at: http://ViralDocumentToolkit.com

David finished testing the Viral Document Toolkit software March 1st, 2008, so you’ll be using a tool that 99.9% of your competitors will have never seen. VDT is actually so revolutionary that NO ONE other than a few of David’s closest friends have even been allowed to touch it, until now.

If you make your new viral ebooks good enough, you may be pleasantly surprised to see your competitors promoting them

6) Take massive action and do it immediately. One of my secrets to building my database so large is that when I’m shown a new tool or technique, and it passes “the common sense test,” then I put it to immediate use… provided it doesn’t distract me from something more urgent that I’m already working on.

Many of my contemporaries, and subscribers, complained about having no list as long as five years ago. Many of them still use that same excuse for why they’ve not made any real business growth progress.

I’m not sure why this is since all of the techniques that I, and that many of my mentors use, are so simple… and even obvious!

The key is not to over-analyze things. That traps you into “paralysis by analysis.” Instead, get into the habit of doing while others are still “thinking about it.”

My friend, Dr. Joe Vitale, taught me that “money loves speed!”

I’ve just shared with you some of the techniques that I’ve used to build a massive subscriber database. Of course, I can’t cover every technique that I use in this short article. I will close by sharing that part of the key to growing your list is actually retaining the subscribers after you get them. To do that, you merely need to deliver tremendous content telling them how to solve their most pressing problems.

Simple - right?

So, you have discovered that perfect home-based business that is going to have prospects banging down the door to sign up…but you don’t have the money to invest. The investment requirement may be $1500, it may be $1000, it may be $100.

The point is that you have NO money to spare, if you want to keep a roof over your head and food on the table. This describes most, in today’s economy, but you are special because you are wise enough to realize that if you just keep doing what you are doing now, you are just going to keep getting poorer.

Now mind you, that doesn’t mean you can walk into your boss’s office, drop off your resignation letter, and tell him to pound sand just yet…that comes later. But, you know that while your day job will make you a living, your online business will make you a fortune. Right?

So the challenge is to raise the money to start your business as soon as possible. The methods I am about to teach you will do just that, PLUS generate recurring monthly savings that will become your advertising budget.

Step 1: Where is My Money Going Now?

The simplest and best way of making money is to reduce your costs. But you may already only be buying what you need! So, we are going to reduce our costs WITHOUT sacrificing the goods/services that we need. But first, what ARE our costs?

Exercise: Take out last month’s bank statement and credit card bills. Itemize each of your major costs. Your list may look something like this:

* Mortgage on house or cost of renting
* Car payments
* Health Insurance
* Car Insurance
* Homeowners Insurance
* Groceries
* Fast food/lunches out at work
* Telephone/Internet/Cable
* Gas

These are just a few. It can be frightening to see just how much money you are spending to keep a roof over your head!

So now that we know WHERE our money is going, let’s take action to divert more of it away from other people’s pockets and into our own. We will do that via…

Step 2: Competitive Bidding–Who wants my business?

It is simply astonishing how almost every company utilizes competitive bidding, and yet how few households do! For every item we listed up there, there are dozens, hundreds, or thousands of different companies who would love to have you as their customer!

Let’s make them compete against each other, shall we?

Exercise: Find your policies for Health, Auto and Home Insurance. Find exactly what your coverages are, and your premiums. THEN, go online to a competitive bidding website, fill out your information, and request quotes from dozens of bidders! I personally use LowerMyBills and E-Health Insurance (links are provided in the resource box below). Representatives from these companies will be scrambling all over each other to provide you with their most competitive quotes, especially if you…

Tip: TELL THEM that other companies are bidding for your business! No one wants the competition to get a customer, so they will cut their margins as much as they can!
Tip: Create URGENCY by telling them that you are only accepting bids until X date, at which point you will choose the most inexpensive offer that meets your needs!

You will be astonished at how much this will reduce your monthly costs. This is a service that I perform for clients, in exchange for a % of whatever I save them, and believe me that is a pretty penny. But you don’t need me to do it for you, you can do this yourself!

Savings: (will obviously vary from person to person, this is what I tend to see on average)
Savings on health insurance: $200 per month
Savings on car insurance: $100 per month
Savings on home insurance: $75 per month
First-month savings on insurance: $375
Ongoing monthly savings: $375/month

Wow! That’s a nice chunk of change right there towards your business. And your actual results may be much higher or much lower, but chances are that right now, unless you bid out your insurance annually, your provider is probably treating you like a 200-pound 4th-grader taking your lunch money.

Step 3: I Can Pay Less, to Save MORE?!?

Have you been reading the news about the economy? In an effort to turn around the recession, the FED has been slashing through interest rates with speed and vigor usually seen only in Japanese Samurai movies.

Take out that mortgage bill, and see what rate you are paying. 7%? 6%?

We’ll use an average mortgage amount of $200,000, and assume your current interest rate is 7% at a 30 year fixed loan. Ergo, your payment is $1,330.60 per month.

Do you have any idea JUST HOW MUCH money you can save by refinancing now at a lower rate?

With the Fed rate cuts, loans at 5% are easily available. Just that 2% drop in interest will lower your payment on the SAME LOAN to $1,073.64…saving you $237 per month!!
Let’s add that in…
1st-Month Savings on Refinancing at lower rate: $237
Ongoing monthly savings: $237/month

And you can roll in your closing costs to the loan, so you don’t pay anything up front, and STILL be saving this much (a few thousand over a 30-year loan just knocks off about $20 per month from your savings, which is already factored in above).

Step 4: Waste Not, Want Not

Now we are going to look at such a simple, obvious, and EASY way to save money, that never even occurs to most people.

What are you doing for lunch at work? Are you getting fast food, because it’s easy and convenient? If so, you are spending about $6-$8 per meal!

Or do you eat out a restaurant? That gets REALLY expensive, anywhere from $10-$20 per meal or more! For this example, we will say that you are like most of working America and you eat lunch at a fast food place, spending $7 per meal.

So not only are you clogging your arteries and getting poor nutrition, but you are spending $210 per month just on lunch!!

Start bringing your lunch to work with you. Make yourself a sandwich, or whatever you please. The groceries will add up to $1-$2 per meal, if that. Let’s say $2 per meal.

1st-Month Savings on Brown-bagging it for lunch: $150!!
Ongoing monthly savings: $150/month
Benefit to your health: Priceless!

And how badly do you REALLY need that $3 Mochachino from Starbucks every morning on the way to work? If you cut that out of your budget, there’s another $90 per month you save!

BUT I LIKE MY FANCY STARBUCKS DRINKS AND DON’T WANT TO GIVE THEM UP!!

Ok, fiiiine! Give it up for just the first month then. If you are going to be able to make $1000’s of dollars per month by starting your internet business, wouldn’t you be willing to make that small sacrifice?

In the words of Jim Rohn, “OF COOOURSE!!”

Step 5: Take Advantage of the Economic Stimulus

By now you’ve probably gotten the letter from the IRS about the Economic Stimulus Plan…you are going to be receiving a check for somewhere between $300 and $1200 in May 2008!

If you spend it on bills, it’s gone, and the bills will be back…with friends. That’s why you want to start your internet business in the first place, right? So that you will have gigantic loads of income streaming in again and again from your marketing efforts?

For this example, let’s assume you are married, below a certain income level, and have 1 child. Your tax rebate will be $900 (or possibly $1200, but let’s be conservative).

Ok, let’s recap. So far, we’ve managed to raise:

Savings on health insurance: $200 per month
Savings on car insurance: $100 per month
Savings on home insurance: $75 per month
Savings on Refinancing at lower rate: $237 per month
Savings on small luxuries like Starbucks: $90 month 1
Unexpected Tax Rebate Coming in May: $900 month 1!
Savings from not eating out for lunch: $150 per month
Total Savings for First Month: $1752
Ongoing Savings per Month: $762 per month

WOW! We are there!! You have raised $1,752 to start your business, which is more than most cost! Not only that, but you will be saving almost $800 per month…let’s take $400 of that and invest it our business as our Advertising Budget, and we will have LOTS of prospects coming to our site…and from there, it is just a matter of the Law of Averages to generate out your sales.

My Passport to Wealth business only costs $997 to get started, and an advertising budget of $350 per month gets you a professional Marketing Manager who does all your marketing for you, AND a personal sales assistant who calls all your prospects! I have included a link in the resource box to learn more about this hands-free automated internet business.

So that would leave an extra $752 in month 1, even above and beyond the cost of investing in your business…AND you would have ongoing savings of $412 per month.

Do you think you could find a use for this extra money that you raised?

“OF COOOURSE!!”

Marketing is the part of business that no one seems to like. Perhaps that’s because it’s confusing and made to be even more confusing when you begin to read books on marketing and its applications to the business world. So, are there any secrets that actually work and that you can actually apply to your online business? The answer is yes. There are three home based business marketing secrets that you can keep in mind as you begin this adventure into running your own business - and as you become a success.

Less is More

One of the things that marketing professionals don’t tell you is that you really don’t need to do as much as you think you do. By simply adopting a strategy of telling as many people as you can, treating each customer with respect, and then repeating this cycle, that’s going to bring in a lot of new business. Word of mouth advertising may not get as much press as it once did, but it certainly still works when it comes to smaller home based businesses.

You also want to keep in mind that these marketing secrets don’t require a lot of time or a lot of money in order to be effective. Something as simple as adding your website address to your emails is just as effective as running a commercial on TV and a lot less expensive to implement. Think about smaller ways to spread the word instead of bigger ways. Target only the customers that have already shown interest in what you have to sell and you’re certain to market for success.

More is Less

You also want to remember that a customer on the internet these days is accustomed to seeing a lot of advertisements, so they know when they are being ’sold’ something. Instead of focusing your messages on sales exclusively, try bringing the customer information they can use - informational articles, etc.

When you put too many advertisements in outgoing emails or you simply push your company too much, you will turn off prospective customers. Even if they are interested in what you have to say, the more you talk to them about the same things, the more they’re going to wonder what the ‘catch’ is and why they should buy from you at all.

Recognize that your customers are smart and that they WILL respond to you, even if you don’t tell them about every sale or every feature for your products. You just don’t have to beat them over the head with what you want to sell them.

Use Your Home Based Appeal to Bring People to You

By adding a personalized touch to your marketing strategies, you will begin to pull in more customers, almost without trying. So often, online businesses forget that it’s their placement and location that allows them to be unique. Instead of downplaying the fact that you work from home, make sure that your customers know it. Show them pictures of your office and pictures of yourself to make the experience more personal. This is a marketing strategy that works no matter what you are selling. Since people aren’t meeting you in person, the personalization will do the ‘talking’ for you, making a customer more comfortable with you.

Try adding a blog to your website that will introduce the kind of person you are and what you are capable of helping a customer with. Or you might want to include a video of yourself talking about your product or a personal story that relates to your product. The internet can be such an impersonal place, so try to connect with your customer more.

It’s no secret that the keyword phrases you select will make or break your site. And yet it’s also true that most people are terrible at selecting keyword phrases that end up being effective and generating traffic for their sites.

The most common mistake made is being too ambitious in selecting keyword phrases for which you don’t stand a chance of generating traffic from. In other words, keywords that are way too competitive.

Yet with the right understanding and approach, any site owner or online entrepreneur can greatly increase the traffic they receive from search engines through keyword phrases.

You Must Arrive At Only One Keyword Phrase

Most people believe that the more keyword phrases that they select for their sites, the better. Actually nothing can be further from the truth. If anything the very opposite is true. You must consider the content and objectives of your site very carefully and when you have done that, you must come up with a single keyword phrase.

That keyword phrase will clearly portray the narrow niche that you are interested in going after and dominating. Now most people panic when they hear this, believing that it will be ridiculous for them to focus all their energies on a single keyword phrase for the rest of their days.

Actually what is supposed to happen is that after you have selected your keyword phrase, you are supposed to find all synonyms and related keyword phrases. In most cases, the keyword phrases list will easily be well over 100 keyword phrases.

In addition, there are other longer keyword phrases that hardly anybody pays attention to because they are not yet popular enough. These are the keyword phrases you will tend to notice in your stats, these could easily number in the thousands. In other words there is much more to the single keyword phrase than you think.

When you put all those thousands of keyword phrases together, you will find that the potential traffic your site is able to attract will number in the millions. One of the greatest secrets of success will come into play, which is the more you limit your target market and niche, the bigger the market you are creating of potential customers and clients. In fact most people believe the exact opposite, which is the more you narrow your niche, the more you limit your market and number of potential clients. This is just NOT true.

The Power of Focus

The World Wide Web is a huge place where it is very easy to drown and get lost forever. The secret to survival has to do with focus. It is indeed a very powerful strategy to narrowly focus on a tiny niche that you can totally dominate. And the way to do this is by selecting a single keyword phrase that best describes what your site is all about.

There are of course other factors that will help you in reaching your decision about what particular keyword phrase to focus all your energies on. Your past experience and skills are critical. You must have an edge that will help you easily win any competition that you end up facing from any other site on the niche subject that you have selected.

In other words, you must be confident enough of at least being in the top 10 worldwide in terms of your ability to deliver on that particular keyword phrase. This would mean that you would have a good chance of being in then top 10 of search engine results.

Actually many people forget that when you are on the web, the competition is not local but in fact worldwide. So you have no alternative but to really know your stuff.

When you make the decision to focus with laser beam precision on a particular keyword phrase for your web site, what you will have actually done is greatly expanded your potential market. The reality which many webmasters have seen in their own experiences is that if you aim for everybody you will most certainly end up with hardly anybody. The proper approach and use of keyword phrases on your site is bound to revolutionize your fortunes online.

Terry Detty finds Website Marketing Promotion and Business Marketing and Online Advertising his passion. In addition to marketing, he enjoys reading and occasionally goes out for a short walk. His latest interest is a new Search Engine Marketing and Internet Marketing Software program he’s been using.

While MySpace has become the platform for bands and musicians to plug in to the global community and promote their talents, many artists are looking into new ways to reach their fans. One of the dominating tactics used by both bands starting out on MySpace and well established groups is the use of email marketing programs.

While paper flyers may have been the avenue for ’spreading the word’ in years past, email marketing programs give MySpace bands access to create, send and track professional new-age digital flyers. Since most email marketing programs are easy to use and integrate seamlessly into your MySpace profile, there are very little barriers or obstacles holding any band back.

The key element of making an email marketing program work for your band is to build a quality mailing list. Everything starts with the caliber of your contacts. If you build up a solid mailing list of loyal friends, family and fans, then your email marketing efforts will produce outstanding results. Most email marketing programs will help you grow your mailing list by giving you a signup button for your MySpace profile. The sooner you add this button to your MySpace page, the sooner people can start becoming both your MySpace friend and your mailing list subscriber.

The following are the top 3 ways MySpace bands use email marketing programs…

1. Announce New Songs
As soon as any band releases a new song, the goal is to get it out for people to hear it. On MySpace there are thousands of new songs added every day, so it can be difficult to fight through the clutter to get people (including your fans) listening to your song. Many bands setup their email marketing program to blast out an email to their entire contact list as soon as the new song is released.

Since this email marketing message is read away from MySpace (and away from all that clutter), it’s a lot easier for your fans to click on a link in your email and instantly be playing your new song on your MySpace profile. Some bands choose to use their email marketing program for each new song they release, while others wait until a new set of songs are available and then blast out the email.

2. Promote Concert or Show Dates
Whether you’re announcing a new international tour or just a gig at the local pub, many bands have found that using an email marketing program can help pack a crowd. Since your fans are already interested in seeing you perform, the goal is really to make sure they know when and where they can come see you in action.

Many bands use their email marketing program to announce a show that is several weeks away, just to build a little bit of awareness and buzz early on. Then, as the show date looms closer, they will use their email marketing program to send out reminder messages, so everyone knows the time is coming closer and to mark it on their calendar, buy tickets, or whatever else they have to do to get to the show!

3. Keep Your Fans In The Loop
Most loyal fans are actively interested in what is going on with your band. From the big issues to the small stuff, inviting your fans to become an intimate part of your band and get an inside look helps build an incredible bond. Many bands on MySpace update their profile regularly, so their audience can constantly see fresh updates. But, by using an email marketing program, you can ensure that these updates reach your fans right in their inbox.

Many bands use their email marketing program to send out a monthly (or even bi-weekly) newsletter, keeping fans up to date on all the latest happenings. Some bands have even started incorporating a “Question From The Fans” section in their email marketing newsletter, where they publish a question that was asked through the last issue. This type of email, which is packed with unique quality content and involves your fans in a two-way conversation, is a great way to build that special connection.

With intense competition to get attention, using an email marketing program can give your MySpace profile a boost and give your band an extra edge.

Robert Burko is President of EliteEmail.com, the #1 MySpace mailing list solution. Harness the power of the most trusted email marketing program today for free with no obligation and no restrictions.

Local pay per click advertisers have a lot of options in today’s pay per click landscape. In some ways, local advertisers have more options than other advertisers. There is a tendency to see local business advertising, particularly online, as being limited, but that’s really an illusion.

Today’s local business owner can take solace in a few facts about the nature pay per click advertising, namely, that optimization and local advertising practices allow for a more effective campaign that can serve your business well.

The discussion on pay per click advertising options must begin with keywords. It doesn’t matter whether you are a local business or a global business, if you want them to be effective, your pay per click advertising campaigns will be keyword-based. Local advertising, however, does rely on a little bit more focused effort and in addition to keywords you must think about geo-targeting.

A geo-targeted pay per click campaign can consist of several components:

Geographic place names:

Zip codes
Area codes
Local landmarks
Regional area marks
Grid coordinates

Which of these components is the best to use for your local pay per click campaign depends on a number of factors, but all of them are available and it’s good to know what they are. Each major search engine that offers pay per click advertising also has a local search feature that involves mapping. Users can search for businesses by address, city and state, zip code, or even pinpoint them by grid locations. Pay per click advertising is similar in some ways.

A good pay per click campaign may involve the use of your local geographic place names, whether it is city and state or neighborhood. For instance, you might use Bronx, NY instead of New York, New York. Either way, your goal is to drive traffic to your local business website using pay per click advertising strategies.

Zip codes can also be effective, as can area codes. If your telephone area code covers an entire state, this might not be effective, but if it covers a specific area of a large metropolitan area like Los Angeles then it be quite effective.

Even landmarks can be useful in pay per click advertising. Phrases like, “Two miles South of Niagara Falls” can give people a general idea of your location. If the landmark is well known enough then it can be effective.

Perhaps one of the most overlooked geo-targeting techniques in pay per click advertising, yet one of the most effective, is the use of grid coordinates. Using Google Maps, or the mapping feature of Yahoo! or MSN, you can locate the exact grid coordinates (latitude and longitude) of your business and tell GPS users precisely where your business is located. This is particularly effective with mobile advertising.

Speaking of mobile advertising, local business owners can use pay per call services just as effectively as traditional pay per click. Just like the pay per click models of the search engines, some services allow advertisers to bid on mobile calling services and users are given the option to call your business directly from their mobile phones at the point of a single click. Bid prices generally start at $1 and you pay only when a mobile phone user makes a call from the ad. This is one unique feature of the
Superpages pay per call service.

Both Superpages and Citysearch offer pay per call services as well as pay per click services. You can run both services simultaneously using the same ad. Known as local yellow pages, these services are used much like traditional phone books except that they exist online for users searching for a particular type of business in a local geographic area.

When a searcher looking for your type of business finds your ad they can choose to click a link and visit your website or click a link and call your business from a mobile phone. Either way, you do not pay for the click or call until it is made. It’s a powerful way to advertise and the benefits far outweigh the cost for most local businesses.

Another benefit to using Citysearch and Superpages is that the cost per click for the pay per click service is usually much less than it would be with Google.

The leading pay per click service online, of course, is the above-mentioned search engine. Google started its pay per click service in 2001 and since then has gone on to become the largest pay per click provider on the Internet. That doesn’t mean it is the best option for everyone.

Yahoo! and MSN also provide pay per click services, though neither has yet presented an effective pay per call service. Google, on the other hand, has begun offering the pay per call service for mobile users and likely will see an increase in its advertising business in the next year.

When it comes to local pay per click or pay per call, many small businesses are forced to pay attention to budgetary concerns. This is not a limitation. It’s a reality. A simple test run of any campaign before getting too deep into the campaign at any search engine is advised and could save your local small business a lot of money in the long run.

http://www.talentzoo.com

Brick Marketing, President and Founder, Nick Stamoulis has become one of the Internet’s premier online marketing managers by treating each client as a business partner.

If you want to promote your product or service, then consider using public relations. The best part of PR is that it costs nothing. In fact, public relations is one of the best kept secrets of small business owners who are successful. Use these powerful techniques to get picked up by local and national media.

1. Be an expert. The media relies on experts for their information. The news that gets printed is only as credible as the source from which it comes. Begin by selecting a news related story to comment on. It should be a story that you are qualified to speak about, aligned with your area of expertise.

If your background is in engineering, and a building falls down, you are qualified to speak about the structure and answer possible engineering related questions. Being an expert simply means that you have a background in a specific area and can lend your expertise.

2. Research the reporter. To get coverage, find the reporter who is covering the news you wish to comment on. For example, if the news is about a specific current event, then Google the current event name followed by the name of a popular newspaper like the Wall Street Journal or USA Today. You’ll quickly find the reporters who have written on the subject. Call the newspaper (contact information available on their website) and ask for the reporter by name. If the operation asks what your call is in reference to, simply state that you have information related to a specific news item.

3. Compliment the reporter. When you locate the reporter, and contact him, start with a compliment. Reporters take great pride in their work. Be sure to compliment their position on a given topic or their previous work. After complimenting them, you’re ready for the pitch.

Talk to them about your position on the given news story and what you have to offer. Again, referring back to our earlier example of the building, mention that you have an engineering background and have a position on the story. For example, you might be able to comment on why buildings collapse and the structural aspects that could be the cause. Let the reporter ask questions but have a point of view. After the dialogue, the reporter will verify your information such as name and company.

4. Leave a compelling yet non-descript message. If you’re unable to get in touch with the reporter directly, leave a message - but be discreet. You don’t want to show all of your cards before speaking to him directly. However, if you leave enough information to get them to return your call, they will call you. Reporters follow up with any leads they consider opportunistic.

When leaving a message, simple say, “I have something you need to hear about (fill in name of story here).” Be specific with regard to the story the reporter is covering. You want them to consider your possible information valuable.

5. State your expertise. After complimenting the reporter about their coverage on a specific article or issue, let them know your position on a given topic and why you are qualified to comment on it. Give them your pitch and be confident that your opinion matters base on the experience you have to offer.

In today’s environment, it’s difficult to attract the media’s attention. The best way to get PR for your product or service is by commenting on current stories being covered by the media. The process is simple. When you hear a news story that you can comment on, find the reporter using Google and the name of a major publication.

Research some of the reporter’s previous articles for background and then contact him directly. Let him know that you have some information that he may find valuable or a comment relevant to the story. Be sure to provide him with your credentials. Lastly, be persistent. Continue to reach out to the media and soon they’ll be calling you for advice.

Michael Fleischner is an Internet marketing expert who has been featured on The TODAY Show and Bloomberg Radio. Discover how to improve search engine rankings at http://www.webmastersbookofsecrets.com.

Whatever your business, submitting keyword-rich articles is a fantastic way to get more website traffic. Obviously, all of the top Internet marketers fully endorse article marketing as one of the easiest methods to attract new clients. Plus, many of them also use article submission to article directories within their blog posts… to maintain their relationships with current clients & continue finding more website traffic at the same time.

Lee Kendrick has been featured by numerous magazines, websites and forums as a successful internet marketer, coach, writer, public speaker and software developer. Go to http://articledominator4.com to learn more about article marketing, to see how Lee dominates Google search engine rankings, and to begin receiving his infamous ‘Insane Website Traffic Tips’ newsletter.