If you’re low on money, you might want to consider using referral marketing to promote your business. How does referral marketing actually work? In fact, you use the general public to help advertise your company.  They would do this through a special referral site that they would share with their friends and family. If someone converts to a sale through this site and/or signs up for the referral program, the original person who referred would receive an incentive. This incentive can be virtually anything, whether it’s cash, discounts, or give away merchandise.

Now, there are two ways you can achieve referral marketing.  The first involves utilizing it as a secondary form of advertising, especially for time-sensitive promotions.  You try to create as much buzz as possible before your promotion ends. The second method involves incorporating referral programs into your unique business model.  If you do this, technically your company becomes an MLM, (which stands for Multi-Level Marketing).

Okay, I can guess what you might be thinking. Isn’t an MLM a pyramid scheme? No, but MLMs can go in a downward spiral if they are not done carefully. This means that they rely only on referrals for their company.  No legitimate sales of products or services are incorporated into their business model.

12 Daily Pro is an example of such an entity. This was an autosurf website that generated millions of dollars.  However, over 95% of these profits came from referrals who invested their own money into the program; very little came from legitimate business transactions.  As a result, older members were getting paid from the new members’ money.As the scheme moved forward, many new members weren’t getting paid because there weren’t enough leads to keep the pyramid strong.

This is the result of pyramid schemes… even those that last several years, (like the Madoff scandal). The Madoff scandal was a ponzi scheme, which is a way more complex than your everyday pyramid scheme.Either way, the concept is the similar.

In order to prevent these problems, always make sure that you’re rewarding referrals from the profits of your company. If this would be hard to do, consider compensating them only on an affiliate basis, meaning they would receive a commission only if their referrals actually buy something.

In conclusion, if you can’t afford an elaborate advertising campaign, consider utilizing referral marketing. Implementation is a snap, and once it’s established, you’ll have tons of people promoting for you with no cost to your business.

Lots of people are now enjoying writing for their blogs. Blogs are fun to write. Many folks enjoy writing a blog about their passion or hobby. Some blog to gain attention for their business. At some point you will most likely want to monetize your blog. Once you learn how to start a blog, start writing good content, and gain visitors, you will be able to make some money.

You can make money blogging in numerous ways. There are ads that you can sell. You can join an affiliate program and collect a commission on products you recommend and your readers purchase. Selling your own product is also a great option. Just about any method you can think of is available to you for making money blogging.

Bloggers can make money from their blog content with the following suggestions. Not all are worthwhile for every blog. If you are writing a political blog with conservative views then posting Google Adsense advertisements may not work as well as getting a commission from selling political books.

Probably the most common means of making money with your blog these days is through the Google Adsense program. This program allows you to place Google Adwords on your blog, otherwise known as Adsense, and if visitors click on an ad then Google will share in the revenue.

So how does Adsense work? For instance, if you created a blog about golf and wrote a post about ladies golf clubs. The ad unit would hopefully display ads about ladies golf clubs or at the least golf clubs. Google allows you to share in the revenue when your visitor clicks on one of the ads in their program, or network. Once your Adsense earnings were over a hundred dollars, Google would then cut you a check for that amount.

Other ways of making money with your blog include affiliate programs where you promote products and services in exchange for a commission. There are numerous programs such as Shareasale, Commission Junction and in-house programs like Amazon.com that you can submit an application to. Many big name companies with large advertising budgets might buy ad space on your blog if you get a large number of visitors. An online store could be set up, linked from your blog, to sell goods you create or dropship.

The methods for making money from blogging are very easy to do. The difficulty is actually marketing your blog so visitors will buy the products you are offering.

If you’ve been in the Niche Marketing field for any length of time, then you’ve seen all the advertising landing pages telling you about some Internet Marketing software that will make you a million dollars in a week. Or some marketing b.s. like that.

I’ve worked in the Internet Marketing field for nearly 9 years and in that time, I’ve seen all kinds of software that promised to help me learn how to make money online. I’ve used a lot of software designed to make me money over the years. Some I bought, some was sent to me to try out by the designers. There were only a few that I would have paid money for. The truth of the matter is, you don’t need a lot of software to be a successful Internet Marketer. I make a lot of money using free software available to anyone.

In fact, Google has some free tools that are better than a lot of the software on the market today. If you don’t want to shell out big bucks for software, give these free tools from Google a try.

Google Trends is a service from Google I use all the time to spot hot trends. Google Trends is designed to track hot trends in web searches. Google Trends tracks all searches that are performed on Google and list the most popular.You can go back over time to see what people were searching for on a particular day as well. It doesn’t take a smart Marketer long to figure out how valuable this service is.

The second tool is one that is the most important one in my opinion if you want to make money online. It’s the Keyword Research Tool from Google. Any Niche Marketer worth his computer knows how important this tool is. The Google Keyword Tool will show you how many times in the previous months a keyword or keyword phrase has been searched for. After finding some hot trends with Google Trends, I use this tool to see how many searches there have been for the terms. This tool will also tell you how much per click advertisers are willing to spend. This tool is one that most people who make money with Adsense use.

The next free service you should look at is Google’s Webmasters Tool program. You’ll have to have a Google account in order to use this program. Whether you have a blog or traditional website, this tool will come in handy tracking your rankings. The Webmaster Tool will show you which keyword or keyword phrases you rank for and what percentage of traffic that each of the top 20 search terms for your website is getting. It also shows you how many backlinks your website has.

Google Analytics. Unlike Google’s Webmaster Tool, Analytics digs down deep to show you detailed information about your website. Although too long to list here, Analytics is a full scale analysing program that gives you important data about your website. Just some of the features of this tool include; telling you where your traffic is coming from, which keywords they’re using to get to your site, how long they stay on your site, which pages they visit, whether or not they are returning visitors and which keywords covert better than other ones. This is critical in tracking the effectiveness of your advertising and backlink campaigns.

This destroys the myth that you need high dollar software to make money on the Internet. With these free tools from Google, there is no need in spending a lot of money on other programs. You can take the money you save and outsource some of those boring chores of Internet Marketing that you hate to do, like writing articles!

I bought Keyword Elite by Brad Callen in 2006 as I needed a keyword research tool, and I had read good reports about it.  Keyword Elite does what is says on the box, it returns as many as 10,000 related keywords for any single keyword or keyword phrase you search on, and it returns them pretty quickly.

Keyword Elite is really easy to use and simple to learn, literally within minutes of getting it I was producing large keyword lists. My real headache was what to do with the huge lists of keywords I was producing? 10,000 keywords are great, but what use are they?

I decided to take another look at the product tutorials. It was at this point that I really started to grasp the power of Keyword Elite. In particular, Keyword Elite Project 2 takes the Keyword Lists you’ve created and returns some incredible data from Google. For example:

• For each Keyword Phrase, Project 2 will tell you how many searches are made each month and how many sites are competing for the keyword phrase
• For each Keyword Phrase, Project 2 will also show you what the Top 3 Adwords Advertisers are paying for the top positions in the sponsored searches

The Keyword Elite keyword data is priceless for the development of profitable Adsense sites, for finding keywords for PPC campaigns and for promoting affiliate products.

So in summary I absolutely, totally recommend Keyword Elite to anyone, whether you’re relatively new to internet marketing as I am, or an experienced online marketer, I never thought I would make so much money so quickly.

So much so that I’ve written my own 70 page Free Keyword Elite 2 Bonus which details exactly how I’ve used Keyword Elite to make thousands of dollars online. My Keyword Elite Bonus details how to use the software to:

• Identify Profitable Niches and Products Using Keyword Elite
• Find Uncompetitive Keywords That Will Bring Free Search Engine Traffic To Your Sites
• Find Profitable Affiliate Products That You Can Start Earning From In Just 7 Days

Keyword Elite is a Monster keyword research tool.  The great news for marketers like me and you is that Brad Callen is about to release Keyword Elite 2.0 … I really am excited that Brad is updating my favourite software, you will be too when you see it ..!

How do you find potentially profitable keyword phrases for your web pages or AdWords campaigns

What factors should you consider when trying to determine the profitability of a particular phrase? Here are some suggestions:

• the frequency of which your keyword phrase is searched on
• the number of other web pages competing for your keyword
• how your keyword phrase is written
• how much Pay Per Click advertisers are willing to bid for your keyword
• how closely matched your product is to your phrase
• does your keyword phrase include a product or brand name

The 6 criteria above will go along way to determining how profitable a term will be for you.

So let me take you through each of the criteria in a bit more detail and explain further how each one can help you determine the potential of the keyword …

1. Keyword Phrase Search Frequency

The higher the frequency that a keyword is searched on, the higher the probability that it will be profitable as it will drive you more traffic. Lets face it, if nobody ever types it in a search engine, it is not going to make you any money!

2. Competition For Your Keyword Phrase

Just because a search term is heavily searched on doesn’t mean it’s going to be profitable for YOU!

There is no point in optimising for traffic from highly searched on keywords IF there are already thousands of other sites doing the same … because you’ll simply find it difficult to compete and your pages will have very little hope of ranking highly in the search engines.

For a phrase to be profitable, it needs to attract “reasonable” volumes of searches whilst not having too many web pages to compete with!

3. How The Keyword Phrase Is Structured

This is a key point. When you discover a keyword phrase that gets a lot of searches and is structured in the form of a “question”, you’ve potentially found a highly profitable keyword to exploit.

If you discover a highly searched on term that starts with “why”, “how”, “where” or “which”, you’ve discovered an opportunity to provide the searcher with a “really targeted benefit”.

4. How Much Google AdWords Advertisers Are Paying For The Keyword

If advertisers are prepared to pay a lot to display their advert against a keyword phrase, it must follow that its valuable and therefore should be profitable … makes a lot of sense I think you will agree? Life really does not need to be complicated …

5. How Well Matched Your Product Is To Your Keyword Phrase

There’s no point in identifying a potentially profitable term and then using it to sell a product that isn’t closely matched to it.

6. Include A Product Name

Phrases that include a specific product name or brand name are likely to be high converting keywords if you’re going to use them for affiliate marketing, because people already have been pre-sold on the product as they know of its existence before they search on it.

So there you have it, you now know what to look for when researching keywords that will potentially make you a lot of money using the 6 tips above.

The best keyword tool I have come across, and I’ve tried a few is Brad Callen’s Keyword Elite.  It’s an excellent tool!  The good news is he is releasing Keyword Elite 2.0 very very soon, click on the link to take a look!  And take a look at my Keyword Elite 2 bonus as well!

People are always looking for new sources of income online.  One of the latest ways that is available is through social media sites.

Social media sites allow different groups of people to communicate with each other and share information.  The social network is made up of the individuals and links that tie them together.  It can be a group of family members scattered around the country, to governments and even professional groups.  Here are some of the ways that you can profit from using social media sites.

Social networking allows for several people to communicate, and one of the fastest modes of advertising is through word of mouth.  If one person gives another a positive review of your website, product or service, this second person in turn may stop by to visit your site.  By getting involved with networks that are have similar interests as your website is that you can use this word of mouth communication to your advantage.

The hardest part of social networking is finding the sites that cater to your interests that will still be profitable.  Choose a interest that is too broad, and you will definitely face with a lot of competition.  Choose one that is too focused, and you will not have a large enough customer base to profit on.  You need to find the balance of exclusivity and popularity.

Social media sites are also a great place to find new potential clients.  Finding the right people for your product or service is half of the battle of promoting your product.  Since people that have similar interests tend to stay together, but may operate in different interest circles.  You can use this to your advantage in two ways – one, you already have a focused group of potential cleints to start with.  Plus, if they like your products or services, they will tell friends in other circles as well, expanding your sphere of influence virally.

Social network sites also allow your customers to get the feeling that they “know” you – and people tend to purchase services from people that they know or that they are more comfortable with.  In order to use this most effectively, you have to be a prominent character on the social network site.  Be an active poster in good standing and keep your name as one of the leaders of the group.

Along similar lines, you have to remember that the most successful social networking relationships are long term.  If you want your social networking to be effective, you need to develop lasting friendships with the people in your social networking groups.

Another positive about social networking sites is that it allows you to keep in touch with consumer needs and wants.  Who better to get ideas from of products to sell or services to offer than the people who will actually buy these from you?  You may get ideas of products and services to offer that are unique to what you currently offer, or ways that you can improve your products and services to stnd out from the competition.

You will also find that using social networking sites are one of the more cheaper ways of developing your customer base.  While you can always find a one time only customer online, your best way of making money is through repeat business, since you do not have to spend the advertising dollars to attract new customers.  You can use social networking sites as a technique to improve customer relations and prove your reliability to your clientele.

Remembering, social networks will continue to thrive and become more popular.  Places like MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter and Friendster attract new members everyday, giving you access to new and potential customers daily. Not to mention social network sites like Squidoo which actually allow you to make money from Squidoo Social Network

There are many other social media sites available online and catering to different interest groups and markets. If you want to make use of social sites to build your business, it is important to know which ones are suitable for your market. You can download a Free copy of Social Bookmarking Directory of over 400 Social networking sites for your reference and learn how you can make full use of these social sites with Internet Marketing Strategies to enhance your business performance online at www.BOBmarketing.com

The definition of viral marketing depends on who you ask.Few individuals say that it is an unethical strategy like spam.But, truthfully, there is absolutely nothing unethical about it.Companies that make use of it are relying on word of mouth advertising to virtually sell their business, and word of mouth works exponentially.

Think about Mary Kay.They are overly expensive cosmetics that are no better than anything else out there on the market.  But the company has continued to be successful for one reason.Women buy them and then suggest that their friends buy them as well.

In order to be a successful Mary Kay representative, you would believe that the product is better.You would then tell all of your friends that the product is superior.  Next, you would ask your friends to sell the cosmetics.  Then, they would tell their friends, etc, etc, etc.

That’s real definition of viral marketing.  It is word of mouth advertising.You broadcast to your friends.  They tell their friends and the process continues exponentially until you, the business owner, have generated more sales than you might have ever dreamed possible.

It is commonly called a virus, because it multiplies, easily and readily throughout the population.  Any advertising strategy that encourages individuals to pass along your message to others is a viral marketing strategy.

There are classic examples of this strategy.“Hotmail” is the one.They usually offer a free service and every time that an person takes advantage of that service, by sending an e-mail, they also broadcast an advertisement to the recipient, asking them to sign up for their free e-mail service.

People love things that are free.  That’s a big part of the definition of viral marketing.You offer something for free, with the intention to generate sales at a later date.You must to be willing to wait.It may take a few months to see the sales figures grow, but eventually they will.

The free gifts keep your company’s name right in front of the consumer.It is not unlike the free calendars that banks, florists and insurance conpanies offered, before the advent of the internet.Each day, every customer saw that company’s name and anyone that came by their house saw it as well.

In these times, you can reach thousands upon thousands of customers with a single weekly e-mail.  What’s the real definition of viral marketing?It is putting your name out there, where all can view it.

The internet offers hundreds of viral marketing tools. Choosing a great service can be slightly tricky.  If the techniques that the company uses are ineffective, then you have wasted your time and money. Research the benefits a company offers and what fees they collect.  Read the fine print in any agreement that you sign.  Those are the basics.  Here’s what a good company can do for you.

Generate Referrals

They can generate referrals for you business. It is up to you to complete the conversion of those referrals into buyers.  Sometimes ad campaigns fail, not because there was not enough traffic driven to a website, but because the website failed to sell the product or service. Before you spend money on a service to encourage traffic to your site, be sure that your website effectively sells your company.

Effective word of mouth advertising ensures that consumers are frequently reminded of your company brand and the services you can offer.  That can be accomplished with regular e-mails that include your company’s name.  Some of the better companies generate those e-mails for you, saving you and your staff time and money.

Before you invest in viral marketing tools, be sure that the company will provide a measurable return on your investment. They must provide detailed reports listing the number of referrals generated, the click-thru rates and the percentage of conversions to sales, using the links that they create.

They should also be able to help you retain customers by continuously keeping in contact with them. This also generates new clients. If one of your current customers highly recommends your products or services to a friend, you will often make a quick sale. People are influenced by their friends’ opinions.They are often wary of advertising campaigns.

When you want to make your company more “green”, select some great internet viral marketing tools, rather than direct mailers. E-mails are paperless and they are more likely to be cost effective.It has been estimated that more than 40% of direct mail offers end up in as garbage. A good e-mail campaign can generate a 50% referral rate, without cutting down any trees to do it, or generating more waste.

If you select a good company, you can generate another stream of revenue by referring other businesses to their services.  It could be as simple as including a link to the company’s website on your pages.  The bottom line is that effective viral marketing tools can help you earn in several ways, as long as you choose the right company.

If you haven’t read my first post about the thesis theme for Wordpress you might want to read it.

I mentioned how skeptical I was about a theme that does what Thesis programmers claim but I was so excited because what if it was all true. Well I purchased the thesis theme just over a week ago and in just a few minutes I was more than convinced I had done the right thing.

However, I only purchased the personal copy which allowed me to put the theme on two of my 30 blogs. That was enough for me to do a few different things on each install.

I later found that it was okay for me to have a test blog where I could put thesis through it’s gears but I didn’t know about it and just did it all on my live blogs.

All I have been able to think about is thesis.

A few minutes ago I was sitting here looking at my hobbies blog, the first blog I installed thesis on, and started thinking about how much spare time I have had in the last week, all because of Thesis for Wordpress.

I had gotten so busy working with Thesis I totally forgot about the developers edition so I put off eating lunch long enough to buy the upgrade to my personal edition of thesis.

Now I can start to install the thesis theme for Wordpress on the rest of my 28 or so blogs.

If you haven’t heard of the thesis theme check it out and if you were as skeptical as I was then you should go back and look at it again.

I didn’t know it until today but I can also purchase an add on for thesis that will allow me to put this theme on my client’s sites. That is another great time saver because I spend a lot of time on my web design client sites.

Well I can’t take up any more of your time, gotta get back to thesis, but do take a few minutes and look at what you will be missing if you pass on the Thesis for Wordpress.

Here you will see some viral marketing examples that are considered effective by Business Week and other experts.The specific techniques used vary greatly and they were effective for a variety of different reasons.These simply inspired curiosity.

In 2001, Business Week cited advertising for the Blair Witch Project as a striking example of viral marketing.  The advertising campaign insinuated that the footage was “real”, filmed by a group of college students that had disappeared, presumably leaving only their video camera behind.

Teasers were first seen on TV and then posted on the internet.Viewers were enlisted to share the footage with friends.The film grossed over $248 million around the world and cost only $35,000 to produce.Who wouldn’t want to see sky high profits like that?

Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” was commented on in Wired as a successful campaign example.Although it is quite difficult to assess the amount of new customers that Burger King has attracted with this specific campaign, it is a popular website.

Some more “down to earth” viral marketing examples for those of you that may be trying to grow your own business are newsletters and automated e-mails.  With minimal software, you can suggest that visitors to your website sign up for your newsletter.That allows you their email address.

In each newsletter, you could ask for the email addresses of accociates that would also be interested in your products or services.You can imagine how this could increase your contact base most quickly.  You don’t have to worry about being called a spammer, because the customer requested the newsletter.

A wildly effective viral marketing example, according to many experts, is the single line method used by “Hotmail”.  They allow people to sign up for free e-mail.  At the bottom of every free e-mail a person sends, there is a single one line message that reads “Get your private, free e-mail at http://www.hotmail.com”.The website address is a link as well.

All that they had to do was wait for thousands and thousands of people to sign up without much to do other than sit back.Most people love anything that is free.The most effective campaigns always offer something complimentary, whether it be playing with a virtual sheep or reading a newsletter that are highly relevant to the individual.

If you are able to get people to tell their friends about your product, the ripple effect spreads like a virus, thus coining the phrase.There are many viral marketing examples.Anyone that is not at least attempting to do it is not growing their business as much as they could.