At some point in time you will come to the conclusion that you need to build your subscriber list, i.e. sign people up to receive your special FREE report or ask people to join your eCourse, or whatever else it is that you need to promote. Having a large subscriber list is a great way to connect with your Website users. In addition, you will want to have an autoresponder to automatically send out emails to your users.

Autoresponders have more features than simply sending out an email. For example, you can send out a different email automatically to new subscribers (for example, a welcome message), a different email message to existing users, a different email message to users that are subscribed to a particular newsletter. Autoresponders also allow you to send out email messages in sequence at a preset time interval automatically.

Some features you will want from a good autoresponder service include:

• ensure the service is whitelisted with all major ISPs so that your email is delivered to every single person on your subscriber list, and in a timely manner. On average, deliverability rates are usually between 98%-99%, i.e. meaning that your email will get delivered to 98%-99% of the people on your email distribution list.
• allows you to create many different campaign streams (important if you have users of your Website subscribed to more than one newsletter or list)
• popup lightbox-type form generator. These types of forms are NOT blocked by the Web browser popup blocker option. If you don’t know what this is or why you need it, stay tuned for a future post where I will discuss this in more detail. For now, just note that this will allow you to create a popup-like form on your Website to capture the name and email address of your users which will then get stored automatically into the autoresponder service database for future email campaign followups. This is a great way to build up your subscribers list.
• track the performance of your email campaigns
• use email newsletter templates for permission-based email marketing campaigns.
• easily set up, organize, and manage mailing lists
• surveys
• RSS feeds
• easy to use Web based interface

Below is a table of the top 3 autoresponders, with some basic information and service cost.

Even though aWeber seems to be the big name here, GetResponse has good pricing (for anyone with more than 500 subscribers) and a great feature set: they allow you to have an unlimited number of subscribers and they have the popup signup form creator which is a great way to convert your Website visitors into subscribers. aWeber pricing is based on the number of subscribers but their deliverability is also great so you pay a little more for that; they also have a nice lightbox type popup form creator. iContact has the best pricing for under 500 subscribers, but seems to be the odd one out in terms of popup signup forms – currently they do not have a lightbox type signup form to capture new subscriber information; hopefully, this will change in the near future.

Would you like to receive a FREE, seven-lesson email course that will power up your email marketing and profits? If so, sign up below NOW.

Are you interested in selling your Website? Do you want to know how much your site is worth? Well, you can now get some idea by visiting:

http://www.websiteoutlook.com

Let’s see what it tells us about popular Websites and their worth to see if it is accurate. By the way, Website owners might have a different opinion due to the amount of time and effort they put into their Website!

Yahoo.com: $2.41 Billion USD
Google.com: $1.2 Billion
Google.ca: $40.83 Million
Microsoft.com: $172.07 Million USD
Amazon.com: $73 Million USD

It’s interesting that their Website worth calculating engine doesn’t combine Google.ca and Google.com – also, since Google redirects all traffic to Google.ca, I thought that might be worth a lot more. And Microsoft.com seems to be very undervalued. Their information also seems inaccurate regarding backlinks. This tool might be inaccurate, but does provide a few minutes entertainment, and some ammunition if you plan to sell your Website.

Finally, they provide a snippet of code that you can put on your Website to proudly display your Website worth. For example, for Yahoo.com it would look like the following:

Want to know who is making the most money online in Internet Marketing? Now you can. Get a list of the top Internet marketing experts or Gurus from GuruDAQ. There is even a daily summary of the winners and losers, as well as more detailed information about each Guru. This is definitely worth a look to see who is making it big, and might also come in handy if you are considering buying some of their materials for study, and possibly trying to emulate their success.

http://gurudaq.com

And if you are getting depressed because you are not making as much money online as you wished you were, there is even a section for Personal Development Gurus, so try listening to Anthony Robbins or Deepak Chopra for both business and spiritual inspiration!

Yes, I finally decided to start tweeting by joining www.twitter.com. And yes, I was already using other social media sites like Facebook, YouTube, StumbleUpon, Digg, and a few others, but I never really used Twitter much. But, I kept hearing about how great Twitter was from others, and never figured it was of much use to me. Twitter? Tweets? Isn’t that just another online chat medium with a catchy name? Well, if you aren’t using Twitter then you’re probably wondering the same thing, so let’s nail down what Twitter really is – here is a definition:

Twitter is a micro-blogging platform that allows you to communicate your thoughts in 140 characters or less.

So, no it is not another instant messenger. People don’t have to be online for you to post messages to them, and you can see what they have posted before. And, posts are viewable by all those that follow the tweets (posts) of that person. So, the definition above makes sense: it is a micro-blogging platform, where each person’s Twitter account profile could be considered the equivalent of their blog site.

So, how does this help us in online marketing?

Well, within Twitter there are two types of users: those that you follow (following), and those that follow you (followers). By follow, we mean that you can read the posts of the other person – and those posts appear auto-magically in your Twitter home page. The trick is to get as many (and as many of the right type) of followers (those that add you to their Twitter account to see your posts) as possible. This way, whenever you post something (hopefully useful), all those that follow you will see it – and if they find it useful or interesting then they may take your advice, think you are a great guy, or follow you to your Website or other information that you share.

So, Twitter is not only a tool to share information, it is also another way to build your social network, and to connect with many people online. However, before you go crazy with Twitter, here are some tips to keep you on the right track:

• Post quality tweets, or people will not follow you. In 140 characters or less, make your post worthy of being read so people look forward to more, and thus are more likely to take your advice or information seriously.
• Be polite. It is polite to follow someone who is following you. But, in order to avoid following 1000’s of tweeters, take time to check out the Websites of your followers to see if they are the right people for you to follow. Strive to have lots of followers: the more followers you have, the more clout you have online.
• Be interesting and entertaining and followers may follow you back to your main Website, Facebook, Digg, or other places you want to send them.

You may also want to check out some Twitter tools. for example, if you use WordPress there are plugins that allow you to post your Tweets on your Blog, or going the other way send a tweet to let everyone following you on Twitter that you have just made another post on your blog. Make use of these tools. I’ve also started to use the Witty Twitter client on Windows XP instead of the Twitter Website. Other good ones are: Digsby and Twhirl. There are Twitter clients for almost any platform, such as Mac, Linux, iPhone, Windows Mobile, so you can tweet to your content from almost any computer or portable device from anywhere with an Internet connection. Check out a more complete list of clients at http://twitter.com/downloads.

My Twitter foray has been quite exciting so far: in a very short period of time, I have managed to acquire over 130 followers. If this keeps up, I may have a few thousand followers very soon. Not bad!

MSN, Yahoo, and Google have all generated fantastic advertising opportunities with the PPC or pay per click advertising model. These simple online advertising systems have enabled many businesses to dump untold millions of dollars into their advertising campaigns online. What happens all too often, though, is that these business people don’t effectively use the PPC advertising model in a way that converts web searchers into sales and leads.

Many tricks exist that you can use to create massively effective PPC advertising campaigns. The five tips listed below will help you be more effective with your online pay per click advertising.

5. Display URL. Once upon a time, Google allowed advertisers to put whatever they wanted into their display URL, the website address visible on the PPC advertisement. Now, your ad needs a real URL that everyone will land on when they click on your ad. You can’t even use a URL that redirects to a different website. For this reason, your display URL is even more important. Make sure you capitalize the first letter of each keyword in your display website name. For example, my website URL is www.creative-emarketingsolutions.com. When I use that URL in my PPC campaigns, I set the display URL as www.Creative-eMarketingSolutions.com. This capitalizing helps your business URL stand out from the pack.

4. Keywords in your first line of the ad. You only get four lines for your entire ad, and one of them is your display URL. The first line of your ad needs to grab the browser’s attention. It needs to set your ad apart from the dozens of other ads out there. It needs to tell the potential costumer, “Hey, I’ve got exactly what you’re searching for.”

3. Benefit vs. Feature. The second line of your ad should have a benefit of your product of service. The third line of your ad should be a feature. A benefit is how your potential customer’s situation will improve because of what you are selling. A feature is why that customer should purchase your products or services.

2. Keywords. The keywords you select will determine how much you pay for your clicks, so pay attention. Well researched keywords will draw targeted traffic that is ready to buy. Poor keywords will cost you money. Use Google’s free keyword tool to uncover the best keywords for your products or services- the ones that are searched for often but have little competition.

1. Ad rotation. Run at least two different PPC ads at the same time. By creating two different ads and running them in competition against each other, you are able to test which messages convert into sales. Don’t let Google decide which ad is best. Check in your campaign settings to have your ads shown evenly over time.

You never know what might make a difference in your CTR or click through rate. Sometimes just switching the text in your second and third lines increases your CTR. Different titles convert differently. Different display URL’s convert at varying rates. You’ll never know until you run a couple ads in competition against each other. Then, when you’ve generated enough clicks, you can decide which ad works best, drop the losing ad, and create a new ad.

These simple five tips will help you do much better in the competitive pay per click advertising world. If you ever need help creating your own PPC campaigns, just ask our professional staff at www.Creative-eMarketingSolutions.com. We’ve helped hundreds of businesses of all different sizes succeed for years in pay per click advertising, and we’d very much love to help you!

About the Author:
The professionals at Creative eMarketing Solutions work directly with you and your company to help you profit from your business’ online presence. If you have a website and you need it to make money, Creative eMarketing Solutions is the team you want on your side. Contact our professional staff today for your free website analysis and online marketing recommendations.

In every bloggers life comes a special day – the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else’’s blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader – you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that’’s about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.

Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major “pillar” articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good “how-to” lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don”t have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that’’s the offline world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Trackback and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A trackback is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger’’s article you can do a trackback to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry – it’’s sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Trackbacks often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a trackback leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important – it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it’’s so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it’’s worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it’’s worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have – your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your “Resource Box”. You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it’’s certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

To get more information, visit BlogMastermind