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Does your online marketing skill make up for in enthusiasm what it lacks in knowledge and expertise? If this is the case, you’re not giving your business every possible advantage. While it’s true that in order to be success at your networking business you need to have passion for your product, you also need to know how to make the public aware of it and want to be a part of it. Online marketing courses are one of the most effective ways to help make this happen for you. What’s So Important About Online Marketing Courses? You’re probably remembering your days back in school and all the reading, tests and studying you had to do and how much you hated it. Does the prospect of taking more courses appeal to you any more now than it did then? Absolutely, because you know the importance of what you’ll be learning in these online marketing courses and how they can help gain you a successful online business, a lifelong income and, possibly, fame. What more can you possibly ask for? The importance of taking online marketing courses is that you can get help and guidance from those that know what they’re talking about in areas where you may be lacking. If you’re just starting your business, there are going to be plenty of areas where you’ll need help. I know when I first started; I needed lots of help and guidance. There were not near the opportunities in online marketing courses available a few years back as there are today. You now have the opportunity to take online marketing courses that will teach you everything you need to know to run a successful online business from the ground up. What Will Online Marketing Courses Cost? A major concern for many individuals just starting their online business is keeping costs down as much as possible. This is the case with any business ventures. The less expenses you have, the more profit you’ll make when your business does get off the ground and running strong. However, some expenses are unavoidable in business and the expense you’ll incur for gaining the knowledge to start your business and make it successful will be invaluable to you down the road. You’ll be happy to hear that many online marketing courses are free on the web. It’s just a matter of finding the right ones. Others, however, may be listed for a fee that’s very affordable. When choosing your online marketing courses, you’ll have your choice of individual courses, programs offering certificates in certain areas of study or complete course packages. If you online need help in a couple of topic such as SEO, email marketing or website hosting, you can easily get by with the specific individuals. If you feel you need all the help you can get, enrolling in complete online marketing courses may be the answer. Whatever area you feel you need the most help and guidance, you’re sure to find online marketing courses to meet that need. The glorious internet has it all.

Companies have many options for communicating with prospective customers. The Internet has become the primary medium for reaching potential clients anywhere across the globe. With advent of search and popular brands like Google and Yahoo, the Internet is an excellent source to obtain new clients and build your business beyond your wildest dreams.

Let us begin by outlining the components of Online Marketing.

SEO / Search Engine Optimization:

Short for search engine optimization, the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. It is common practice for Internet users to not click through pages and pages of search results, so where a site ranks in a search is essential for directing more traffic toward the site.

SEO helps to ensure that a site is accessible to a search engine and improves the chances that the site will be found by the search engine.

PPC . Pay Per Click:

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.

Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword “red widgets”, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. In the spring of 2006, MSN started beta testing their own PPC service, MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0. 01 (up to US$0. 50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.

Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword “red widgets”, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy. These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. In the spring of 2006, MSN started beta testing their own PPC service, MSN adCenter. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0. 01 (up to US$0. 50). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Abuse of the pay per click model can result in click fraud.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a method of promoting web businesses in which an affiliate is rewarded for every visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale provided through his/her efforts. It is a modern variation of the practice of paying a finder’s fee for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation may be made based on a certain value for each visit (Pay per click), registrant (Pay per lead), or a commission for each customer or sale (Pay per sale), or any combination.

Merchants like affiliate marketing because it is a “pay for performance model”, meaning the merchant does not incur a marketing expense unless results are realized.

Some e-commerce sites run their own affiliate programs while other e-commerce vendors use third party services provided by intermediaries to track traffic or sales that are referred from affiliates. Some businesses owe much of their growth and success to this marketing technique, although research has shown in general the increase to be approximately 15-20% of online revenue. [citation needed]

Merchants who are considering adding an affiliate strategy to their online sales channel have different technological solutions available to them. Some types of affiliate management solutions include: standalone software, hosted services, shopping carts with affiliate features, and third party affiliate networks.

Revenue generated online grew quickly. The e-commerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the web, became an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grew to a bigger business than the existing offline business. Many companies hired outside affiliate management companies to manage the affiliate program

Online Reputation Management

Online reputation management is a developing field that encompasses public relations and search engine optimization.

Consumers go online to make buying decisions. When they research brands using search engines, the results that they observe often influence how they behave. Consumer generated media sites offer the general public the opportunity to express their views of brands. This information can be found in search engine results. Members of the public such as competitors, and ex-employees can take part in the online conversation which can adversely affect the brand reputation.

Online reputation management is a field that involves the monitoring of online conversation, and the action undertaken, to improved brand reputation within search engine results.

These components are extremely crucial in order to successfully marketing your website online. We the right Online Marketing firm, you company can see exponential growth with a highly satisfactory ROI. The most rewarding side effect of online marketing is the brand recognition that comes with your campaign. The actually campaign effectiveness can be tracked in terms of dollars through ROI calculations. However, this is a short –term terms. The long –term benefit of a well executed online marketing campaign will positively affect your brand. This is priceless!

Well, online marketing for products and services has really taken off in recent years. In fact, it is one of the reasons that business is booming upon the internet. Doing online marketing really is a simple process of placing advertisements with certain keywords in them on a search engine and linking them to the product website. The more the words are used, the more hits that you will have for the web site. This increases your chance of getting and keeping business. It also means that you stand a better chance of surviving and thriving with your online business. Since the internet is such an untapped goldmine, more and more people are making their living doing online marketing. They are making a very good living with what they do. With the advent of the internet, more and more people began to realize that to market their goods and services properly, that online marketing would suit them better than most traditional ways of marketing that the physical store would need. In this case, online marketing would definitely benefit all online business, no matter the products sold online. The ease of doing online marketing is also one of the attractions of doing this type of marketing. It is cost efficient and with the correct key words in the correct order, then the will just raise your chances of being effective in whatever you are choosing to sell over the internet. In fact, classes are given in this type of marketing. That is how popular this particular type of marketing really is. It is also cost effective and time efficient. This is a big boon to those who have a lot of things that they need to do in order to do business. A savvy online marketer will be able to attract customers from near and far and bring them to the web site.   The right words chosen can mean the difference between success and failure as far as an internet service or provider goes. This is crucial as there are many other online markets trying to market and sell their products and services to customers. To stand out from the crowd isn’t an easy feat. These online marketers have to be on top of their game to be able to get their product or service to stand out and stay out in order to have a successful business on the internet. You may ask “Just how successful are these online marketers?” In reality, these are some of the best online marketers in the world. They fully understand how to use the system of online marketing to constantly produce results. This nets them a hefty pay check every week and makes their way of living much more comfortable. This is a skill that can be learned very easily and within a very short amount of time, a person can be up and marketing their internet product or service just like a pro. Once the process is fully understood and absorbed, even a child would be able to get online, set up a business and run it using online marketing. It is simply that easy to do. The rewards are great for these types of online marketing gurus. It is simply put, a fantastic opportunity to make a living doing what they love and getting rewarded for it. With that thought in mind, the nest time that you go up on the internet and see all the internet ads, you can be certain that someone with a talent for online marketing has been there and profited.

A business must be making profit. Everyone knows it. It can be a little bit difficult to make it happen always as business involve risk. You never know about the move of market. It is necessary that you take wise steps in your business and make sure that your move is covering the risk. If you are involved in online marketing or if you want to venture into this field then make sure that you are investing in the right directions and you are utilizing the right online marketing tools. How will you make sure the same? You can do it by opting out for the professional help and that help can be offered from an online marketing company. Any such company would let you know about various kinds of profitable Internet marketing tools which serve your purposes and which involve less risk. If you are concerned about the promotion of your product in a nicer way then it is necessary that you turn to modern tools of online advertisement. A whole new generation of consumers are ready to buy your product through the Internet. All you need to do is to reach them and in that case you can take the assistance from an online marketing company. To have a profitable online presence such assistance works. A good and efficient online ad company can provide some good Internet advertising tools. Online tools are successful because a huge number of Internet users are using it for buying and selling products and services. They are utilizing it for other activities also like job, matrimony and property search. So a huge market for the advertisement is present over the Internet all over the world. An online marketing company can make you learn how you can make profit due to these Internet users. An advertising company can provide services globally like in UK, USA, India and Australia. Online advertisement is the best way for being recognized globally and for that it is necessary that you take the right guidance. So, choose online ad tools like banner advertising, search engine optimization and e-mail marketing and for using them in better ways opt for an online marketing company.

Online or Internet marketing is essential for the success of your online business. Internet marketing refers to tactics that are used to market a product or service online. To be very specific, online marketing binds the technological and innovative aspects of the Internet. The sphere of Internet or online marketing includes the following
Professional web designingBranding of a company onlinePromotion of products and services onlineE-mail MarketingSearch engine optimisation andPPC (Pay Per Click) Ads 
The major advantages of online marketing are as follows
Availability of informationComparatively low cost as it is on the InternetFast and effectiveCan easily reach the global audience24/7 promotion 
There are different ways that you can apply in your marketing plan through PPC and SEO to affiliate marketing and opt-in mail subscriptions. Google has its own analytics service, which provides you information about the incoming visitors, their origin, keywords they used for search and so on.
Search Engine Optimisation or SEO is one of the most vital strategies of online marketing. It is one of the best ways for generating higher targeted traffic and search engine positions of a website on targeted keywords or phrases. Organic search engine marketing solutions deliver success to a wide range of businesses, which includes brand and product promotions to a global market.
PPC or Pay Per Click is also one of the frequently used promotional tools. It is a fast and popular method to get targeted traffic and make money online. Google adwords is the most accepted and biggest pay per click service on the Internet so start with them if you are new to pay per click advertising.
Researches have shown that 82% of potential customers use search engines or directories to find relevant content. Thus, SEM or search engine marketing is widely used for attracting web visitors to a site.
This is an age of electronic communication hence; your online presence is an integral part of your business. The people who are ignoring the strength and power of online marketing are placing themselves isolated from this advantage. Increase your company sales and profits by providing a variety of online marketing techniques.
If you feel that implementing these can be tedious for you take professional help. Use the Online Marketing Bath Firm – James Burfield to do these for you.
If you want to know more about how Online Marketing Bath Firm – James Burfield can help your website send us an email.

Recent survey numbers highlight how Internet traffic is growing exponentially and is poised for a 600% increase by 2012. The huge increase in Internet traffic comes at a time when the convergence of mobile search technologies and local search capabilities will drive the growth of online marketing, local search and mobile search to similar heights – while driving foot traffic to businesses large and small that have a “digital footprint” in today’s surging digital economy. Staggering numbers from worldwide networking leader Cisco Systems predict a six-fold increase in global traffic on the Internet, highlighting the increasingly important role online marketing and internet advertising will play for businesses large and small as consumers increasingly move online to do both shopping and “Windows shopping”. Cisco released its Visual Networking Index (VNI) Forecast for 2007-2012 on June 16th, which predicts that we will see a 600% increase in Internet traffic by 2012. Cisco’s VNI projections predicts that Internet traffic will double roughly every two years as a result of “a combined annual growth rate of 46 p[er cent form 2007 to 2012. The key component in this surge of Internet traffic will be video streaming. Cisco predicts that by 2012, “video traffic alone will be 400 times the traffic carried over the U. S. portion of the Internet in 2000. Increasingly, marketing agencies and advertisers are moving off traditional media and moving online to exploit the consumer movement to the Internet. Significantly, much of this consumer movement online will result from the increasing tendency of consumers to access the Internet from handheld mobile devices – a trend that will only increase as RIM, Nokia and other cellular phone and mobile device manufacturers move to keep pace with Apple that just recently released its next-generation 3G iPhone. Cisco is predicting that mobile data will roughly double each year from 2008 to 2012, highlighting the importance that mobile search will play in an emerging digital economy. Jupiter Research, a leader in online research analysis, has projected that annual revenue from mobile search revenues are expected to hit $US4. 8 billion dollars annually by 2013. As technologies converge, the driver behind these anticipated huge jumps in online advertising and mobile search numbers is – not surprisingly for those who have been tracking the emerging technologies of Web 2. 0 – local search. Jupiter predicts that in the emerging digital economy, local search will be the most popular service amongst all advertisers and will attract 40% of all mobile search ad spending between 2008 and 2013. The convergence of technologies that is fostering the growth in mobile search, and particularly local search, was illustrated by Google CEO, Eric Schmidt. Sitting down for a much-publicized interview with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo earlier this spring, the head of the search engine giant touted how improvements in mobile search capabilities on advanced mobile handhelds (such as the BlackBerry or Apple’s iPhone) combined with advances in Google Maps and Google’s local search capabilities are making real time, and precise geopraphic local search a reality. ”(W)henever I fly somewhere,” Schmidt told CNBC, “I open up . . . my iPhone or my BlackBerry, and, boom, there’s everything in my world as I’ve landed in a country I’ve never been in. It’s a remarkable achievement. ” Schmidt notes that Google has been tracking the huge increase in use of Google Maps local search technology. “(T)here’s been a huge increase in maps, Google Maps, hugely successful,” Dr. Schmidt reports. “(W)hen I want to go to the equivalent of a Starbucks, I just type “Starbucks,” it says it’s over there. For me, that’s just a huge–a huge improvement. And that service is available almost everywhere in the world. “ What is common practice for Google’s high-flying and technologically enriched CEO is increasingly becoming commonplace for the digital consumer on the street. The predicted growth in internet traffic, together with the radical shift of advertising dollars to online marketing and the growing tendency of Internet-savvy consumers to take up mobile search, clearly forecast where commerce and e-commerce is headed. While there may still be local niche markets that depend on foot traffic to drive their business, increasingly it is a company’s digital footprint that drives customer traffic to its online site or storefront. And the vehicle driving that electronic traffic is mobile search. As online traffic balloons between now and 2012, the importance on local search, mobile search and online marketing will also balloon.

Online marketing has become the most successful method of advertising for any kind of business on the planet during the last decade. It is lightning fast and can promote your business to thousands of potential customers daily. As marketing is a primary factor for a long and successful business, the internet facilitates this process in a way that will ensure the maximum exposure to what you are offering. Traditional marketing is becoming more expensive and slower to produce results. It also requires much more time and effort. It often has to be done by many employees and is restricted by many barriers and regulations which make it hard to get the most beneficial results. Then along comes the internet as it makes the entire globe seem like a short alley rather than a large city where you can reach customers overseas in a matter of seconds. Online marketing is superior to traditional ways of marketing in almost every aspect, and here we list the top 10 reasons online marketing dominates traditional advertising. 1. SPEED Email marketing campaigns are fast, targeted, cost-effective, highly efficient method of marketing your business. They reach a lot of customers in the shortest time. Traditional mail marketing can take months and a lot of money and effort to generate results. 2. GEOGRAPHICAL RESTRICTIONS The whole globe can be your customer base when you are marketing your business online, as the internet reaches almost every house on the planet. On the other hand, you are often restricted to local customers from a smaller geographical area when you market offline. 3. MARKETING EFFECTS Online marketing is based on pull marketing effects, which means that online customers come across your website when they are looking for similar products of yours. While offline marketing is based on push marketing effects, which means you have to introduce your business to every single customer that come into your location. 4. SALES PROCESS When your business is marketing online, you can make a sale in a matter of seconds; where the customer chooses what product or services they wise to buy, they move to the check out page, pays for the product or services on a secure page, and then receives their purchase. Offline advertising is very different as the selling process is very complex and requires a lot of effort and persuasion and sometimes can’t be completed after all. 5. HOURS OF OPERATION Your website is self-managed and requires you only to make few changes, and after that it can operate non-stop and can be selling products or services while you are sleeping. Offline stores are restricted to the human active times, this means you open in the morning and close in the evening and you can’t make a sale while you are closed. In other words, the offline selling process has a shorter sales life than the online one. 6. COST OF MEDIA If you want to make a commercial on TV or radio or a newspaper, you will pay a fortune. While online marketing allows you to make a short video or audio commercial and submit it thousands of media communities and it will cost you next to nothing. 7. LIMITED ADVERTISING LIFE SPAN When you post an ad online about your business or website, with an article for example, it can be online forever and the place where the ad occupies will be untouched for a long time. On the other hand, offline ads can be only active for an agreed-upon period of time and then it will be replaced. 8. COST PER CUSTOMER These costs are reasonably low with online marketing but relatively high with offline forms of advertising. They are simply the costs incurred to generate potential customers for the business. 9. CUSTOMER SUPPORT With one email you can solve all your customer problems and concerns. This process is much more time consuming and require more effort offline. 10. ONGOING MARKETING INFORMATION It is very easy and only takes a few seconds to collect all the information and data about every aspect of your business when you market online. Offline information and data are stored within piles of documents, where it requires a squad of employees to collect the required information. As you can clearly see, online marketing is far superior to traditional forms of marketing. Online marketing is all about saving you money, time, and effort; yet brings you the required results you seek and most of the time exceeds your expectations.

Communication was so difficult years back that people avoided communicating with anyone. With the growth of technologies communication slowly became easy and today with the upcoming of Information Technology the concept of communication has changed entirely. People now believe in one to one communication through Internet facilities. This instant form of communication has given rise to several online businesses. A simple click of the mouse reduces the communication gap that encourages users to use online facilities. The Internet business has also helped online marketing companies and Internet advertising agencies to perform extraordinarily. Several online marketing companies are seen on the web that utilize this instant form of communication to communicate their messages throughout the globe. A two way communication becomes so easy for an online marketing company, as it that helps to form a communicating bridge between the company and customer. Since advertising is an integral part of marketing therefore Internet advertising agencies have benefited a lot from online marketing facilities. For those who want to promote their good/service through Internet can go for affiliate marketing by becoming a part of an online marketing company.     An online marketing company makes use of all the marketing techniques to place a product in the market through web. Brand promotion is a part of Internet advertising that helps the audience to know about the latest offerings of a brand. Just like an online marketing company, the Internet advertising agency works to advertise the brand and make online marketing a successful business. Everything associated with Online marketing is very simple and marketers enjoy this business because they can even work from home . Email campaign was a concept that was never even thought about but online marketing came up with this technique to cater to a large mass of audience. This concept became a success and was accepted by many online marketing companies that some of the companies specialize only in email campaigning. A powerful online marketing company can utilize all the effective techniques to pull up a website and bring it on the top most rankings of a search engine. To know more about online marketing keep searching the web to update yourself with the latest happenings.

After this article concludes, you will have learned that most people do a 9-5 job because they have no other option. Given a chance, we would all like to be at home, do things the way we want, spend more time with our family, play our favorite sport or give shape to a hobby. Thanks to the Internet, we have in our hands a powerful weapon that can give us more time, more flexibility and yes, the freedom to do a successful business that we’ve always cherished. The key is online marketing. Online marketing involves promotion or marketing of a product or service online. There are many who work from home and do a fabulous job. They earn a lot of money and also save on their time, which would have gone into commuting and spending hours at work. However, online marketing is a fairly new concept which is spreading like wildfire. Still, there are some who are apprehensive of doing business online.

Let us look at some of the problems involved in online marketing and their solutions:Problems:

1. I am not computer literate. This is not for me.

2. What if I am cheated?

3. I do not know how to do business online.

4. What if I lose my focus?Solutions:

1. It is not necessary to be exceptionally good with computers. A basic knowledge of computers and usage of internet is enough. A trusted friend, a family member or the person you’re working with will gladly help you. However the best thing will be to invest in a computer course to learn the basics.

2. Trust reliable companies. Of course, there are a lot of companies that advertise ‘get rich quick’ schemes and ‘fast money’ programs. Stay away from those. Look for reputed companies that have excellent third party reviews or feedback online.

3. You can start a blog or a website of your own and apply for the Google AdSense code. You will get contextual advertisement on your website and if anyone clicks on the ad on your site, you will make money. Apart from Google, there are other online advertising companies also like Yahoo, MSN, MIVA, AdBrite, etc. You can also make money recommending the products and services of other people; the concept is called affiliate marketing. Some of the major affiliate advertising companies online are Clickbank, Commission Junction and Amazon. You can also be paid for reviewing a product, service or a website. There are various online research companies that pay you for doing online market research and surveys. You can also do Network Marketing, Direct Sales or MLM online.

4. Since you will be working alone with your computer at home, you may lose your focus if you are being disturbed by issues or problems with your family. Under such circumstances, you should make sure to allocate a certain amount of time only for your business. Keep your home office separate and away from distractions and noise. Finally have the belief that you will succeed and work towards realizing it. Actions:

Strategies for Researching the Market

Do research and find some of the finest programs online that pay you well. I have mentioned some of them above. Researching your market is perhaps the easiest way to assess it. Market research does not have to be costly, nor does it have to be a complex process. It can be as simple and as easy as surveying a cross-section of your consumers (focus group) to get their opinions about the product or service you will be offering, or conducting a telephone or mail survey. The disadvantages of using the telephone or mail survey method are the individuals you contact may not be interested in responding to a survey. Other market research techniques include analyzing demographic data, such as population growth/decline rate; age range, sex, income/educational level; brainstorming with family and friends, focus group interviews. Whatever method you use, your focus should be on gathering enough information to determine who your potential customers are – their needs, wants and expectations; if there is a demand for your product or service; who your competitors are and how well they are doing.

Market research is an invaluable tool that can save you time, effort and money. You should start your online business and make sure to keep a persistent, consistent, focus in your approach and the results will follow. One of the best things about using Online Marketing to make money is that you won’t be stuck in the 9-5 grind. You can say goodbye to long commutes and moody bosses and co-workers. You will decide when, where, and how long to work. Best of all, as a home-based business owner, you’ll decide the size of your paycheck.

That’s right, with the power of the Online World to reach millions of people, Online Marketing is definitely an awesome tool that no business should be without. Just because of the simple fact alone that advertising is practically FREE. The ability to get the results of thousands of dollars in free publicity is practically unheard of in business today. Only recently have more and more people figured out how to utilize the ever exploding Online World to market their business efforts. Think about it, there is probably no business in existence that could not benefit from free publicity! And the fact that properly utilizing free advertising raises net profits to unbelievable levels! Using any or all of the major online services, or the INTERNET, can help you market your business efforts. Let’s start with plain-old advertising. On America Online, for example, they will let you place classified advertisements for FREE! They have a variety of classifications to choose from. By placing these small free ads you can generate some very quality leads that can turn into sales. Or if you are a really good marketer you could sell something straight from your free ad. Wouldn’t that be something, using the actual free ad to do all of the selling. The other services offer free advertising from time to time. When they do charge for classified ads it is usually very inexpensive, and still a great deal considering how many people those ads can reach. When you place any advertisements you should always “code” your ads. This means put something in each individual ad that will tell you, if you get any business from it, which ad it came from. This way, you will probably find that some sections are better producers than others, and you will want to concentrate on these sections and not the ones that weren’t making any money. To code an ad you could make them request a certain “report” on more information. You should give each report a different code for each ad. Such as: “ask for report #1tv” , this way you would know that this request came from the ad in the televisions for sale category, and so forth. If they send you an order straight from the ad, make them give you an order #, which would be different for each ad. THE MAJORITY OF PEOPLE WHO ARE ADVERTISING ONLINE ARE NOT USING THESE AD CODES!!! THIS IS A MAJOR MARKETING MISTAKE!!! By not tracking exactly which ads are making money, they are wasting their time by continually placing ads in “loser” categories. The actual code can be anything you want to assign to it. ALWAYS keep track of every ad you place. Make a note of what it said, where and when it was placed. You will be pleasantly surprised when you analyze your “ad data” and see some positive trends developing. Just repeat these trends and it will help you to make more money! How would you like to find a name list of several hundred (or even thousand) people who might be interested in the particular product or service you are selling based on their jobs or interests? Wouldn’t that be great!? Well, you can! And the Online Services supply this service as a part of your regular membership. This little unknown tool is called the “Member Directory!” You can do searches in the directory for other users with certain characteristics. For example, if you were selling fishing equipment, you could do a search by “fishing. ” All of the people that were registered in the directory and had listed fishing as one of their hobbies would show up on that search list. You could now send each one of those people an e-mail message telling them about your product or service, it’s just like using a mailing list, but you have no postage! (*Make sure you check with your Online service to see if they allow unsolicited E-mail. ) You can also get the names of several prospects by doing some “browsing” in the different topic forums. Using the earlier example of looking for people who fish, you could look under sports until you found a discussion on fishing. You could then take note of the users’ names that were participating in the discussions. You could do the same thing on the INTERNET with one of the many newsgroup topics that they have. The bottom line is that you “test” and record the results of your Online Marketing efforts. Then just repeat the steps that are making you money and expand on them to reach more people. Doing simple research on the Internet. The Internet has several mailing lists that are dedicated to marketing on the Internet. You will also find hundreds of articles on the World Wide Web. By searching one of the WWW search engines like Webcrawler you can find all the information you can read. Use search strings such as: “online marketing”,”internet advertising”, “selling online”, and so on. You can also find many books on the subject at your local bookstore or being advertised online.