Blog on Online Marketing

Archive for October, 2009

How to Earn Money With Google Adsense

October 24th, 2009

Earning money is as tough and as limited as that through your regular job or for that matter any business. So if you come across any advertising (software especially) that promises/guarantees to increase your adsense earning overnight, just ignore it. Had that been so easy that man would not be selling software. He would be busy in monetizing his own site and collecting checks from Google.
Definitely Google adsense has helped many to earn even million dollars in a month but that does not mean it is an easy task that can be done overnight or over a month or even in a year. You have to toil hard and real hard. I am listing here some of the most important parameters that can determine how much money you will be minting out of your adsense program.

Traffic: Get at least 3000-4000 traffic daily on your site before you can think of earning $30-$40 per day.

Category of website: Depending on the competition and CPC, eCPM for a particular keyword you can even go up to $100 (3000-4000/day traffic) if your website is related to education. Mortgage, finance, etc, since the keyword rates for these domains are relatively higher than any other.

Placement of Ads: CTR or click through rate is very important since it is the number of clicks that will determine your payouts. A good CTR also increases the ECPM, so you can expect your average per click to go up in that case. Try to place your ads at positions that are most visible to your visitors.

Banner ads vs Text ads Vs Link ads: which ad option should you choose for your website. Your Google adsense account would have all these options, what do you think is the best to display in your site? For me the text ads work better than any other but for you it can be different. So use advance report option in your adsense account and see which ad is giving you maximum earnings.

Number of websites: If you wanna make real fortunes through Google adsense program, have a good number of websites and promote them vigorously. Once you have significant number of visitors on your sites you can really expect a fat check from Google every month.

But remember there is no short cut to it and it doesn’t come automatically. You have to work hard to make this program success.

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Posted in Marketing

Tags: earning money online Google Adsense

Your website design is critical for the success of your online business

October 19th, 2009

It is very critical to make your website design simple and intelligent enough to make your users reach to all pages of your website you wanted him to reach. Now it is easier said then done. It’s actually the most complex phase of web development and requires a lot n lot of brainstorming before you design the work-flow of your e-commerce store.

How to Get Started – Some Tips?

Identify the goals of your website

It can be possible to have more than one goal. You may want your visitor to do immediate purchase, or you may also want someone to fill up a query form or simply download your product brochure. All actions might be important for you from business standpoint.

Assign the Level of Importance

Once you have the list of goals, you can assign the level of importance against each goal. It can be in terms of percentage or simply categorize as “High” “Medium” and “Low” or for that matter whatever you feel is convenient for you.

Identify the Touch Points

Identify the Touch points on your website from where you wanted your visitors to reach for a particular goal. Here your web designer has to pay critical role in determining the workflow of your website. The simpler and intuitive the navigation the better will be the results.

Leave No Room For Guess Work

The visitors on your website have time to purchase but no time to think or guess for actions to be done. Make your web design intelligent enough to do all work for your visitors. The only role your visitor should play on your website is clicking on mouse as per your designed navigation and reach to the goal pages you have defined.

Don’t Let your Goals Compete With each other

One you have identified your goals and have assigned the level of importance attached to each goal, stick to the same in creating touch points while designing your navigation. This task has to be done intelligently so that your potential prospects do not pick up the low priority goal against the medium or high priority goals.

Based on the above suggestion revisit your site, you may have answers to some of your unsolved problems like why despite large number of influx of traffic your visitors are not converting into customers?

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Posted in Marketing

Tags: importance of website design website design

Should I care designing a logo for my local business?

October 13th, 2009

I assume that if you are reading this post you know the importance of logos, but still I believe there would be some readers who would want to know why every business requires a logo?

Logo is a graphical representation that gives businesses a visual identity. With Coke you associate

Similarly the moment you hear McDonald, you think of the big red M…..

For me, perhaps that’s the power of logo- a brand getting its identity!

But does that mean, if Coke were not having the logo it has today it won’t become a popular brand or is McDonlads a famous brand only because of its logo? May be that would be injustice to the product as well as the entire marketing elements that goes into making of a brand-if I say Yes to this.

A brand power and reach may go beyond the confinements of logo but yes it is logo that shapes the visual identity for the brand and makes its flow seamless reaching across the culture and geography.

Importance of logo may not lie in the fact that how beautifully or artistically it has been carved but definitely in the fact how well it gels with the brand features. How easy it is to recall and reproduce. How simple it is to perceive and how unique it is to attract.

Big or small, every business needs a logo. Even if you are working with a business owner who has his business confined to the very next street from where he is operating, provide him with logo that bears some or all of the following characteristics:

Simplicity

Keep logo design as simple as it can be, Nike, is perhaps one of the best examples, I can recall now that manifest this character.

Uniqueness

Please do not copy or even come close to any existing logo ideas. It has to be unique and absolutely unique. McDonalds is one of the best examples for being unique. It stands out even when you cross through a busy street with full neon advertising boards and signage.

Color that can stand out

Vodaphone has proved to be one of the best Logo, easily recognized because of its rich color. Not necessarily every logo has to be rich in color to stand out but yes it should be as per the product feature and persona.

Flexibility

This is very important since you don’t know in what size you would be required to reproduce your logo. It must look when produced on a billboard and similarly it must not loose its identity when produced as thumbnails.

Reflection of brand features

The balloon/dialogue box inVodafone logo reflects the communication and that’s why it is recalled so easily. But this should not be understood as that every logo must reflect what the company does?

The Mercedes logo isn’t a car. The Virgin Atlantic logo isn’t an Aero Plane. The Apple logo isn’t a computer. Etc. Etc. The idea here is it should reflect the feature of a product so that user can relate to it.

Hope this post would help you in understanding the importance of logo. I would appreciate your contribution in making this post further useful by sharing your comments and feedback.

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Posted in Marketing

Tags: logo logo designing Should I care designing a logo for my local business

What is The Best Time To Send Marketing Mailers

October 6th, 2009

Probably, everyone of us have pondered over this question on when to send mass mailers? Whether it is weekend or weekdays, whether it is evening, morning or afternoon?

For me it best works on Tuesday-Thursday and post lunch. Why I chose these periods. Just recall the number of emails you have in your mailbox on Monday morning.

This is the day when you have maximum number of mails as you might not like checking your mails on weekends. This is the case with most of your target audience.

Monday blues and lots of mails in your target audience mailbox will diminish the chances of your potential prospects opening your mail or even noticing it. He might simply select all unwanted mails and delete them. Why do you want to be in crowd?

Tuesday-Thursday would be good days to send as people are more attentive towards work and might scan everything coming in their way. Here comes my second point -timing. If you again chose late night for the email blast thinking that the first task every working person does is check his/her mail so it would be good to send the mail late night, you may be wrong.

Again think of the numbers of mails you have in your mail box when you open the mailbox for the first time on a particular day. Chances are higher that your mail will be lost in bunch of mails you have received in the past 12-13 hours. I would recommend here to choose post lunch period as this is the time when your target audience would have already cleaned up your mail box and here is the chance of getting noticed.

Though the timing alone will not determine the success of your mass mailing campaign as it involves lot many other factors to make your email campaign stand outbut yes chances of your mail getting noticed is highest at this time.

I would love to hear your opinions on the same so do leave your comments and share your views.

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Posted in Email Marketing

Tags: marketing mailers What is The Best Time To Send Marketing Mailers

Is Keywords Meta Tag Given Any Importance By Google?

October 2nd, 2009

I am not so sure about how Yahoo or Bing treats the keyword Meta tag but Google has officially announced they not at all take keywords Meta tag into consideration to rank a website.

So if you are optimizing your website targeting Google search, it’s the time to say goodbye to your Keywords Meta tag. There were many instances in which law suits were filed because company “A” has used company “B’s” brand name in their keywords Meta tag and somehow managed to gain visibility on that particular keyword. Probably, this might be one of the reasons for Google to completely ignore keyword Meta tag while evaluating the rank of a website.

So next time when you see your brand/domain name is being used by someone in their keywords Meta tag just ignore, it is of no use.

Nonetheless, Description Meta tag is still very important and actually shown as snippets during search results. It’s better to tweak and do experiments with your description Meta tag as it not only helps search engine to understand your website but also helps human to understand the basics of your website and thereby increases your click through ratio.

Just for a note: if bounce rate affects the ranking of your site then definitely CTR also does. It’s not only important to get good ranking but equally important is getting good CTR.