Viral marketing has been around for quite some time and had matured a bit over the years. Web advertising had made it big and now holds its place as another tick box for any ad campaign. Now being the medium where a campaign is launched to create a buzz before it hits TV and print, big business gets it.

Buzz works! It can work for small and start-up businesses, as well. The planning stage of a viral campaign will set out objectives and develop the viral theme for a buzz. There are three core components to any viral campaign and businesses of any size can use them. They are:

1. The creative material: The viral agent that embodies the message you want to spread in a digital format (image, video, text, etc). The trick is to put together material that people will be eager to share with their family and friends and people are much more eager to share “advertainment” than advertisement.

2. Seeding: Distributing and placing the agent online in places that provide the greatest potential spread. Direct viral material downloads or links on specialist viral third-party web sites in order to create awareness and spread before users get to the campaign destination site.

3. Tracking: Measuring the spread of the campaign to provide accountability and prove success. It is absolutely vital that you know what is or is not working. The only way to get that information is to track the results of your seeding.

Trends have evolved, lessons have been learned and there is definitely some science involved in creating a buzz that will linger on lucratively. We all know that the buzz technique is here to stay. One only needs to learn how to use it strategically. When done correctly, it can make a difference to the success of any online business.

Business + Internet = Success? There is still one thing missing on this equation to spell success–Traffic! There is not one article anywhere that discusses success of your company that does not discuss the significance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business or company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken care of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you feel that you’re not getting the traffic that you’re supposed to be getting, then it’s high time to reconsider. If you are contending in this very competitive business, you should always be on top of things, a step ahead of your competition. Increasing your traffic flow should have been done since yesterday!

Timing is essential. That’s an old adage known to everyone. With generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are seven surefire ways to increase your traffic:

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assure immense traffic, however this method would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, you must take note that Adwords and Overture are “the” top way to increase your traffic. No questions about that.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your site’s traffic. When one site features another site’s link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product with very little or no costs. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky. You can simply attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article, or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts, write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass it on to people their trust, including friends, families and colleagues. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Last but not the least, offer newsletters or eZines

If you put yourself out there, many people will come to know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others. With this you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you stimulate the curiosity of your subscribers and they are satisfied with the information that you offer, it would always follow that they will tell others about you, which in turn will help you with your traffic.

It’s very rare to come across a site without an option to subscribe, better known as opt-in. It is fundamental to any site or online company to have one. Big or small, an opt-in list can do wonders to your profits. Even small business enterprises such as a niche profit website can benefit highly from it.

Businesses, particularly internet-based, capitalizes on the opt-in list to market their products and company website via an e-mail. When a subscriber “opts-in” to your website, he automatically consents receiving a newsletter from your company. By this means, you can keep your subscribers abreast of what is currently available in your site as well as whatever is coming out.

Because mutual consent had been established between the two parties, any mail sent to the list is not considered as spam mail. There is a great number of successfully read promotional materials such as catalogs, newsletters and such that are sent because the subscribers themselves have signed up for them, meaning, they do want and are actually looking forward to receive them.

Building a list is vital, though only a small percentage actually subscribes for an opt-in list. Many people find promotional mails annoying but if you provide a good newsletter or promotional material, you will see your list build up and grow. This can be achieved by simply having good content on your site. If people like what they see and read on your site, then they surely would want more. Newsletters would be a way to attract them back to your site, a little teaser or appetizer if you will.

Other than marketing your products and your services, an opt-in list can also be used to earn profits on the side. Not all that comprises your list can be used though. It would be good to first build a successful list with a huge number of subscribers. More subscribers simply equate to more money. Here are seven ways to make money using nothing more than your list:

1) Placing advertisements. There are many corporations who will be willing to pay to put their banners and ads on a list with many subscribers. Selling or renting out lists is not very much recommended, or at times flat out advised to be avoided, so rather than doing that, many companies would opt to place ads with lists that have a huge subscriber base. Your newsletter could be placed with a number of ads and each one spells money.

2) Having affiliations with other companies that relate to what your site is about. Here, other companies will provide links and brief descriptions of what they offer- their products and services. With every click made on the link that directs or leads a subscriber from your list to their site, the company will pay you. This is what is known as P4P or pay for performance.

3) Making deals with other companies by asking for a small percentage of sales done through your list. With every sale done by customers that have come from your list and have gone there because of your newsletter, the other company will pay you a small percentage of your sales. The more people who buy from them, the more earnings you get.

4) Consigning products from other sites or companies and selling them to your list via your newsletter. Place descriptions, articles and photos of the product in your newsletter. There will always be those who will buy from you than anyone else, and when that happens, you can order the product from the other site and sell it to your buyer.

5) Sell e-books or a compilation of your articles on your list. Manuals and how-to articles are in great demand. People will be willing to shell out money to gain knowledge about a certain topic or subject. With your existing list trusting your expertise in that area, an e-book could be offered and sold or used as an incentive.

6) Create a network out of your list. Get people to invite more people to view your site and subscribe to your list. The larger your list, the more people will be able to click on your links and affiliate links as well as makes your advertisement rates higher.

7) For as long as people know that useful information can be trusted and relied upon, they will be more than willing to pay for it. If you put your list to work, it can get you more and more people to subscribe, thus increasing your traffic as more and more people visit. Additionally, you earn money from your list by making them your partners. Your list will be the bloodline of your growth and increasing revenues.

An E-Book is just another book in digital format, reading material until you add in your marketing message and a link to your website, then voila! You got yourself a tool for viral marketing. This technique uses the multiplication effect to explode the distribution of your message by eager participants.

This is the basic principle that was used by Hotmail to get established. When the two founders set up their free email system, all the messages that were sent by subscribers had a text message at the bottom which identified Hotmail as the origin. People who sent emails to their friends advertised the free email site.

Using viral E-books as a marketing method is cheap. It doesn’t take long to set up and it’s even quicker if you use rebrandable E-books that have been written by others. Just use your favorite search engine and run a web search. You will find many rebrandable E-books that are available on whatever subject you are interested in that apply to your e-business. One method of distributing the E-book is to offer it to visitors in exchange for subscribing to your newsletter. If they pass it on to their friends and family, they are promoting your business for you.

E-books are capable of reaching a large audience and are limited only by the enthusiasm of the participants.

E-books are fairly easy to create. It’s possible to produce your own E-books by combining articles that you have written or have gotten from public domain sources, such as directories.

Using materials that have Private Label Rights is a common approach that is very cost-effective. These include articles and reports that have been written specifically for that purpose, for that niche. Cutting off a portion of a larger work that you have prepared such as the first three chapters of a large E-book could already also be used as a viral E-book.

Being content is something people commonly struggle with. They always want to follow the latest trends, be it in fashion, sports, gadgets, music and practically anything you can think of. Websites have become a necessity to almost everyone. Companies, businesses, individuals, even teenagers have created personal websites with their respective purposes. Some get one to make more way for more profits. Some get it for entertainment, and some just to have the revered online presence.

What one must consider, however, before creating a website, are the factors in which to consider, such as the cost in acquiring one, maintenance, use, web hosting and so forth.

Firstly, associating with the cost, we must always try to find an affordable host, preferably not spending too much on it. A cheap host does not exactly symbolize a credible reliability rating, but we must always look for value for any deal that costs money. Also, regarding the efficiency and server/web host reliability, there are cases where web hosts do not provide the service they assured their customers to be getting. Some had even shut down and were nowhere to be seen, along with the websites of those were hosted to them. Keep this note in mind. If you would like a long-lasting website (well, who doesn’t?), this would be the first thing to look out for.

Next, think about whether hiring a professional would be affordable, or of it is the best option? For simple websites, we could always pick up the coding, or even use programs, as it is relatively simple. However, when it comes to more complex coding, and when you want it to do a tad more than just providing information, hiring help in doing so would be the best way. Not only in terms of design, but security is also a key factor in assuring a quality website. If the website also acts as a portal for businesses, security would definitely be a main issue here.

Given these considerations in building a website, think carefully if you actually NEED one at this point in time? Will it be beneficial to you in the sense that it would boost your sales or promote positive implications? Then by all means, go ahead and do what’s best, bearing in mind planning is the key to success in everything we do. If you don’t plan to fail, then don’t fail to plan.

When Macromedia introduced Flash onto the World Wide Web, Flash-based sites have always garnered attention and it only gets more and more popular as more and more great features are added to it. It is rather easy to foresee that Flash site population will continue to rise around the Internet. Nevertheless, there had been discussion on Flash based sites being unnecessary. Where exactly do we draw the line? Here’s a simple breakdown.

Pros:

Interactivity

Flash’s Actionscript opens up a vast field of possibilities. Programmers and designers have used Flash to create interactve features ranging from very lively feedback forms to attractive Flash-based games. This whole new level of interactivity will always leave visitors coming back for more.

A standardized site

With Flash, you do not have to worry about cross-browser compatibility. No more woes over how a certain CSS code displays differently in Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera. When you position your site elements in Flash, they will always appear as they are as long as the user has Flash Player installed.

Better expression through animation

In Flash, one can make use of its animating features to convey a message in a much more efficient and attractive way. Flash is a lightweight option for animation because it is vector based (hence having smaller file sizes) as opposed to real “movie files” that are raster based and hence much larger in size.

Cons:

The Flash player

People have to download the Flash player in advance before they can view Flash movies, so by using Flash your visitor range will decrease considerably because not everyone will be willing to download the Flash player just to view your site. You’ll also have to put in additional work in redirecting the user to the Flash download page if he or she doesn’t have the player installed. In short, this could be a reason for non-flash users to leave your site and never come back.

Site optimization

If your content was presented in Flash, most search engines wouldn’t be able to index your content. Thus, you will not be able to rank well in search engines and there will be less traffic heading to your site.

Loading time

Users have to wait longer than usual to load Flash content compared to regular text and images, and some visitors might just lose their patience and click the Back button. Worse, they could try to Google another site similar to what you have and go there instead. The longer your Flash takes to load, the more you risk losing visitors.

It is then recommended that you use Flash only when you absolutely need the interactivity and motion that comes with it. Otherwise, a mixture of Flash and HTML or pure text would be perfect if you intend to present simple textual and graphical information.

It may be hard to believe, but it’s a fact that there are still a number of users running on good old dialup, even though more and more subscribers are using and switching to broadband every year. It would therefore be wise to count these people in the equation when designing your website with the very major consideration for the loading time of your website. Dialup users or not, visitors appreciate it when a site loads quickly which gives them time to navigate the pages at the minimum loading time possible.

Generally, all the text on your website will be loaded in a very short time even on a dialup connection. The culprit of slow-loading sites is mainly images on your website, which are larger in size. It is very important to strike a delicate balance between using just enough images to attract your users and not to bog down the overall loading time of your site.

You should also go to a greater length and optimize every image on your site to make sure it loads in the least time possible. What I really mean is to use image editing software to remove unnecessary information on your images, and thereby effectively reducing the file size of your image without affecting its appearance.

If you own Photoshop, it will be obvious to you that when you save an image as a JPEG file, a dialog box appears and lets you choose the “quality” of the JPEG image — normally a setting of 8 to 10 is good enough as it will preserve the quality of your image while saving it at a small file size. If you do not have Photoshop, there are many free image compressors online that you can download and use to reduce your image’s file size.

PNG or Portable Network Graphic format, on the other hand, can get you the best quality at the least file size. Then there’s the option to save your images in GIF format — the image editing software clips away all the color information not used in your image, hence giving you the smallest file size possible. The downside in saving in GIF format is that it will, more often than not, compromise the appearance of your image, so be sure to make your choice wisely!

Considering e-commerce options is not a decision to be taken lightly. It is one of the most important choices business owners face.

One wrong decision could result in a loss of profits and a lengthy contract that must be honored, even after a second account provider has been chosen as a replacement and regardless of whether you have stopped using the service. Unfortunately, there are many business owners who find themselves paying for two services, because of this very reason.

There are several helpful tips to take into consideration when researching merchant account providers. These tips are dependent on the size and type of business that is interested in providing e-commerce availability to their customers.

Small business owners, who are working with limited funds, may want to initially consider the use of an online provider such as PayPal or 2checkout to process their credit card payments.

Because of the fees associated with a more formal merchant account provider, many small business owners who process up to $1000 per month in credit card payments find that these third party payment processors work out quite well.

Business owners who process more than $1000 per month in credit card payments, may want to consider other vendors. When doing so, one of the most important things to look into is each vendor’s discount rate and per transaction fee schedule.

The discount rate refers to the actual percentage of the sale that the merchant account provider will keep. There is normally a separate rate for ‘swiped’ and ‘non-swiped’ transactions. These fees vary from vendor to vendor.

There is also a fee charged for every processed transaction. Again, these fees vary but can be anywhere from 10 cents to 99 cents per sale.

Business owners who process smaller credit card payments of under $25, might want to consider choosing a vendor offering a higher discount rate and lower per transaction fee, as this will probably be a money saver.

Other things to consider when looking for the right merchant account provider include: monthly statement fees, gateway fees, annual membership fees, equipment rental fees, batch fees, cancellation fees and contract length.

Merchant account services have come a long way over the past few years. Business owners will find that many of these vendors offer lower fees, short-term or even no contract options, and customizable account features.

In conclusion, the large number of e-commerce service providers is actually a good thing. Vendors must stay competitive, in an effort to attract new clientele. This competition often results in lower fees and better overall service.

All it takes is just time to thoroughly research several merchant account providers and scrutinize their service features based on the guidelines discussed in this article. It is typically easier to make a final decision on the right one to utilize. Comparing the pros and cons of each vendor is a good way to begin this research.

For any online business, the website is the hub or the virtual representation of the company whether it exists physically or not. When business is done on the World Wide Web, people do not see each other physically like how it is when dealing with a physical company. Naturally, people mostly judge you by your cover. This is where a good design steps in.

Imagine if you are running an offline company. Would you allow your salespersons to be dressed in shabby or casual clothes when they are dealing with your customers? By making your staff wear professional clothing, you are telling your customers that you do care about quality. This works simply because first impressions matter.

This is exactly the same case with your website. If your website is put together shabbily and looks like a 5 minute “quick fix”, you are literally shouting to your visitors that you are not professional and you do not care for quality.

On the contrary, if you have a totally professional looking website layout, you are allowing your visitors to see that you have given meticulous attention to every detail and professionalism is important to you. You show that you are organized, focused and you really mean business.

More importantly, anything related to your company should always be well-designed, not just your website. Business cards, letterheads, promotional brochures, flyers- every little bit matters. As you grow your business, these items that represent you. They simply become the face of your business. Once more, remember the analogy of the “salesperson dressed shabbily”. Keep it in mind and you will always get the point.

The whole point of building a website is thrown away when there no visitors coming in. Search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Altavista, Wikipedia and so on are oftentimes the source of these much-sought traffic. For this reason, designing a search engine-friendly site will make your website rank easily in search engines, resulting to driving more traffic in which translates to more visitors.

Major search engines use programs called crawlers or robots to index websites to list on their search result pages. They follow links to a page, read the content of the page and record it in their own database, pulling up the listing as people search for it.

If you want to make your site indexed easily, you should avoid using frames on your website. Frames will only confuse search engine robots and they might even abandon your site because of it. Moreover, frames make it difficult for users to bookmark a specific page on your site without using long, complicated scripts.

Do not present important information in Flash movies or in images. Search engine robots can only read text on your source code so if you present important words in Flash movies and images rather than textual form, your search engine ranking will be affected dramatically.

Use Meta tags accordingly on each and every page of your site so that search engine robots know at first glance what that particular page is about and whether or not to index it. By using Meta tags, you are making the search engine robot’s job easier so they will crawl and index your site more frequently.

Instead of using HTML tags like to style your page, it is wiser to use CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) because they are more effective. By using CSS, redundant HTML tags are eliminated which then make your pages much lighter and gives it faster time to load.