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Before you decide to select a name for your online identity, you should do some keyword research (especially when you intend to sell something online). Use Google keyword tool to research your business keywords. Find out what people are searching for and how they use different words to find there required product. This little practice of keyword research will not only help you decide a good, relevant and SEO friendly domain name but you’ll also know what exact keywords you should target in your SEO and advertising campaigns latter on.

Keyword Based Domain

The domains that comprises of a set of keywords are termed as keyword based domains. Once you have selected a set of keywords that you are going to use in SEO and other website promotional activities, try a combination of two most relevant keywords as your domain name. Now, a question that might have come to your mind would be why to try a combination of two keywords? Why not to try one single keyword to find a domain name? There are two reasons for this; one is its very unlikely that you would find a single keyword domain. As I mentioned earlier, thousands of domains are being registered every day and it’s simply near to impossible that you would find a single keyword domain name available for registration.

The second reason is an SEO practice. People who are searching for a product or a service to buy will always use a phrase or at least two or three words search string. For example, if you want to buy a domain name, your search query would be, ‘buy domains’ or ‘cheap domain names’ etc. You will never type the keyword ‘domain’ as your search string when you want to buy one but if you are performing searches to know the meaning of this word or you are doing some kind of research over domains, you might search for this single word and people who are researching are not your target market rather those who are searching to buy. So, always try a combination of keywords as your domain name.

Another question that you can raise is why to use keywords in domain name? Again, it is a good SEO practice. One of some hundreds of search engine ranking factors is keyword in URLs. If your domain name consists of a keyword, search engines will consider your website relevant to the topic of searched keyword and the chances of your website, being ranked higher, increase tremendously.

Domain Name Extensions

Selecting which extension you should go for depends largely over availability and your target market. The most common domain extensions are.COM and.NET. You should only shift to a specific country domain extension (ccTLD, Country Code Top Level Domain) if both of these extensions are not available and the.COM &.NET domains are not functional. For example, if your selected set of keywords is ‘buy cheap domains’ and the.COM &.NET extensions are just taken, there is no operational website over them, only then you should move on to the ccTLD. If any of these two top level domain extensions are operation websites, then it would be very hard for you to compete with the same business name, even if you get a ccTLD.

You should only shift to a country specific domain if your target market is from that very country only. Search engines, especially Google, ranks such websites higher in results but only if the search is being conducted from that country. For example, if you have selected a.CO.UK extension and your target market is also UK then your website will be ranked higher than websites with extensions other than.COM &.NET in the search result page of Google’s.CO.UK extension. On the other hand, your website might not even appear in search results if the search is being conducted over Google’s.COM.PK extension.

Similarly, if there is already a.COM or.NET extension website present on internet with the same name that you have selected in.CO.UK extension, your website will not be able to rank higher easily even in Google’s.CO.UK extension. It is because that.COM or.NET website is already there, is older than your website and caters the audience from all over the world. Remember, generic TLDs always rank higher than ccTLDs.

Be very careful in selection of ccTLDs for your website. My suggestion would be to search for a generic top level domain (.COM or.NET) to select for your website. Try different combinations of keywords or you can also use a hyphen (-) in domains. Although many people don’t like using hyphens but there is nothing wrong in using it. In fact, it’s better to get a keyword domain with hyphens rather than going for a ccTLD.

Domain name is your brand’s identity. Keep it short, easy to remember and a word or a combination of words that define your business. Understanding the search patterns of internet users will help you in placement and promotion of your online business. The little exercise of keyword research and right domain selection will benefit you a lot in future when you would be ready to market your products with SEO, social media and PPC.

Looking for help in selecting your business name?

Find something that is a hot market, in which a lot of people are interested. Now, how would you find a hot market? There is no simple rule that can define a hot affiliate market. You have to do some research to find it out. I assume that you have selected pharmaceutical industry as your niche and now you are looking for the right product to market. Search for news, magazines and forums about your product. If you find a good number of news reports and forums that are discussing your selected product then your selection is right. You already have a lot of people who are interested in your niche and it’s easier for you get your piece of cake.

Another great way is to check if your niche is listed with Click Bank or Commission Junction. These websites have a market place and you can search for your niche within this market place. If your niche is listed as a category then there would be a lot of products and again, it would be easier for you to promote them, as there already is a huge market for it.

One good strong affiliate niche can make you rich and a strong niche is the one that has a lot of buyers. When you have searched for your product keyword to find out the popularity of your niche, if there are a lot of websites that are providing information only and are not selling anything then it’s not a good niche. Remember that a good niche will always have a lot of competition. A large number of websites would be selling the products from that very niche. If your product does not have a competition, it doesn’t mean that it’s an open market for you to enter. Rather, it means that there are no genuine buyers of that product.

A good niche has a potential from various products. If your niche is pharmaceutical products then you are not only selling a single health  category product. There are men’s health products, women’s health products, herbal medicines and a lot more. All these products fall under one affiliate niche and that is health and medicines.

The beauty of selecting a large product base niche is that you can sell multiple products to one buyer. For example, if someone has bought a weight loss medicine, that buyer can also be a potential prospect for a hair loss or quit smoking product. This helps you multiply your affiliate revenue because after buying a couple of products from you, the buyer would have gained trust in you and he would return to you for buying more similar products.

It’s not the case only with pharmaceutical niche. This’ll happen with any niche that you would have selected. If you have selected Apple, you have complete range of Apple products to market and not only Apple top line products but also their accessories.

While selecting products to market, try to relate them either with pleasure or with pain. It’s a simple human behavior science, everything we do, we do it either because of the pleasure or the pain associated with it. The pleasure of being a smart and good looking person would encourage a man to buy weight loss or hair fall control medication. Similarly, the feeling of pain associated with catching up a disease or sickness because of excessive weight would make people buy a weight loss medicine.

When going out for choosing your niche for affiliate marketing, it’s always a good choice to select the niche that you have interest in. When you are passionate about a product, it would be easier for you to understand the dynamics of marketing it. Product knowledge and understanding of target market helps you place your product rightly and increase your chances of becoming a successful affiliate marketer.

Looking for help in selecting your affiliate niche?

I’ll start with an over view of affiliate marketing. I’ll explain everything that I know about it and how it works. With affiliate marketing you get fast money. As of now, if you are to take everything away from me, my money, my cars my house, my resources or whatever, just give me a laptop and a high speed internet connection and I can be ready by evening and will be making money on the same day. It doesn’t take much to get started and it can be highly profitable very quickly.

The most obvious question that anyone will ask is, “Why affiliate marketing?”  The way it works is that you get paid off a commission. Somebody else has a product that they created and are selling it. They have an affiliate program, an affiliate setup script within their own website or they go to a website like click bank, commission junction, RX Direct or any other such website and post their product.  People can sign up for that product as an affiliate. An affiliate is someone who promotes that product in exchange for a certain commission. In other words, as an affiliate, you send internet traffic to that product.

Whatever that product might be, when a sale is completed, you’ll get a percentage of that sale value. Different products have a different commission percentage. Most of the times, the percentage is something between 25%-50%. Sometimes this percentage increases to a 75% or more, depending upon if it is a physical product or a digital product. These products can be anything from cell phones to cell phone accessories or laptops, eBooks, medicines or anything.

No Support Issues

With a lot of the other things which you would probably get into like creating your own product or private label rights (PLR), there are support issues that you have to deal with. You are selling a product and people are going to have some issues that need to be resolved. For example, if you are selling medications, you need to handle shipping, customer services, payment processing, accounts management, if someone has a problem or want a refund, they would need to contact you and you would have to provide support for all such things.

On the other hand, as an affiliate marketer, you don’t have to worry about any such thing. All you are doing is promoting a particular product and people are buying it. They buy it from the original supplier or manufacturer. If they have any support issue, the vendor is responsible for that. It’s just like you are working as a salesman for them. You just bring traffic that turns into buyers and you get a commission out of each sale.

Scalability

Scalability in affiliate marketing is like I was talking about PLRs, that you would tend to get into in future. Affiliate marketing can really turn into a big thing eventually and you would like to move onto something else. What I like about affiliate marketing is that a lot of people make their entire living just out of affiliate marketing and never branch out to other things like PLRs or creating their own product. They stick strictly to affiliate marketing.

Now the question is why they do so? Why stick only to affiliate marketing? Once you set something up in affiliate marketing, it’s pretty much going to take care of itself. You can then focus on creating and setting something else or the same niche up again. It’s like a machine that is running and you just have to do a little maintenance once a while. Its running and doing its job, that is to make money for you, and you can go out and setup another such machine. The other machine could be a different niche entirely or a different product from the same niche. Anything, all the world’s products and services are there to make money for you.

So, there is a lot of scalability. You can have several things running at one time. Multiple streams of revenue and this is where it becomes more attractive.

Multiple Revenue Streams

You setup one product and it’ll soon start to make money for you. May be it’ll make some thousands of dollars for you. Then you setup another product that you are promoting and that product is again making some thousands of dollars. Once it’s in place, you build another. It’s like building an empire and it is a very easy thing to do. Specially, when you have built that first one and its making you some money, you would be like; yeah! I can do this.

When you have done the first setup it’ll become easier for you the second time and then the third time. Just keep going and built that empire up and you would have money flowing in from all these streams. When we talk about medications, you can build one setup for, let’s say, men’s health products and then a second for woman’s health, third for beauty products and so on.

You would really be surprised of what you can make in terms of revenue. I am saying and emphasizing over medication and pharmaceutical products because the average order value of these products is more than $100 and commission is usually 35%. There are products that pay more than this commission percentage but pharmaceutical products are relatively easy to sell.

No matter what niche you select and what products you start to market, it’s all about passion, excitement and commitment. Affiliate marketing is easy to start and it really pays off but you need to be committed and consistent with your efforts. Research your niche properly and to start with, select only a few products. Once you have rolled on with your first project and some bucks start to fall in, you’ll be convinced enough to add-up more products and setting up new projects will be much easier.

Looking for help with Affiliate Marketing?

Online advertising is a method of marketing that uses internet to deliver the message about your product to the public. Whole world is connected to each other with internet and it is the easiest way of spreading your product information to the entire world. When you are over internet; you get global before even you know about it. Marketing products or services over internet has grown very rapidly. It is reported that online advertising has reached over 25 billion US Dollars. This includes the advertising over search engines, display advertising over different websites, online classified ads, video advertising and email marketing. The main reason of this growth in online advertising is the cost effectiveness and immediate delivery of desired information to the target audience.

Growth of social media websites has forced the marketing experts to align themselves with the internet marketing technique, termed as social media marketing. Social media marketing involves the techniques used to advertise your products and services over websites that offer social networking options to their users. Internet users are growing rapidly over social networking websites and with more than 600 million users, Facebook is the largest social networking website at the moment.

Other than social networking, Facebook is now used as an effective marketing tool over internet as well. With over 600 million users, this single platform has the capacity to help a company grow over internet. Facebook provides a number of features that can help in branding and increased public awareness about a company’s products. Pages and groups are no doubt effective marketing tools but the features of Facebook ads are true competitive advantage one can have. If setup correctly, these ads can really bring a boost to the ultimate goal of an advertising campaign, that is, sales.

Facebook ads are easy to setup and provide some good options to target your audience. The first step towards a successful advertising campaign is to design an innovative and attractive advert. Facebook allows you to advertise your own website, Facebook page or even an event that you might have created over your page. Be creative while designing your ads because in Facebook, you can only have a 25 characters title and 135 characters description. You can also use an image to spice up your ad a little.

The target audience selection is very comprehensive with Facebook ads. You can not only target people by their geographical location but can also select the gender, age limits, likes, interest and even education. The most powerful targeting tools is the ‘Like & Interests’ tool. If you are planning to promote cell phones, you can target the people, who already have ‘liked’ the pages of various mobile phone brands.

Advantages of Facebook Marketing.

• You can create your own Facebook page that acts just like your own website.
• Fan following can be measured with the ‘Likes’ of a page.
• Comprehensive targeting even allows you to target fans of an already established Facebook page.
• You can select your maximum advertising cost options for CPC and CPM.
• Daily advertising budget can be specified.
• Advertising can be scheduled. You can select when to start and end the campaign.
• Good click through rate of adverts if ads are designed properly.
• Cost per click (CPC) and cost per thousand impressions (CPM) is low in comparison with other display advertising options.

Incorporating online advertising is essential for a successful marketing strategy. All internet marketing experts agree that Facebook plays an important role in positioning and placement of your brand. Be creative, research the target market properly and select your audience wisely to get most out of a marketing campaign.

Looking for help in Facebook marketing?

Facebook fan pages are a great source of business opportunities and it was announced that fan page layout will be changed in March 2011. The page administrators have been given a choice to upgrade to the new page layout with some added features. These upgrades can help any business to grow further over Facebook.

Features

New design and features of a fan page are somewhat similar to the new profile of a Facebook user. Let me explain the changes within a page:

Latest Pictures Showcase

Facebook page’s new layout lets you display up to five image thumbnails over the top of your page, right below the page name. This image display area can only be utilized by a picture that was uploaded or tagged by the page itself. Fans can upload images but they won’t be displayed over the front. Facebook has termed this area as ‘Showcase Your Latest Photos’. You can hide any image that you don’t want to display here.

Images play a very important role in a design. There is always a greater chance of acceptance if you use image to translate your thoughts. If you are selling products or services and Facebook page is your business identity as well, you can display your product and service images here. This will greatly increase the usability of your fan page.

Navigation Structure

The new Facebook user profile has already shifted the navigation tabs to the left side of the profile. As users have become used to of exploring the navigation over the left panel of profile, the fan page navigation has also been shifted to the left side of the page layout. Facebook has termed this as ‘Navigation Where People Expect It’.

As navigation links are on the left, just like user profiles, it’ll be a lot easier in terms of usability optimization. Users expect the ‘Wall’ to be the top link of navigation and it is. Then ‘Info’ tab, ‘Photos’, ‘Discussions’, ‘Events’ and the last tabs are your custom FBML or any other custom tabs that you would like to add to your fan page.

Page Wall

Facebook fan page wall has always been the most important tool. The previous feature of activity sharing is still there with an additional filter of which activity you want to display on top of your wall. With the upgraded design, you can show the top posts by your fans on the wall or can display the post by page as the first post to appear when someone lands over the fan page wall. Facebook has termed this feature as ‘Show the Top Posts on your Wall’.

This feature has added the flexibility for a page admin to display all the activities of page itself as a featured post and page fan posts under the featured post. In this way you won’t have to worry about the first post that’ll be visible to a person visiting your page. The first post displayed can always be your own post.

Switch Account to Fan Page

You can switch your account to make your fan page a Facebook user itself. You’ll receive notifications when someone would ‘Like’ and interact with you by posting something over wall or responding to any of your post. If you would like any other page, it’ll appear as featured page on your profile. You can see the activity of pages that you have liked in your news feed and you can make comments, posts and can share activity over other pages as well. Facebook has termed this feature as ‘Use Facebook as Your Page’.

Now this truly is going to be a remarkable feature. As a page admin, you were not able to post something over the page as a fan. All your posts were being displayed as posts or activity performed by the page. Now you can switch account and make your posts to appear as fan posts.

When you switch to be a page, you become a separate entity over Facebook. Now you can do everything that you were doing as a person. Making posts, commenting and sharing activity will enhance your visibility over Facebook and this will turn into a marketing and promotional technique in coming days.

Page Owners

This was a major difference between a Facebook group and a page. Group administrators are visible and page owners and admin were not. Now you can add yourself or any other page administrator as a featured owner of the page.

Blocklists

Spamming was a major concern of page owners and Facebook had provided a spam filter to counter it. The new Facebook fan page features also include a blocklist feature. Facebook will automatically filter some words and phrases that are considered offensive and you can also create a blocklist of words or phrases. Whenever someone will post something that includes any of the blocklist words or phrase, the post will be filtered as spam.

With new features and enhancements, Facebook pages are going to help you in promotion and marketing of your products and services. It has indeed become vital for every business owner to develop, establish and get his brand recognized with social media and Facebook plays a significant role in developing your online presence.

Looking for help for your Facebook page?