Foreword By The Editor

The following article by Stephanie Powers focuses on the very important area of online promotions, with particular reference to CPA advertising. Basically, what this refers to is banner advertising, which is scoffed at by so many in the field nowadays (particularly those who are hyping competing products.). This has led to its undeserved bad reputation as an advertising method that “doesn’t work”. This is nonsense, of course. Banner ads are simply space rented on someone else’s website where you can advertise your wares. It’s where that space is and how you use it that determines whether or not it’s going to work. Banner ads are not just a ‘trend’ and, like their ‘real world’ counterparts, they will never completely lose their effectiveness.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

CPA Marketing

Cost Per Action (CPA), or Pay Per Action, as it is sometimes known, and other forms of affiliate marketing can be a tough learning curve, but there is one method of promoting merchandise or services that is about as close as you can come to ‘copy and paste’. Does that sound too good to be true? It almost is, but it’s completely legitimate, and experienced marketers have been making fortunes with it for years. What is this mystery technique? It’s known as ‘media buying’, or more specifically in this case, online media buying.

Media Buys

This term is not new. For many years now, it has described the process of buying advertising from traditional print magazines, newspapers, radio and television. These are still viable advertising media. Usually, it is bought in bulk and then ‘brokered’ very inexpensively to individual buyers. The Internet is new in this type of advertising market and offers opportunities for marketers who do not have the deep pockets often required for advertising elsewhere.

Essentially, media buys involve buying banner advertising space on websites, with the cost depending on the website’s prominence and traffic, the size of the advertising campaign, the times at which the banners are to be displayed, and other such criteria. Payment for these ad campaigns is generally calculated on the basis of cost per thousand impressions (CPM), which means that, unlike Pay-Per-Click (PPC), where you pay each time your ad gets clicked, with CPM you pay a set rate each time a visitor actually views your ad.

Cheap Clicks

The ad rates are sometimes such that advertisers can end up getting very cheap clicks. Formerly, they had to pay advertising agencies to do all the design work for their campaigns. However, many companies with affiliate programs are now providing their affiliates with pre-made banner ads in various different standard sizes for free, either directly or through their affiliate network.

For the affiliate, in order to start promoting affiliate and CPA offers with banners, all they need to do is to cut and paste a snippet of code. Cut and paste, it’s that simple. No need to wrack their brains to come up with ad copy, spend hours trying to write code etc. It is all done for them.

Summary

Just like any other type of promotional offer, there are ‘tricks of the trade’ that can help increase the chances of success. While you can simply jump in and hope for the best, you are far better off learning from a professional who has already tested and tweaked techniques for maximum profits. By clicking a link in the next paragraphyou will be taken to a course that will show you the ins and outs of media buys and allow you to hit the ground running with confidence.

About The Author

Gift Yourself the Chance to Make Money Online. Go here right now and grab your copy before they’re all gone! CPA Advertising Work From Home.

Foreword By The Editor

Website design is not a difficult subject provided you take the trouble to follow some simple and time-tested rules for better overall website performance. Many people make the mistake of thinking that artistic excellence is what is called for and then get stuck in a morass of conflicting techniques which only end up making the result less efficient. This article by Russel Grant offers a number of easy-to-follow guidelines for keeping you on the right track.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Peak Performance

You need to pay attention to every detail of your website design to ensure peak performance. Many common mistakes are made by both amateur and professional designers who believe that their visitors require an entertaining visual and audio experience when most often that isn’t the case at all.

Take heed of the website design rules that follow and you can be assured of an optimally designed website that will produce the results you are seeking.

Systematic Navigation

Always use an easy navigational system. It should be so simple that even a young child can understand how to move from place to place. Stay away from any form of Flash based menus or even multi-tiered menus as they only serve to add more complication to the layout. If you make things difficult for them, your visitors will leave your site as quick as they arrived. Also, have a sitemap added to the main menu to help them find what they are looking for.

Navigational Clarity

Let it be clear to the user where they are at any given time. When visitors are deeply engrossed in browsing your site, you want to make sure that they know which part of the site they are in. That way, they will be able to browse relevant information or navigate to any section of the site and find their way back just as easily. This is best achieved by ensuring each page has a clear title and a textual ‘breadcrumb trail’ that clearly shows the links they have taken to get where they are. Never confuse your visitors or you will lose them very quickly as they become frustrated.

Splash Pages

Leave ‘splash’ pages for movies and advertisements as they are very often the first impression people have of a website. Made up of pretty designs, they are usually lavish images and graphics with accompanying words such as “welcome to our site” or “click here to enter”. These are merely fancy additions without any real functional purpose at all. They serve only to entertain but if website conversion is your goal (i.e. you want buyers for your products), they can be a big barrier to you achieving your goals.

Banner Ads

Do not use excessive banner advertisements. These are usually placed at the top or bottom of webpages but they are mostly ignored by the majority of web surfers so it is a very ineffective form of advertising and a waste of good space. Instead, provide more valuable content and weave relevant affiliate links into your content. Let your visitors feel that they can buy at will rather than being coerced.

Audio

Use as little audio as possible if you want your visitors to stay a long time and study your content; do not irritate them with your choice of music. Some  sounds can certainly enhance their experience but when played over and over again they can become irritating. It may be ‘cool’ to include music but give your users some form of control such as a mute button or the ability to control the volume.

By using this information on website design you will find visitors to your site stay much longer and will return in the future.

About The Author

The author writes cool stuff. Get more of it at 3d Graphic Design Course.

Foreword By The Editor

The following article by Justin Harrison covers the very important subject of search engine spiders, what they are and what they do. Automation is crucial when it comes to effectively indexing the World Wide Web and the search engine spiders are one of the most important elements in the process. Be sure to read his author bio in the last paragraph and to follow the links there if you want to explore further.
Mike Alexander
For all your content needs go to ClipCopy Content Solutions

Spiders And Crawlers

Search engines employ automated processes or robots, casually known as ‘spiders’ or ‘crawlers,’ to find various sites. They’re an important part of the whole internet infrastructure, but why is that so? What do they do exactly?

Robots actually have the same basic functionality that earlier browsers had. Just like these early browsers, search engine robots do not have the ability to do everything. Robots cannot get past password protected areas, for example. They do not understand frames, Flash movies, images or JavaScript. Even if you use a robot, you have to click the buttons on your website. They can cease to function while using JavaScript navigation or when indexing a dynamically generated URL. A search engine robot retrieves data and finds information and links on the web.

Gaining Visibility

The ‘Submit URL’ function places the URL into a list the robots are going to explore. Even without submitting your URL directly, robots will try to find your site by following links. That’s why building visibility through a web of links is so important.

Links are collected from every page that is visited. These links are used in following those links to other pages. The robot gets around the World Wide Web by following links from one place to another.

When the robots return, the information they gathered is assimilated into the search engine’s database. Through a complex algorithm, this data is interpreted and web sites are ranked according to how relevant they are to various topics that would be searched for. Some of the bots are quite easy to spot. Google’s is the appropriately named Googlebot, whereas Inktomi utilizes a more ambiguous bot named Slurp. Others may be difficult, if not impossible, to identify at all.

Data Gathering And Processing

Robots ‘read’ your site by collecting data on any visible text, on tags you may have in the coding of your page, and on any links available. These are the things that determine what the search engines ‘think’ your content is about, so these are the things you really need to pay attention to when building a site that you want to have high visibility in search results.

The search engine sorts the information that has been delivered to the databases which has become a part of the search engine and directory ranking process. This allows it to display the results.

Databases are updated periodically. Robots visit often to find changes to your pages so that the latest information is available. The way that the search engine is set up determines how the number of visits you get is calculated. This can vary with different search engines. If your website is down or experiencing a large amount of traffic, the robot may not be able to access the page they are trying to visit. The website may not be re-indexed when this occurs. It depends  how frequently your site is visited by the robot. In the hope that your site will be accessible again, the robot will re-visit your site to see if it has become accessible.

About The Author

Justin Harrison is an internationally recognized Internet Marketing Consultant who provides world class SEO Services to website owners. For more information visit: http://www.seorankings.co.za.