I have been paying for traffic ever since I started my online business over 4 years ago and one of the best sources of targeted traffic is through pay per click search engines (PPC) or pay for placement search alternatives like Google adwords or Yahoo Sponsor Listings, formerly Overture.com.

Google adwords and Yahoo Sponsor Listings are the kings of pay per placement search engines. They are also the most expensive but you will get the most targeted traffic from them. If you cannot get a free listing in the top 10 on their main search results under the sponsored listings then you may want to consider pay per placement. Sponsored listings usually appear at the top above regular listings on Yahoo, and down the right side of the page at Google.

If Google and Yahoo are too rich for your liking then try some of the smaller PPC search engines like 7Search, Findwhat and or Kanoodle.

The key to good PPC advertising is to find cheap key words under .50 cents per click that will land you in the top 5 positions. There is no need to be number 1. A number 5 placement may cost you a few cents per click less and you will likely get the same traffic or in some cases even more than a number 1 spot. Try to pick as many key words as you can that are directly related to your product or service.

If you are advertising a work from home internet business try breaking down what I just typed. Work from home, home internet business, internet business, work from home business, home business. YOU GET THE PICTURE.

If you want to advertise a product like multivitamins try keywords like vitamins, supplements, vitamin supplements, health supplements, diet supplements, multivitamins. YOU GET THE PICTURE.

If you don�??t have your own web site and only an affiliate link you may have to get a redirect URL from someone like http://tinyurl.com Most of the PPC engines will not allow you to use an affiliate link. But you can get a tinyurl for free and have it re-direct to your affiliate link. If your affiliate program allows you to key code for testing purposes like SFI does then you can get several tinyurls and direct them to a different key code. That way you can actually test your PPC ad campaign to see which key words are working the best for you. This is important if you want to reduce your advertising dollars without sacrificing traffic to your web site. (We all want to do this right?)

PPC is only one advertising method that you should be taking advantage of, but it�??s an important one so give it a try if you have not already. It may just change the way you do business and effect how much money you make with your work from home internet business.

Tom Worsley is a Work From Home internet business entreprenuer Independant representitive of the Strong Future International Affiliate Program and webmaster / owner of the Kawartha Publishing FREE content Article Directory

A WordPress theme is what determines the look of your blog, like a website design. And it’s not easy to pick! There are hundreds and hundreds of them…and some are definitely much better than others.

The theme you pick is essential to your blog’s success. First impressions are key, and a visitor’s first impression to your blog will be largely dictated by the theme.

Here are 4 things you should think about to help guide you through the process of picking the best WordPress theme for you:

1. Your blog’s subject matter is key. What’s it about? Really, the content of your blog should strongly influence the look of your blog. For example, it would make sense for a corporate/business blog to look similar to your existing website. A blog about partying should be colorful and exciting, while a blog about yoga or meditation would have a completely different feel.

2. Do you want to make money with the blog? Google AdSense is the most common way of doing this, you see these ads everywhere. And, some themes are better suited for using Google AdSense than others. Of course, there are other ways of making money from your blog - affiliate marketing, selling text links, Amazon, etc.

Not everyone wants to make money from their blog, but if you do, here’s some tips:

• 3-column themes (particularly with 2 columns on the left or right side) are becoming more popular. Part of the reason is that they provide a lot of space for advertising above the fold (above where a user has to scroll to see content.)
• Ads that are above the fold typically do better. So pick a theme with plenty of space at the top to include advertisements/sponsored links.
• While ultra-simple themes might be quite vogue they often lack the space needed for proper advertising.

3. Your technical know-how is important. Most WordPress themes are quite easy to use right “out of the box” but there are some themes definitely geared to beginners and others aimed at experts. Your skills in HTML and even in coding with PHP may play a factor in your successful use of a given theme.

Some themes come better equipped with instructions; so take a look after downloading a theme to see if there’s any advice or information in the files that you’ve download.

If you’re a beginner look for contact information and/or an active community around the theme (like a website or forum.)

Quick Note: Make sure your theme supports the version of WordPress that you’re running. Some themes might only work with a later version of WordPress (2.0+) but you might still be on an older version of the blog software.

4. Don’t forget to test the theme thoroughly! Once you’ve found a theme you like, at least do the following:

• Write a few sample posts. Vary their length and style to see how each looks. Try including some images as well. On occasion when you start experimenting with the positioning of images you might see it actually breaks the theme.
• Submit some comments. Comments are important to blogging so try this out and make sure you like how they’re formatted.
• Make sure you click on a few posts to look at them individually. Click on the category names that you’ve setup as well to see what those pages look like. Generally speaking, try and click throughout the blog because when you first setup a theme or see one you like online it’s not going to be showing you everything.
• In the WordPress Admin go to the Theme Editor and look at a few of the files listed there. The idea is to just get a feeling for what the code looks like - how well written it looks - because once you start editing that code you’ll want it to be as neat as possible.

Remember, you can always change the theme on your blog, but you want to get it right the first time, if you can. Do some research, look around, find examples of themes you like in use and always test as much as you can.

Once you’ve found a great theme and started editing it you won’t want to get away from it; and that first impression for visitors to your blog is going to help guarantee your success!

Visit Ben Yoskovitz’s blog at Instigator Blog (http://www.instigatorblog.com)

Ben Yoskovitz is a veteran entrepreneur specializing in turning your ideas into a thriving business. He helps people shape their passions into profitable, successful companies. He’s been in business for over 10 years and works extensively in the technology industry, including web design, software development, blogging and podcasting.

Some people are resistant to clicking on what are obviously adverts, and have to be seduced into doing so. Not only that, but once you have taken all that time designing your Adsense pages, you want to get a decent return for the work you have done. What’s the point spending hours on a few Adsense pages that are going to earn you only two or three cents a click? The first part of your strategy in increasing your wealth is to make sure that you are targeting the right products and niches.

There is a balance to be made between high priced clicks and their popularity. Adsense sites tend to proliferate in proportion to the return per click: this is not surprising, but means that the days are over where you could pick the highest priced ppc adverts and write a quick page to have the appropriate Google adverts placed them on. Take the keyword ‘mesothelioma’ for example, which is a type of cancer caused by exposure to asbestos.

When this became big news, and sufferers started suing left right an center, the keyword was worth over $50 a click - it is still worth over $50, but at that time there was a fortune to be made using Adsense since fewer people were aware of its existence. Now, although the rewards can be the same, every man and his dog are using mesothelioma and variants, and competition is fierce. It is very difficult to get your site listed on Google due to the competition.

Google will only list so many similar sites on mesothelioma, and you will have to offer something unique, or specific services other than just information on the condition, to get listed sufficiently high for your website to be found.

The secret is to find a well paying keyword, at least $5, and work on that. One page Adsense sites no longer bring the return that they once did, especially if software generated, and it has been demonstrated that it is better to design an authority site with good content and a range of products on offer, than a site designed for Adsense alone. Ok, you might be able to produce one Adsense site a week, while an expert site could take you a month or more, but if you have more to offer than just adverts you will keep people on your site longer, and will extract more clicks from them as a result.

You will also generate income from the affiliate products you will also be selling on such a site. The key to increasing your wealth with Adsense these days is to generate several experts Adsense sites annually, and they will eventually build up to a sizable income. It is not just the Adsense itself that matters, however, but where you place it and how your ads are designed. The place to avoid is the right hand side of your web page, since that is normally associated with adverts, since it is where Adwords appear on a Google results page.

How about across the top, below your website title and graphics, and just above the page heading. That is normally associated with website navigation, so if you place a 468 x 15 Link unit across the top, your visitors are more likely to associate the links with navigation than with adverts. Format it to have no borders, with the title in blue and the background the same as the page, and that completes the effect.

Large rectangular Ad Units have also been found to be useful, and they tend to work well to the left top of the page. Again, no borders, the link in blue and the URL in black, and the background blending into the page: this format has been proved to give best results so should be the preferred format for all your Adsense blocks and units.

The best placement for your ads, apart from the above, can be determined by studying a heat map of a typical website. These provide information on which parts of the site are most looked at and in what order. Eye-tracking maps are very useful in helping you decide where to place your Adsense ads on your page. The maps for a Google results page, however, will different to those on your own website, and areas close to headlines containing your keyword (since that is what people have searched for to find your page), and around graphics (people look at graphics) are prime candidates for Adsense ad placements.

There are many other factors to consider when designing your adsense campaign, but these two are the main ones. Increasing your wealth with Google adsense, largely involves choosing the right type of ad units, formatting them properly so as to blend into your page without seeming to be blatant adverts, and to position them where they will be noticed.

Get these factors right, and you will make more money from Google Adsense than if you ignored them.

Increasing your Wealth with Google Adsense was originally published at http://www.affiliatemarketinglife.com

If you�??ve been using the same approach with your customers and clients for very long … it�??s sorta like getting peanut butter and jelly in your lunch for 37 days in a row. It�??s boring, predictable and memorable �?� for all the wrong reasons.

Lesson Learned: Keep your main offer fresh.

In today�??s market, a fresh new approach can mean the difference between clients eating up what you have to offer �?� and getting your snack cakes crushed.

For example, I remember the day I opened my insulated bottle to pour my milk and out came CHOCOLATE milk! Mom had my attention. Yeah, making sure I had milk to drink showed she cared. And for a 9 year old that’s all well and good. But chocolate milk? Well that just moves mom up on the list of “stuff that’s swell”. And from that day on, there was a little twinge of excitement when I opened my lunch drink. Problem was �?� it never happened again. After a while, the slight twinge of excitement that came with opening my drink �?� disappeared.

Lesson Learned: Every now and then, you have to change it up to keep the excitement alive. Putting a different type of juice or chocolate milk in my lunch one day every three weeks would have done it.

By the same token, if you’ve been sending the same old postcard announcing the “Sale of the Month”, next month try sending the card in an envelope instead. Better yet, send it along in an envelope with a 25 sheet sticky notepad with your logo, name and number imprinted on it.

Think about that for a minute from the receiver’s standpoint. You’ve been getting a postcard from LMNOP for 2 years. SUDDENLY, you get an envelope from LMNOP. You’ll open it with renewed interest. Why? Because you don’t know what’s inside. Something unexpected and out of the ordinary happened. But because the same old postcard in an envelope could be anti-climactic, you want to include a little “excitement enhancer” with an inexpensive sticky notepad.

Mom’s lunches weren�??t all bad, though. Part of effectively changing your approach is understanding that while an apple, an orange and a banana are all fruits �?� they are different fruits. Mom added variety to my lunchbox fruit course by constantly changing the fruit. She did the same with the veggies, alternating carrots, celery, sweet peppers, radishes and pickles. Similarly, a postcard, an envelope and a package are all direct mail, but they’re different. The same way a pen, a note pad and a refrigerator magnet are all promotional products �?” yet different. Even with postcards, you can change the design while maintaining the integrity of your corporate identification.

And now the main course �?” the offer! Mom knew I would be ok with ketchup on bologna even though I preferred mayo. Mustard is fine on pork/ham. PB &J was fine. Egg salad would fly like a lead balloon, sandwich spread was great and I’d eat anything with cheese on it �?�. except PB&J, hold the cheese, please.

Lesson Learned: Want to keep your target relatively happy and interested? Get to know them, keep changing the main offer and give them what they like.

What do you know about your clients and prospects? Do you know what they like, how much they buy or how often they buy? For small retailers it can be as easy as utilizing a punch card program. Swipe type cards coupled with the right computer program can allow you to capture a lot of useful data. But even the smallest retailer can send/give a survey and reward respondents with a low-cost, high perceived value promotional item. This is an excellent way to start or expand a database.

Change the main offer. Even if all you sell are chairs. Change the featured chair. Tell why it’s a great chair �?” features and benefits. Tell them something they don’t know. Give them something they can sink their teeth into.

Finally, the treat! Whether it was a piece of candy, a snack cake or a fruit pie, I always looked forward to the treat!

Lesson Learned: Treat your clients, customers and prospects. Treat them to a mint (regular and sugar free) at the cash register, have fresh coffee and hot water for tea available, have stickers or waterless tattoos available for the kids. Train your staff to treat customers and prospects like they are welcome. Treat them �?� like your business depends on them.

Michael Merrick Crooks is a 23-year advertising veteran, copywriter and founder of Crooks Advertising Alliance. His firm, based near Lansing, Michigan (USA) is a creative strike-force that provides advertising, creative problem-solving and promotional marketing services to a diverse client base. From logo development and brochure writing, design and production to targeted, promotional concepts, Crooks has an ability to look at the same thing everyone else does and see something different. For more thought-provoking marketing articles and insights visit http://www.crooksadvertising.com and sign up for CrooksView Creative Digest free. Or, visit the most authoritative waterless tattoos website in the world http://www.waterlesstattoos.com

1. When embarking on a course that you hope will lead you to profitable article marketing, you need to know the subjects with which you will be dealing with. It is important to become an expert on the subject in which you are writing.

2. In undertaking profitable article marketing, you need to identify those markets that will be most interested in purchasing your articles.

3. Profitable article marketing depends to a great degree on quality control. You will want to make certain that your articles are of good value and well done.

4. As with any other business, when it comes to profitable article marketing, you will want to come up with a marketing a promotions plan.

5. When involved in profitable article marketing you need to be very proactive in protecting your copyright interest in the articles you are marketing.

6. You will always want to make certain that you have a fresh �??batch�?� of articles for sale on �??hot�?� topics at all times. You can’t sell what you don’t have. And if you are not selling your articles, you are not making money.

You now have the information. Sit down and start writing.

Want to learn more about it? Download the free ebook, Steps to Article Marketing Success.

When entrepreneurs deal with self-marketing on a low budget they must realize that there is not one golden technique that they could perform that will draw loads of new business their way. New entrepreneurs and small business owners must perform a variety of marketing activities because no one marketing tactic on its own will be enough. That is why self-marketing is a full time job.

With that in mind, here are just a few self-marketing techniques that a new entrepreneur should do. If you are a new entrepreneur, don�??t do just one. Do them all and more.

• Article Writing: Write expert articles in your area of expertise and submit them to article directories. The most important directory you can submit to is EzineArticles.com. At the bottom of each article that you write you can include a link to your website (if you have one), your business phone number, or an email address. The most important thing to realize with articles is that most people will find your article via a search engine such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. And, most of the search engines will give you a ranking based on the title of the article. You must make the title keyword rich; use words that you think people searching for your services will type into the search box. Don’t write just one article; write plenty.
• Internet Sales Leads: You can purchase executive contact names and phone numbers from leads list companies like InfoUSA and D&B. Or you can receive free B2B and B2C sales leads from Trade-Pals.com. There is a TradePals category for most business professionals like accountants, advertising & marketing professionals, insurance brokers, real estate brokers, lawyers, engineers, website designers, sales consultants, motivational speakers, financial planners, and writers, for example. When creating a profile remember that, just like EzineArticles.com, most people will find your profile via a search engine so it is important to create a descriptive profile, especially the “brief overview of services” section.
• Free Publicity: Free publicity could be the best advertising that you and your business could receive. The media’s reach is wide and far. You could try meeting with editors of local newspapers or even news stations. You could send relevant press releases, as long as they are newsworthy. Don’t believe the hype that a press release can get you instant publicity. You must realize that the media receive thousands of press releases daily; they don’t even read most of them. But again, you must try everything when self-marketing yourself including writing a press release. There are online press release services like PRWeb.com and Send2Press.com.
• Business Networking: Business networking could be an inexpensive way to learn from other entrepreneurs, to make business contacts, or to receive business referrals. You could join your local Chamber of Commerce or your local BNI (Business Networking International) chapter. As well, there are online business networking websites such as Ryze.com and LinkedIn.com.

Visit Tino Buntic’s TradePals to receive qualified sales leads without cold calling or prospecting - for free! TradePals provides B2B and B2C sales leads to business professionals in major cities across The U.S. and Canada, including Albuquerque, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Detroit, Vancouver, Quebec City, Denver, Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Ottawa, St Louis, Baltimore, Edmonton, Houston, Dallas, and Las Vegas.

1. Develop a strategic plan on writing and submitting your articles. Set your daily working schedule to determine the number of articles you will write everyday. Also, allot at least 1 day for your article submission.

2. Motivate yourself to do more. Never get satisfied with the number of articles you write everyday. Try to write an additional 2-3 articles so you can create extra 14-21 articles per week. That would definitely create a big difference in your campaign.

3. Do not procrastinate. If you want to be more productive, you have to eliminate procrastination on your system. This will greatly pull down the number of your articles and may cut your online traffic in half.

4. Stay away from distractions. Loud music, phone ringing, friends chatting, or even your bed can distract you from writing and this can extremely slow down the process. To prevent this from happening, I suggest that you work in a place where you can be alone and comfortable so you can be more productive.

5. Focus. Clear your mind and don’t let your pressing issues distract you. Avoid the temptation of surfing the net or chatting with friends while writing your articles. The more focus you are, the more articles you can write.

6. Know your limits. Do not work too hard. If you are too exhausted to write additional articles, stop! This could affect the quality of your work and may hurt your credibility online.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide’

Download it free here: Secrets of Article Promotion

Sean Mize is a full time internet marketer who has written over 1574 articles in print and 11 published ebooks.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage’s title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you visit Google and type in “link:” (without the quotations) followed by your site address (no space after the colon), you will be shown the sites that are linked to your site as per Google. Example link:www.yoursite.com. Note that searching link:yoursite.com will return different results than searching link:www.yoursite.com . To find your site’s link popularity on other search engines search the phrase “free link popularity check” and try one of the many link popularity tools available on the Web.

If you find that there aren’t many sites linked to yours, or that the sites that are linked have low search engine rankings, you need to start promotion campaign. Filling blogs / wwwboards / message boards with your articles and link is one of the best ways. It directs more quality traffic to your website.

We automated this process - filling hundreds of blogs is like a one button click with our product - Blogs Auto Filler. There is a free trial version and the manual available at nezabudka.oksima.biz Use Blogs Auto Filler and save your time and money!

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can’t boost your rankings yourself. Don’t ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.

First off, what are mini-sites? Well, mini-sites are simply 5-20 page sites that contain informative content. Mini-sites can take as little as a day or two to create, but can pull in passive income from automatic search engine traffic and other sources. I’ll show you how to do this.

The way you make money from mini-sites is by integrating income producing elements within the website. Mostly, these consist of affiliate links for affiliate programs. What are affiliate programs? They are commission based programs where you promote a product and earn a commission for every sale. Some income producing elements include but are not limited to: Clickbank affiliate links, Google Adsense advertising banners, Amazon affiliate banners and pay-per-lead program links.

Let’s take a look at these money generators:

Clickbank - This is a digital product marketplace. You can promote digital products with commissions of 50% or more. The reason the commissions are that high is because digital product owners often have very little overhead business costs and can afford to give more to their affiliates!

Google Adsense - This is a contextual advertising program. You just need to place a little code on your site, and ads will instantly appear. Whenever someone clicks on an ad, you make money.

Amazon - You can advertise products from the world’s largest online bookstore by simply signing up for their associates program. However, commissions are usually low compared to Clickbank.

Pay-Per-Lead programs - These are programs whereby you direct a visitor to a page of a merchant. If someone signs up for say a free report using your affiliate link, you make money. The customer doesn’t even have to buy anything!

That wraps up part 1. In part 2, we’ll look at exactly how you can create your own minisite and get started quickly.

Fabian Tan is the author of the free 51-Page Report:

“Murder Your Job: How To Build Cash Sucking Autopilot Businesses In 30 Days Or Less!”

Head over to http://www.MurderYourJob.com to get your free copy now before it’s gone!

For big name branded companies, this may be less of a problem since they serve the upper end of the moving market. This sector may be less prone to cycles, and this class of property owner often chooses between a small number of high profile firms.

For smaller businesses, which rely on the chance that a searcher will pick them out from the mass, the problems multiply. To take the example of the Yellow pages: When fewer searchers are viewing the same number of pages, and requests for quotations have consequently declined, there is an obvious temptation to consider buying ones way out of trouble with an increased advertising spend: larger and fancier ads, possibly with extended geographical coverage. This need for extra cost comes at a time when the shortage of customers creates a downward pressure on fees chargeable.

The fact is that when the business cycle is in a trough, it is hard to buy a way out, just as when it is at a peak, minimal expense would keep the order book full.

But for small moving companies, there is an area of untapped business. It is those small, even single item jobs. So often a client gives up trying to find a feasible price because after many calls, they cannot find that mover who happens to be going the right way. For moving companies, these requests always seem to come the day after they could be satisfied. Individual companies are always failing to meet these requests, and over the country, the number of unsatisfied requests is huge.

The internet has revolutionised the cost of reaching your audience, and advertising costs and opportunities are developing away from the stale ‘cough up and hope’ model of the Yellow pages.

The first improvement came with Google’s ‘Adwords’ scheme which allows advertisers to bid for prominence, on a ‘pay-per-click’ basis, and offers the flexibility to adjust bids as conditions require. For moving companies, ‘Adwords’ or Yahoo’s ‘overture’ alternative, is particularly effective when targeting specialist services (like works of art). The ability to suspend campaigns, or re-write them at a whim, is a big improvement on the Yellow pages model which as an annual publication, leaves a business stuck with its decisions.

However Pay-per-click has its detractors. Clickers may be poor sales prospects, and the growth of click fraud (the practice of competitors running up their oppositions’ costs by repeatedly clicking their ads) whilst probably solvable, means that all campaigns have to be carefully monitored.

For moving companies, the full possibilities of the internet have yet to unfold, and a site where a moving company can post part load offers, and where the public (meaning ebayers, students etc) can request quotes from any mover ‘going their way’, will be a huge asset for small movers, especially since the overheads and therefore cost of participation will be very low.

You can read more about load sharing, load matching and partloads at http://www.student-movers-forum.com.