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Archive for September, 2009

Spam filters can be quite tricky to contend with especially if it is your mails that the filter is trying to block. This is a common problem that is faced by most bulk email marketers. The problem fundamentally lies in the fact that most bulk email marketers and spammers are not really discriminated against by a filtering mechanism. This simply means that you could be a well meaning pharmacist who has decided to mail customers, perhaps as a newsletter; however, because of the nature of your business and perhaps a few keywords, your newsletters or promotional emails could simply end up in the spam folders of your clientele’s mailbox.

When this happens, you need to introspect and look closely at the kind of information you are sending out as well as the way you acquired people’s email addresses. Use the following top three tips to ensure that this is not repeated.

The first thing that you must do is start paying more attention to content. Advanced filtering mechanisms actually learn from user behavior. As users mark mail they consider spam, the content of the mail is analyzed for patterns in words and phrases for “spam” words. This could be anything from words like free, discount, certain brand names and product names, click here, or any other words that is pushing a hard sell strategy. Rewrite your content in such a way that the spam filters cannot pick up a single word more than once and that you don’t make any obvious gestures to promote a sale.

The next and probably the most important thing that you need to do is get a client’s opt in before you start to mail him or her. This number one reason for mails to get rejected is that people don’t follow this rule. Ensure that you get a user’s opt-in and send a mail to that person as a confirmatory email. This importantly, will ensure that when the mail does reach the client, the recipient will not mark the mail as spam mail.

Another important content change that you need to do is to incorporate more imagery and embed most of the slightly more spam-worthy words in the image. The object of sending a mail in any case is to send users back to a base website, and to ensure the complete sale anyway.

Probably a change that most marketers have to do whether online or offline is to learn that customers value information more than sales spiel. This is important to avoid spam filters as newsworthy and informative articles do not get targeted like regular spam mail. When you combine all these methods, you should be able to send your bulk email and newsletters with little to fear from filtering mechanisms. Ultimately, whether these add up to sales is a question then of how good your product and service levels are. Even if you don’t make a sale, customers will always remember good information given.

Karrie Beth is a best practices activist and advocate for Benchmark Email ( http://www.benchmarkemail.com ), a leading Web and permission-based email marketing service.

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Free email marketing is starting to become one of the preferred methods of selling goods and services over the net. Probably the divergence of spam from this more formal method of marketing online has got something to do with this rise. In the early days of the internet, there was little to differentiate these two breeds of businessmen. However, with time and the outcry over spamming the more professional marketers decided to follow more ethical practices. What separates a spammer from a regular marketer is the way that they acquire mail addresses to mail to and how they send the mails. In most cases, spammers scour the net and pick up email addresses that might have been dropped in a database or a webpage by some user. Spammers also exchange information amongst each other and purchase databases. Spammers also use nefarious means that are akin to hacking to send their mails by using malware and the like. It is important to understand that most spammers are just fronts for other companies and that they are not really concerned who the mail reaches. This is the reason why even a 10 year old child could end up being offered Viagra pills over the internet.

Free email marketing is a boon to most corporations because they offer a very lost cost alternative to traditional offline media. While the internet itself is quite a cheaper medium, the usual method of advertising like banner advertisements and the like are getting much more expensive to the point where the major portals actually charge rates that are as high as offline media. Therefore, using a medium like email is like sending a message to individual TV screens that you want to target. In addition, the cost of this method eventually will end up being close to zero because of the wide reach that you can have. It can be said that if you have a global outlook then the costs are so low that the world is literally your oyster.

The medium is also useful because of the flexibility in formats that can be adjusted with individual budgets. This simply means that if you have limited resources, you can stick to simple HTML mails that require the least creation effort or if you have a budget at your disposal, you can integrate and embed videos into your mails.

Free email marketing also allows more precise monitoring of the effectiveness of these mails. This basically means that the real job of a marketing campaign starts after the mails are sent out. The main points of monitoring include open rates, links clicked on, bounce back statistics, and other extrapolations of tracking statistics. This is absolutely crucial to any mail marketing campaign and most importantly to entities that have decided to spend a substantial amount of money on it. Entities that have decided to try out this medium over others would also be interested in knowing what happened to the few million mails that they sent out.

Karrie Beth is a best practices activist and advocate for Benchmark Email ( http://www.benchmarkemail.com ), a leading Web and permission-based email marketing service.

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Free email marketing is a branch of a larger type of marketing called bulk email marketing. In theory, this is quite a good way to market online because the costs of production are low, the reach is nearly 100%, and you can target just the people that you want. However, there is one small problem with this delivery mechanism, which is that spamming is also a branch of bulk email marketing. This goes back to the early days of the internet before legislation and the wide use of the email. Bulk email marketers took the opportunity to exploit this medium with online sales, which in itself was fine, except for the fact that most marketers indulged in sending unsolicited mails. This brought in the advent of spam filters and, with the increasing amount of spam and mail users, came the need for more complex anti-spam mechanisms.

Cut to the present day, the spam world might finally be looking at extinction in a few years with the daily dose of spam reducing from hundreds per day per mailbox, to below fifty now. This is all because of the work put into making spam filters more aggressive to the point that spam no longer figures in a mail user’s daily work. However, regular email marketers are a casualty in the process. So how do you make free email marketing work for you?

The first trick is to learn how spam filters work and then tweak your content in such a way that it doesn’t trigger off a spam alarm. The most important thing to remember from a deliver perspective is that you must not over-mail a certain domain as some of them have daily limits on the number of mails sent to it in a day. Anymore and it could be a spam attack. Apart from this, understand that spam filters work on keywords and phrases. Most marketing material is rather predictable to the human eye and even more so to software that uses complex mathematics to understand what constitutes spam. Therefore, you must not use keywords more than two times in the entire mail and stay away from the usual sales spiel.

The second important item in your free email marketing campaign is to not use subject lines that are obviously spam-worthy. Most humans can again recognize spam from subject lines and again so can software. Do not use sales spiel again over here and instead try to be more informative in your approach about the contents of the mail.

The final and most important tip in your free email marketing campaign is to get client opt-ins for your mailing efforts. Do not fall for the temptation to buy mail address databases from a spammer. This is because mail ID’s that don’t exist in a person’s address book or folders are the first to be checked for spam material. This is also a fundamental tenet of the US Government’s CAN-SPAM legislation and one that all US based online marketers have to follow.

Karrie Beth is a best practices activist and advocate for Benchmark Email ( http://www.benchmarkemail.com ), a leading Web and permission-based email marketing service.

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As a manager, executive or business owner your top priority today is exceeding company goals. You can’t do it yourself, so the best way to exceed your goals is to have what we call “High Performance Teams” working for you.

Your goals may include growing your business, increasing revenue, improving business efficiency, doing more with less, creating competitive advantage, improving customer satisfaction, reducing costs or leveraging intellectual assets.

Your team, which may include (sales, marketing, finance, strategy, HR, IT, operations, shop floor, etc.) represents a very powerful mechanism for getting significant results in organizations today.

High performance teams are a special class of team that has the ability to easily adapt in a rapidly changing environment and is an essential element for highly successful organizations.

The first step in building a high performance team is understanding the essential team ingredients that create a recipe for success.

Building high performance teams is a top priority for many executives. The benefits and value produced by these teams are very clear and being viewed as essential tools in their business strategy.

High performance teams produce many benefits.

1. Increased sales revenue

2. Increased productivity

3. Improved customer service

4. Ability to do more with less

5. Increased innovation

6. Ability to quickly adapt to change

7. Ability to solve difficult, critical problems

Sales Team Essentials – The Ingredients

So where do you begin? Like a great chef making the perfect souffl

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If you own a business, and need your web page to make a splash, or if you are interested in a career in web designs, you should consider enrolling in an internet marketing course. It is no secret that internet marketing is a necessary skill in order to really make a webpage a success, but the problem is that many of the internet marketing courses that are advertised are scams. It is imperative to sort out the good courses from the bad-finding the right course the first time will save you both money and effort. Navigating through these sites can be difficult especially for a beginner, but there are number of things you can do to not only root out the scams but to teach yourself.

This does not mean that there are not real courses geared toward teaching real methods to be successful at internet marketing. These are the courses that are offered by accredited universities. These online marketing courses are regulated and taught by people who have proven the success of the methods they teach and who are held accountable for what they teach. Finding and taking a bonafide internet marketing course can help you learn the basics of promoting your site, and prepare you to compete within your industry.

You can also consider a course or series that offers certification or accreditation of some sort. These programs will go into more advanced methods of internet marketing; someone who is really serious about having a successful website could benefit from taking one of these courses. The downside of these internet marketing courses is that they will usually cost more than courses offered by independent companies. The extra money goes toward the accreditation and verification of these teachers and courses.

Internet marketing courses that are independently offered, as in offered from a company instead of a university should be approached with caution. They will often give you the same information that is available online or try and talk you into paying for more services. The truth is that most digital marketing is simply putting in the footwork, such as submitting to search engines manually, using search engine optimization techniques, or even doing work in viral marketing. One of the best things you can do when you are considering an online marketing course is look for reviews of the course or school itself. One or two bad reviews alongside a hundred good reviews are acceptableaa school or course with overwhelmingly bad feedback is not.

If you are looking to take just once class and like the convenience, consider taking classes online. There are a number of accredited schools and universities that offer a completely online option for their internet marketing courses. Most of these schools offer records of their accreditation online and with reviews of their courses.

You shouldn’t consider taking an online course that does not offer real credentials and that you cannot find independent reviews for. Many internet marketing course sites will manufacture positive reviews and buzz about their site, this is also one of the techniques they are likely to teach you in their courses.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.baol.co.uk/internet-marketing-courses.html where you can find information on an internet marketing course

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There is simply no getting away from using computers at most jobs. For those who weren’t still young when the computer generation began, clicking away on your keyboard may seem like an impossibility. Then there are those who just aren’t very savvy on the computer. The problem is, if you aren’t somewhat computer literate, it can have a negative affect on your search for employment.

There are a number of options for improving your computer skills, whether you are starting from the beginning or trying to improve the abilities you already have. If you need to start by improving your keyboarding accuracy and speed, there are free typing tests online that give you the opportunity to practice and improve on your own. You really aren’t going to be qualified for any type of job that requires computer skills if you can’t master the keyboard!

If there are any business colleges or community colleges in your area, check with them to see what they offer. Some will let you take classes independently while others require you to sign up for a degree or certificate program. You will want to choose the computer courses you need without having to take those that focus on skills you already have mastered.

There are also many, many computer courses available online. One advantage to these courses is that you can usually get a pretty good description of the class online to help you understand exactly what is covered. They also frequently offer 24/7 customer service in case you have questions or problems with the course. If you choose to take online computer courses, find out what the requirements are before you sign up. You need to make sure you won’t have to purchase a lot of new equipment before you can do the assignments. You will probably need high speed internet for downloading and uploading programs, too.

Many jobs will not require a lot of knowledge about specific programs but will instead use their own systems. You will have to learn how to use the system as it applies to your position once you begin training for the job. However, you will still need to have a basic idea of how to operate a computer and figure out problems and solve them when they occur.

Benefits of taking computer classes in person include having an instructor to guide you when you don’t understand something and having other students to lean on for support. You can also take courses at night, if needed.

The prices for these courses vary drastically. Courses taught online at large universities that are accredited may cost as much or more than the in-person campus classes at your local community college, so it pays to shop around.

If you have a good idea of the type of employment you want and what the requirements for computer use will be, it will make it easier to know whether you need extensive training or just a little brush-up on your skills.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.baol.co.uk where you can find information on computer courses

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Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

Sep-30-2009 By JamesCopper

The internet changed the world as we know it and has made many different things possible. The great thing about the internet is that it is a very useful and valuable business platform which is becoming even more useful.

Every business needs to have a website on the internet. If they don’t already have one then they are missing out.

Digital Marketing

The internet has made advertising much easier and more affordable for many businesses. Anyone who wants to build their brand needs to use the internet to make this possible. It’s not enough to simply have a website anymore as you also need to drive traffic towards your site.

There are a number of businesses which will try to use old techniques to promote their business. However the only way you are going to be able to make your business a success is if you use the internet.

Digital advertising is extremely popular because it’s so effective and so affordable. Generally speaking you will only pay every time the ads are clicked and this means that your campaign will be affordable.

Traditional forms of marketing were always very expensive and prohibitive for smaller firms. The internet is making it possible for anyone to promote their business.

Targeting Adverts

A great feature of digital adverts is that it’s really simple to direct the ads to a certain audience. There are so many different websites on the internet which cater for different types of users that you can promote your website to anyone.

No matter what you are selling and who your customers are, you can be pretty certain that they will use the internet on a regular basis.

Other forms of Digital Marketing

There are of course plenty of different types of digital marketing solutions. These can include cell phone marketing, and LCD displays. These are examples of digital promotion tools which work well with passing custom.

If you hire a professional agency then they will be able to suggest which forms of marketing will be suitable for your business. It all depends on the products that your business is selling.

Hiring Professionals

If you are too busy running your business every day to worry about digital marketing campaigns then you might want to hire a professional business to help you to do this. When choosing a digital marketing agency it is very important that you choose someone who will look after your business.

Remember, this digital marketing agency will have the reputation of your business in their hands. This means that they can make or break your business. Never allow anyone you don’t completely trust anywhere near your business.

A great place to look for an agency to handle your requirements is on the internet. You can then use the internet to ask for credentials and check that everything they say is true.

Digital marketing is what your business needs to grow up big and strong. You just need to be careful that you are implementing the campaigns in the right way.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.thebigagency.co.uk who are an online marketing digital marketing agency

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Reasons to Use an Internet Marketing Agency

Sep-30-2009 By JamesCopper

The internet has made it easier to be an entrepreneur than it has ever been. Using the internet to run your business makes things very easy. If you do run an online business then it’s important you concentrate on improving the page rank of your site.

Page Rank

Over three quarters of the users on the internet use a search engine to find what they are looking for. This is because the internet is such a huge place. The only way to effectively find everything is by using a search engine.

The page rank is the position that your site is displayed in these search engine results. Few internet users will go past the first three pages of results. Most users will only ever look in the first couple of results.

If you are serious about improving your site then you need to improve your sites page rank. The higher your page rank is the more likely people are to click on your site and visit it.

The search engine works out your page rank using a sophisticated mathematical algorithm. It is possible to change various things to adjust your page rank. All of these things will take quite a long time to accomplish. Search engine optimization cannot be done overnight.

Search Engine Optimization

There are a number of different ways that you can promote your website using SEO techniques. If you do struggle with any of these then you might want to hire an internet marketing agency.

Keywords

One of the ways that search engines decide about the quality of your site and your rank is keywords. These keywords are what visitors search for when looking for websites. If your website is packed full of lots of relevant keywords then it will normally be ranked higher. It is however important not to go overboard with keywords. If you stuff too many articles in your content then it could end up negatively affecting your sites rank.

Keywords should be used in content, titles and Meta tags.

Links

Links are another very important part of the page rank calculation. Many search engines use the number of incoming links to decide how useful and popular your site is. It’s a good idea spending time developing links to your website. There are a number of ways to do this.

One of the best is to spend time researching websites which are similar to yours. Talk to them and try to encourage them to swap links with you. It’s also possible to purchase links or hire a specialist internet marketing agency to deal with this.

Other Sources of Links

There are plenty of other places where you can get links to your site from. You don’t have to just contact similar websites. You should also be a frequent poster on forums. This is especially useful if you can help people out with problems related to your industry. You should be able to include a link to your website in the signature.

You can also write articles and submit them to article sharing sites. These also provide back links to your website.

Internet marketing will help to drive more visitors to your website.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.alicointernet.co.uk who are specialists in online marketing and are an internet marketing agency

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It has probably become one of the most common complaints that most ISPs face when a corporate entity complains that its bulk emails from a marketing campaign or its newsletters are blocked out as spam. This can have quite a few ramifications for the corporate entity and the ISP of the corporate entity as well. Both parties are technically liable to pay damages if they cannot prove their case in a court of law. However, this problem may be mitigated if the entity is an overseas one but, in any case, one of the eventualities is blacklisting from ever mailing again. Even if the ISP doesn’t get you, the chances of the end users marking your emails as spam are pretty good.

Spam filters are the inanimate entities that are responsible for this action. These filtering mechanisms use artificial intelligence methods and complex mathematics to understand what comprises a spam mail in the eyes of that specific user. They also come with some preloaded settings so that the user doesn’t really have to “train” the software from scratch. These filtering mechanisms search for specific patterns in the number of keywords or entire phrases, which could be suspect. Considering all these attributes, there are times in which even legitimate mails get lost in the process. This is called a false positive and if studies of user behavior are anything to go by, false positives are worse than the odd spam mail getting through the filter.

So, when you are in a position in which spam filters have blocked you out, the first step that you should take is to check if you have gotten a report from the domain that you were mass mailing to. Some filters will actually send you back a mailing stating that your activity seemed like you were spamming and are now blacklisted. The site will also give you the option of getting yourself delisted. However, in most cases this does not happen and there is a very good reason for this. By telling a spammer that he has been blocked because of being recognized as a spammer, the spammer might just elicit a change of identity. It makes more sense to just let the spammer believe that the mail has reached a recipient and then blacklist the specific IP quietly. If this is what has happened, then you must again check with the domain administrator for blacklisting and also check email open rates.

Spam filters are a fact of life and the chances of blacklisting are quite good, unfortunately. One good remedy for this is not to mail at domains but rather to mail to webmail accounts. Mass mailing to a webmail domain will not cause the same amount of uproar or ruckus. You should also carefully consider from this point on what you are sending and the contents and subject lines of the mails. These are sometimes dead giveaways and can ruin your reputation and business.

Ron Gomez is a best practices activist and advocate for Benchmark Email ( http://www.benchmarkemail.com/email-marketing/email-campaign ) a leading Web and permission-based service for sending and tracking a email campaign .

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A method of attraction marketing is video producing. The good news is that you do not have to be an expert at creating videos, nor even experienced, to use this highly effective method of attracting leads. In attraction marketing, the goal is to bring people to you and to build trust with them, in an effort to sell to them later. Video can be one of the most effective methods of accomplishing this.

How It Works

When using video to promote yourself, the goal is to take a topic that some people may not find easy to understand and to break it down for them. For example, you may know all about the social networking website Twitter, but other people may be looking to get started. You can create a video demonstrating how to set up a Twitter account, how to get followers and respond to direct messages. It sounds simple, but with this very simple video, you create trust in those who watch it, learn something they wanted to know and then react positively to it.

Perhaps your main product is an Internet marketing guide. Now that these individuals have seen your Twitter video, they trust you. They know that you are able to break down those complex topics into simple directions. Therefore, when you present them with the Internet marketing guide, they are likely to want to buy from you since this is something they want to learn and you are someone they trust.

Whenever anyone watches the video, it continues to market for you. It does not have to be about your product at all. Rather, you are exhibiting how you as a leader are teaching others. This is what attraction marketing is all about.

Any business online will benefit from videos. You do not have to use a video that is a direct reference to your own product. It should not be an advertisement, either. It should be an instructional or informative video for the best results.

How To Get Started

To create a video to help promote yourself and your business, consider the following tips.

1. You can use any type of video camera you have and software that allows you to download it to the web.

2. You can post the video at your own website if you have strong traffic numbers. Use search engine optimization throughout the website to keep the video pulling in leads.

3. You can use other websites like http://YouTube.com to post your videos. Then, include links to your website from the http://YouTube.com link that interested people can use.

Be sure that the video helps with personal branding as well. To do this, be creative and unique, informative yet professional. In addition, use wording that helps people to remember your brand or your product. This way, people learn more about you and learn to go to you when they need questions answered. Promoting yourself through video is a simple way to gain good leads. It is quite inexpensive and very effective tool for lead generation marketing. Not to forget, it can be a lot of fun.

Michael E Friedman has over 30 years sales and marketing experience in a business to business environment. He is now fully committed to become an expert in network marketing and to share the benefit of his experience. He is someone who has survived the pitfalls of business start up ideas associated with MLM and other various unique business ideas that were supposedly designed to create instant millionaires. He has dramatically shortened the sometimes long and painful learning curve associated with network marketing and is now actively participating in the best money making ideas to take him strategically to his goals. For more information on his first alliance click here http://financialfreedomleaders.com/?t=isnare4b

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E-mail marketing is the most efficient, timely, and attractive way of reaching out to your clientele. Newsletters in particular can give a personalized touch to the recipient, by including information that might be of specific interest to them. Including graphics, videos and special offers are all ways to draw the attention of your reader and keep them there.

After all the effort you put into designing a newsletter, it would be a waste if it didn’t reach your clients. There are several ways to manage to avoid this issue – keep these in mind while creating your newsletters, as well as before sending them off.

The subject line of your e-mail often gets scanned for words that are typically found in spam. Be sure to use words that cannot be interpreted as possible spam – the words “free,” or “cash,” often causes e-mails to get filtered into spam. Also, slightly abnormal punctuation, such as all caps letters or lots of consecutive exclamation marks, or other non-standard construction, would attract the attention of the spam filter. On a similar note, the text in the body of the e-mail should also not contain any of these potential pitfalls.

It’s important to periodically update your e-mail list and clean out any incorrect addresses or no longer valid addresses. If you repeatedly send to a list that contains these kinds of addresses, the chances of future e-mails getting delivered are less.

Your HTML code is also a source that attracts the attention of the spam filters. Any errors, a particular style of formatting, or the use of JavaScript, can all cause your newsletter to get flagged. It is also important to keep the ratio of words to images high: in other words, very little copy and many images or one large image will be a sure way to get the message separated out. Keep a reasonable balance of both to make sure the message is in a safe zone for delivery.

There is also free software available that will check your HTML newsletter and rate it and give you a recommendation about how likely it is to get filtered into spam. One such software is SPAMAssassin.org. The software will evaluate your message on a scale of 0 to 5, 0 being the rating that would allow your message to pass through the filters without any trouble. If you find particularly good software that serves this function, it is likely that it will also give suggested changes that you can make to your Newsletter to fix any potential flagged items.

One final way to improving your delivery rate is to request that your clients add your “From” address to their list of contacts. Some e-mail services do not accept e-mails from unknown senders, and hence the message again gets filtered into spam. If the address is added however, it increases the chances of its acceptance in the inbox.

Keep these few tips in mind and your newsletter will in all likelihood reach your clients!

Karl Cruize is a best practices activist and advocate for Benchmark Email ( http://www.benchmarkemail.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates ) a leading Web and permission-based service for sending email newsletters.

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Free Email Templates: 4 Tips on Images

Sep-30-2009 By KarlCruise

HTML e-mail templates are a great way to communicate information. They look classy, contain your choice of text, and can be adorned with images and other designs of your liking. When you choose to use images however, be careful to do so in a manner that assures that the e-mail is delivered, and that the image is viewed in a way that is conducive to the recipient. We will discuss a few tips that will help you avoid any of these problems with images in particular.

Tip 1: Avoid using images that are too big. The last thing you want is for your e-mail to take a long time to load, and that your client chooses to delete it immediately before taking the time to read the content. Keep the dimensions of your image reasonable – it is recommended to be maximum 470 pixels wide by 150 pixels high.

Tip 2: Create the images as you plan to use them. When you are creating the images for your template, it would be ideal to make them in the size that you intend on using in the actual e-mail. If you do need to change the size to fit your message, be sure to re-size in a proportional manner, so that the image does not look distorted. Change both the width and the length in equal portions to maintain the right proportions.

Tip 3: If you are using a link to an image, check that it is absolute. Be sure to use absolute links in your HTML template for the images that you use – if you use a relative link, it is possible that the image will not be accurately located when viewed by the recipient. It is also important to make sure that the link is active, so that the image can be selected in the e-mail if necessary. The image is not permanently embedded in the e-mail, so the absolute link is critical. Also, background images in the HTML code for the template are also more prone to getting filtered into spam. To avoid this problem, try using solid colors for background rather than images.

Tip 4: Assume the reader has turned off image viewing in their e-mail inbox and provide a back-up option. Many people opt to turn off the viewing of images in their e-mail inbox. Always provide an alternative text for the image in the case that the client has used this feature of their e-mail service. This way, the purpose of the image is conveyed even if the image itself is not visible. On a similar note, never rely on the image to carry the crux of the message, in the case that does not get viewed.

Don’t shy away from using images in your e-mail templates! They enhance the quality of your message and often attract the interest of the recipient. However, incorrect usage of images can backfire and result in your message being ineffective or filtered into spam. Using these tips, you can avoid some common HTML pitfalls and use them to your best advantage!

Karl Cruize is a best practices activist and advocate for Benchmark Email ( http://www.benchmarkemail.com/email-marketing/html-email-templates ) a leading Web and permission-based service for sending email newsletters.

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One of the best marketing methods for ebooks is to give it away for free. Don’t stop reading. It’s not as crazy as it sounds. If you give away your ebook, then people can give it away to their friends who can give it away to their friends. It’ll spread like a virus.

This is a little scary because you just spent time doing research and writing your book. And of course, the main reason for writing an ebook is to make money, so how are you supposed to make money from it if you give it away for free?

The first way to make money if you give your ebook away is to use your ebook to build your marketing list. If you talk to any business person anywhere, they will tell you that the most important thing you can do in marketing is to build a client list. If you have a client list, you can build a rapport with them. Then they will buy things from you over and over again. That client list is worth its weight in gold.

To build your list, you need to have a sales page to advertise your ebook exactly as if you were selling it. Place an opt-in form on your website. The opt-in form would ask people to type in their name and email address. In order to be able to download your ebook, they must agree to receive future emails from you. This process can be simplified by using an autoresponder service like Aweber.

A second way to make money from a free ebook is to use it to market relevant affiliate products. The affiliate links would actually be embedded within the ebook. You could go to Clickbank, Amazon, or another affiliate site and get affiliate links for products that are associated with your topic. Let’s say that you are writing an ebook about muscle building. When you get to the chapter where you’re writing about improving your abs, you can include an affiliate link to one or more of the products about improving your abs. When someone reads your ebook, they follow the link to the affiliate site. When they purchase that product, you receive a commission from the sale.

If you use this second method and you’re able to completely let go, you can allow people to give it to anyone they choose with the stipulation that the affiliate links remain in place. Those people, in turn, can give it to their friends and clients. This allows the book to spread far and wide across the world wide web. It will continue to earn you money for a long time.

The third way to make money by giving away your ebook is to use it as a tool for marketing another product or service. Let’s say that you wrote an ebook about Backpacking Locations in California. If you wrote a second ebook about the benefits of various brands of backpacks, you could offer it as a free bonus when someone buys the first book. More people will buy the first book because they are getting the second book free.

Fourth, include links back to your website(s) in several places throughout the book. If people come and visit your websites, you have another opportunity to make money. They might click on the Adsense ads on your site. They could purchase other ebooks you’ve written. They can also purchase other products through affiliate links on your website.

After reading this article, I hope you aren’t so afraid to give your ebook away for free. It might be the best marketing decision you ever make.

Julie Coan is an educator and writer with over twenty years experience. Visit her website to get lots of free information on marketing ebooks. If your ebook isn

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The biggest ebook marketing mistake that new ebook writers make is made before the writer even writes the first word of the book. The first thing that most people do when they decide to write an ebook is to start writing about something they’re interested in. It seems like the most obvious thing to do.

However, it’s important to remember that the main reason for writing an ebook is to make money. When you write an ebook, you are beginning a business. And just like when you are starting a brick and mortar business, the very first thing you do is to research your market. Is there a demand for your product?

If you were opening a store that sold candied figs, you wouldn’t want to spend thousands of dollars opening a store only to find out that everyone hates candied figs. The same idea applies to writing an ebook. You wouldn’t want to spend time writing an ebook on caring for pandas, only to find out that no one is interested in buying books about caring for pandas. It wouldn’t matter if you had done a ton of research and written a brilliant book, you wouldn’t make any money from it.

It makes sense to write an ebook that people already want to buy. It’s like having people line up at the door to your store before it’s even open. There are several ways to find out if people want to pay money for information on the topic you want to write your ebook about.

The first is to use the Google Keywords tool or a similar keywords tool. Go to https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Type in the topic of your ebook in the keywords box. Then type in the security word. In the Global Monthly Search Volume, it will show how many people searched for your keywords during the past month. If the number is very low, you may want to find a different topic to write your ebook about. Other keywords tools are http://www.Freekeywords.wordtracker.com and http://www.TrafficTravis.com. These have the advantage of letting you view other search engine results in addition to Google. They also offer articles and other information on using keywords.

The next step is to find out whether people are willing to pay money to get the information you’re offering. Just because a lot of people are searching for information on the internet, it doesn’t mean they’re willing to pay money for an ebook. Sometimes there’s just too much free information. So you’re going to search for other ebooks on your topic. The logic behind this step is something like this: “If there’s already an ebook on your subject and people are willing to pay money for it, then people will be willing to pay money for your ebook, too.”

Go to Google and search for your keywords. On the top of the page and in the sidebar to the right, you will see paid advertisements that fit your keywords. If you look at the bottom of the right column, you will see text that says, “More Sponsored Links”. When you click on this, it will show you all the Google Adwords ads for those keywords. Not all of them will be advertisements for ebooks. Click on them until you have found at least a couple that are advertising ebooks. This will let you know that people are willing to pay money to buy ebooks on your topic.

If you take the time to follow these simple steps before you start to write, you’ll be able to write a successful ebook that will provide you with a long-term passive income.

I’ve been an educator and writer for more than 20 years. Visit my website to get lots of free information on marketing ebooks. If you

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Many people write ebooks so that they can make money on the internet. However, there is a group of business professionals who could greatly increase their business and their income by writing an ebook. I’m talking about lawyers, tax accountants, real estate agents, hair dressers, personal trainers, masseuses, and landscapers, to name a few. These professionals obviously can’t operate their businesses solely on line. They need to have an office or a physical location for their business. They need people that will walk into their office (or at least call them on the phone) and pay for their services.

Here are six reasons why these business professionals should write an ebook:

1. Writing an ebook can prove that you’re an expert in the field.

It really is amazing to see the power that a book gives to its author. People see authors as experts even if the book is an ebook. Just by working in your chosen field, you certainly know more than the people that are coming to you for help. In effect, you are an expert. Unfortunately, all lawyers in the phone book look alike to a potential client. If you publish an ebook, people will view you as more of an expert than the other lawyer or real estate agent or hair dresser who works right next to you. They may be equally as expert as you, but people will not see it that way. In marketing, perception is everything. When you write an ebook, people will be more likely to hire you, more likely to keep coming back to you, and more likely to refer you to their friends.

2. Writing an ebook will attract new clients.

In business, you’re always in competition with other professionals in your field. If you’re a real estate agent, there may be hundreds or even thousands of other agents in your town all trying to attract the same clients. If you’ve written an ebook about a real estate topic, you’ll stand out from the rest. If a client is trying to choose between the agent who’s written a book and one who hasn’t, they’ll choose the one that’s written the book every time.

3. Writing an ebook can help you build a client list.

As you give away your ebook online, you collect names and email addresses of potential clients. Once they have signed up for your mailing list, you can continue to contact them. You can send them tips relating to your business. When they need your services, you’ll be the first one they think of. It is one of the least expensive and most effective ways of building and maintaining a client list.

4. Writing an ebook can help you make money.

You can sell the ebook to make money from it. Although this may not be the primary reason for writing the ebook, there’s no reason not to charge for it. The downside of giving something away for free is that sometimes a person may equate cost with value. They may decide that your book is not worth anything because it didn’t cost anything. Charging a minimal amount for the book may increase its value.

5. Writing an ebook can increase sales.

You can offer the ebook as a free incentive when people buy your product or subscribe to your service. If I was a masseuse, I could give away my free ebook on “Daily Relaxation Techniques” if the client signs up for six weeks of weekly massages.

6. Writing an ebook can help you get promoted.

Just think about the next time that a position opens in your company. There’s probably going to be some competition for that position. Then the boss sees that you’ve written a book about a topic in your field. First, he’s impressed that you’ve written a book. Second, he sees that you have taken the initiative to do some extra research in a particular area. Third, he sees that you are independent and don’t need constant supervision to get a job done. Guess who’s going to get the job? You, of course.

Julie Coan is an educator and writer with more than twenty years of experience. Click this link and come visit her website to get lots of free information on marketing ebooks.

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