Free Valentine’s PLR Giveaway - Download Yours!

Now, I can’t really take the credit for this one as it’s a giveaway from Wendy Wood, but its very fitting for Sweetie Saturday.

I’m talking about Wendy’s Free Valentine’s PLR Giveaway - it’s a pretty sweet package with a quick family-oriented report and marketing materials. It includes a
completely customizable and brandable report called:

“14 Valentines Fun Ideas for Whole Family…Plus 5 Romantic Ideas for Mom & Dad”

You get the full 4-page report plus:

• opt-in page template to build your list with the report (and it’s super cute!)
• 4 ecover graphics to promote your report and give it a professional look
• 3 promotional banners to further spread the word about your fun report

You can claim your free plr package by clicking here.

7 Trends To Watch For In Marketing

The electronics company LG recently had an ad pulled from Australian TV stations for a new TV recording device. The commercial touted the benefits of being able to skip commercials.

This was something anyone could appreciate. The ad read: “When you replay, you can skip the ads.”. After having its ads pulled, however, the company changed their ad, using instead the far less powerful: “And when you replay, you can skip straight back to the action.”

The television networks won the battle, but it is obvious that consumers will win the war and they will be the ones able to choose whether or not to watch these commercials in the future.

1. Product placement, sponsorship and other “non-ad” ads.

I’ve recently been watching an HBO Drama The Wire and one thing that caught my eye is the omnipresence of Heineken beer, usually featured with the label nicely facing the camera. Obviously some moolah is changing hands there. I’ve also lived in Japan, where I swear almost everything on TV is an ad. Whenever a product, place or event is favourably reviewed, you can bet dollars to doughnuts that money is involved (a fact that is almost never disclosed). Me, I prefer journalistic impartiality, but that’s clearly on the way out.

2. Targeted ad messages.

Given that TV recording technology is here to stay, many advertising professionals have suggested that in order to remain viable, advertisers will have to narrowly target viewers in order to induce them to watch. It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise to see the emergence of a system much like Google Adwords, where advertisers would pay per impression. This would be far more cost effective than playing commercials for the entire TV viewing audience, but is still “push” marketing.

3. Increase in information marketing to generate leads.

Reports, White Papers, DVDs, Audio Programs, software etc. will be given away (or sold) with the aim of enticing prospects to “self-select” and allow advertisers to focus their energies and promotional dollars on high-probability prospects rather than anyone and everyone. I’m now currently conducting lead generation campaigns for companies who traditionally wouldn’t have touched this “direct marketing” stuff with a bargepole.

4. Accountable marketing will become a necessity.

Any business which does not use accountable, cost effective marketing can count on losing business to the competition. These strategies are coming into use both on and off of the web.

5. PR and spin will surpass traditional marketing tactics.

We’re already seeing more companies dedicating a larger slice of their marketing dollars towards press releases and other methods which can make their products and services into news ? and this is a trend which will only get bigger.

6. Smaller niches and increased specialisation.

Gaining a larger share of the market has become a lot harder to do ? and it s something you’ll see companies turning away from in favour of targeting smaller and smaller niche markets instead.

7. Blue Ocean Strategies.

You can bet that companies are going to spend more of their time and resources on trying to carve out a space in the market where they can dominate rather than trying to go head to head with the competition fighting over a shrinking share of the public at large. This will be the challenge.

Strategies for Video Search Marketing - What is Video SEO?

We all know how popular search is for internet users. However, did you know that as of October 2008, video surpassed search on the major 5 search engines in terms of becoming the most popular online activity? According to research covered on ReelSEO, online video is now the most popular online activity worldwide.

Because online video is so popular right now, it presents a unique opportunity for online marketers to leverage video content as an effective means for marketing brands, products, and services. Because online video marketing is in the nascent stages, there is much that is not well understood. For content producers as well as internet marketers, it is important to learn how to produce and publish video content in a way that users can easily discover your video content on the search engines. For this, one must learn and understand video search engine optimization, or SEO for video content.

Let’s start off by answering the question, what exactly is Video SEO? Simply put, Video SEO, also known as video search engine optimization is the art and process of publishing a video such that it is easily discovered and attracts as much traffic as possible for your target audience. When we talk about video SEO, there are really 2 different strategies for getting your videos discoverable on the search engines.

One strategy for video SEO is that which we call “Posted” video SEO. Essentially, this is when you optimize video content that is uploaded to video websites like Youtube and Yahoo. With “Posted” video SEO, the strategy is to generate as many views as possible for your videos. Uploading your video to these sites allows you to draw upon the massive audience of viewers that these sites already have. In addition, because these websites have a pre-existing authority and page rank with the search engines, this is an effective strategy to leverage these sites to obtain rankings within organic and universal search.

When optimizing video for “Posted” video SEO, it is crucial that you pay close attention to the keywords that you choose to include in the upload fields like tags, descriptions, titles, etc… It is also recommended that you utilize many of the tools and services available that allow you to automatically upload your video content to many video sharing websites at once. The main downfall with “posted” video SEO is that it is more difficult to get users back to your own website property.

In addition to “Posted” video search optimization, there are many techniques and strategies for “hosted” video SEO, or “website” video SEO. With this, the goal is to optimize video content that is placed on your own website. With universal search on the rise, it is possible to utilize video content to increase your own website’s chances of ranking in the major search engines as well as the video search engines. The main benefit in this strategy is that you can expose potential viewers to your other business assets, products and services.

With “hosted” video SEO, it is most important that you follow best practices in general for search engine optimization. Because search engines can not yet read within video content, it is important that you optimize the HTML pages that contain your video content much in the same way that you would with regular SEO. Although there are many detailed tips and techniques for “hosted” video SEO, most can be summed up with the following tips:

1) When including video on a web page, make certain that you populate the page with relevant on-page text.

2) Leverage the use of transcripts, descriptions, related links, meta tags, URL-structure, etc…

3) Publish all your videos within the same directory or subdomain and keep each video on its own unique URL.

4) Publish a video sitemap or MRSS feed to help guide the search engines to your video content.

5) Create inbound links to your video pages and encourage linking and sharing of your video content.

Whether your strategy is to drive visits to your video or to your website in general, video SEO is an effective way to leverage the power of online video. If you are interested in learning more advanced tips and techniques for either “posted” or “hosted” video content, ReelSEO is the website to visit. They are the only site completely focused on providing resources and information for Video SEO.

Good luck and much success to you and your video optimization efforts.

More Traffic with PLR Content & Articles

The Internet is still first-and-foremost and information medium for many of its users. That means having informative content is an opportunity for you to receive traffic from people are looking for the type of information you offer. One of the ways you can put that content together quickly and easily is by using PLR content, instead of creating your own content from scratch.

How to Make it Work:

Search engine optimization: People use keywords when searching for information on the Internet. These are words used to describe the specific topics they are needed information about. Search engines then do all the work to find websites that have information on the topic you are interested in, or a topic bearing some similarities. When setting up your own website you will want to increase the flow of people who visit your site to view the information you are providing.

IMPORTANT: In order to achieve a higher volume of visitors to your website you need your PLR content rank to place high within search engines, some changes may be needed. By consulting somewhere like wordtracker.com you can find out what keyword phrases are popular, and rework your content accordingly to give you a target or phrase other PLR publishers havent grabbed yet.

Social Networking and What it Could Mean For You: People like to be in the loop so to speak when it comes to what others are doing. There are different social networking sites or social community forums you could use to your advantage. Keeping friends, family and possibly potential clients up to date with the content you have to offer through such sites as Twitter, Facebook or Squidoo is definitely a step in the right direction. If you would like to go even farther you can look into automatic posting systems as well.

What else can I do to get more traffic? If you have more than one web page that you own and create, the more traffic is generated. With PLR you can easily have enough content to supply multiple websites.

How Can I Become my Niche Authority?: Do you have a topic or two you would like to start websites about, but youre not an expert on the topic? With private label rights content you have the information researched for you already. The person who wrote that PLR content you has an understanding ahead of time what there is to know about that topic. By using the information on your website and attracts traffic you are becoming an authority on the topic at hand. You are now the go-to person all your readers will refer their friends to.

Looking for PLR? Get free lifetime access to a huge library of hard-to-find private label rights products and articles at PLRWholesaler.com. Plus, you’ll receive instant access to over 100 training videos so you can start making money with PLR right away.

5 Keys to Developing the Courage to Go for Your Dreams

How do you develop the courage to go for your dreams? That’s the million -dollar question, isn’t it? Because if you don’t learn how, it will not only cost you the millions you could have earned, it will cost you the realization of your passion and your purpose.

It’s a lot of fun planning the vision for your life and the action steps you’re going to take to live your passion. It’s another thing to keep moving forward as it all starts to become real. That’s where the fear sets in and you start to wonder what ever made you think you could do this.

Here are 5 keys to developing the courage to go for your dreams:

1. Move past the fear

I’m sorry to tell you I haven’t found a magic pill for this. It has to come from inside of you. Nobody can do it for you. And it all starts with your vision.

There is so much more to creating a vision for your life than just discovering your passion. There’s so much more than just writing down some goals. I would venture to say that you’ve done that before and it wasn’t enough to get you where you want to go.

Fear not! There’s a system for creating a vision for your life, just as there is a system for anything else you want to be successful at. The question is whether you will take the time to learn it.

Discovering your purpose was only the first step. To walk through your fear, you have to be clear on where you are going.

2. Create a strong vision

You need a vision that is so strong you can’t possibly walk away from it.

Once you have a strong, compelling vision that’s based on your passion and purpose in life, how could you let anything stop you?

When you know what you want and you’ve visualized it over and over and over until it becomes part of who you are, how could you stop?

When you see yourself in the life you will have upon the realization of you vision, how could you stop?

The answer is, you can’t! You can’t stop; it’s impossible! You can drag out the process, but as hard as you try, you can’t stop!

3. Stop projecting future catastrophes

Are you aware that 95% of the things you spend your time worrying about never happen? So, isn’t worrying about the outcome of things you haven’t done yet ridiculous?

Once you realize you’ve invested so much of yourself into your vision that there’s nothing that’s going to stop you from creating everything you’ve envisioned, what’s the point in letting your fears delay the inevitable?

And it is inevitable. With the vision you’ve created, you’ve tapped into the Universal Laws and everything you need is being drawn to you as we speak. You’ve used the law of attraction by being clear on what you want and asking for it. You’ve used the law of creating a vacuum by clearing out a lot of the things that no longer fit in your life to make space available for something better to show up. Think about it.

You can run and you can hide, but eventually everything you visualize will come to you if you take all the necessary steps. So why fight it? This is what you want more than anything, isn’t it?

Are you crazy? Why would you spend your time discovering your passion and creating a vision for it if you had no intention of following through? Are you the kind of person who does things like this for an intellectual exercise?

Well guess what, the joke’s on you. You’ve created a process you can’t stop. It will move forward whether you have chickened out or not. So what’s the point in trying to avoid your future success?

4. Get Out of the Way

When did you want something so bad you could taste it and then decide you were too scared to go for it?

The only courage you need to go for your dreams is the courage to get out of your own way. Just take a deep breath and move aside.

If you look back over your life, I’m sure you can find many examples when you did just this.

So the next time you feel like your courage to go for your dream has abandoned you, just tell yourself there is no reason to fight it. Falling into your fears can postpone your success for a while, but you can’t stop it, so why even try.

Get back on that horse and keep riding to the finish line.

5. You’ve Always Had It, Dorothy

The good news is you don’t have to worry about how you’ll develop the courage to go for your dreams. You already have it.

When you feel like it’s too big for you to go on, look at how far you’ve come already.

The bottom line regarding courage comes from the Wizard of Oz. Towards the end of the movie, Dorothy thinks she’ll never go home. Just then Glinda the good witch shows up. She tells her she’s always had the power to go back to Kansas but she didn’t tell her before because she wouldn’t have believed her. She had to learn it for herself.

But to find out how to unleash the power she had inside, she needed to ask for help. Don’t be afraid to ask for what you need.

So my little Dorothy, you’ve always had the power inside you. All you have to do is have someone show you where it is. You’re so much stronger than you give yourself credit for.

Get some mentoring if you aren’t achieving what you want as fast as you want it. You may need an outside perspective and a little refocusing. Because when your actions and your purpose are in alignment everything falls into place. Things just flow. I can help you get there.

I’d be happy to mentor you to successfully:

# Make your dreams more than just a dream # Develop specific, targeted goals # Take action on your goals # Create a plan that gives you the courage # Create a roadmap to make your success a reality

The Winner of the HUGE Headstart Is

Sigh…a tough one again and why I am so late posting this. I’m talking about choosing a winner for:

A Huge Headstart for a Budding Online Business Owner

In the end, we’ve chosen Vonalda Utterback from Colorado. Her entry was simple:

Hello Alice,

Thank you for offering this contest!

I would so appreciate the help with finally getting my business moving. The technology end of things has me stopped short. I have a domain name, hosting, and a niche. I would love help with the techno end of getting it together and a consult about my business plan. There’s so much conflicting information out there. I really like what you do and the way you run your business. I consider you a mentor.

Thank you for considering me,
Vonalda Utterback
Colorado, USA

We chose Vonalda because she’s almost there…she’s on the brink of getting started with an idea she’s had for a long time. I know how it can be when technology can make things overwhelming or when you’re not sure what direction to take - so you take no direction. Well, no more excuses for Vonalda, she’s getting her online business off the ground!

TO Vonalda - My assistant Mel will email you with details on how to claim your prize. We will use the email address that you included with your comment (that only we can see). If you don’t hear anything in the next couple of days, be sure submit a ticket here and we’ll take care of you.

Thanks to everyone who entered and be sure to congratulate Vonalda. With Vonalda’s permission of course, I hope to post updates on her progress and hopefully we can make an offer like this again in the near future.

How To Breathe New Life Into a Dying Website

Do you have a website that is losing income and traffic? Perhaps Google did a little algorithm change that caused the site to lose ranking and therefore visitors, or perhaps it’s pure neglect.

Don’t worry - it can happen to the best of us! We get busy and distracted if we have multiple projects or sites, and it’s hard to keep all those plates spinning. If this ever happens to you, don’t worry too much. You can turn things around rather quickly, especially if the site in question is already well established. Here are some of the things you can do to breathe new life into a dead website.

Launch a blog on the domain

If you haven’t heard already, search engines love blogs. The frequently updated content is also interesting to human visitors, too. Have a blog installed on the domain and start blogging with regularity. If you can do so, throw a little money at the problem and hire a ghostwriter to write quick blog posts for you. This is more cost effective than hiring writers to create entire articles. You can send the ghostwriters lists of keywords to write about so they can quickly come up with content. Of course, doing some keyword research first is a good idea. Once your ghostwriters send you their work, you can then expand on what they wrote. This will enable you to add a lot of content to the blog very quickly.

Write new articles

Write several new articles to direct traffic to the site. You can use some of the ghostwritten content you used for the blog posts if you like. Then, submit these to article directories and sites like iSnare for distribution. Where appropriate, publish the articles on another site you own. You can also write different versions of the article for use as guest blog posts for others.

Get more incoming links quickly

You can do this in a number of ways. You can pay for incoming links. Contact people who have websites in your niche and offer to pay them for text links. This can be fairly inexpensive. Writing articles will also get you more links. It also helps to go through your site and make sure your site has good internal navigation, meaning your pages are linked to other appropriate pages inside the site itself.

Use Google alerts

Sign up for Google alerts in the keyword(s) you want to rank for for this particular site. This accomplishes a couple of things. Each day (or week) you are sent an email telling you where bloggers are talking about this keyword phrase, so you can check out their blog and leave a comment if you can add something useful to the conversation, linking to your site. You also get ideas for new topics because you can see what’s going on in the news in your niche.

Twitter

After adding a new page to the site, tell your Twitter followers about it. If you have a particular page you really want to send traffic to, ask your friends to “Retweet” your update.

I have a confession to make. I recently had the experience I talked about above - letting one of my highest earning sites go neglected. I’m pleased to say that after applying the suggestions above, the traffic in the first month increased by 80%, with a corresponding increase in income too. Of course, these very same tips would work not only to resurrect a dying site, but also for growing traffic to an established site or a brand new one!

Carrie Lauth is a work at home mom who created the Natural Mom Business Guide - the internet’s only complete how to tutorial for women who want to start an online business marketing to green minded families. She also offers coaching for those who need one-on-one assistance. Click here to see how she can help you turn your struggling site into a full time income.

Search Engine Optimization Made Simple

When a site is optimized for free positioning in search engine’s search result pages, the act is called SEO or Search Engine Optimization. By listing well organically, the owner of a website can rank extremely well and reap the benefits of free traffic.

Search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN utilize automated programs called search engine spiders or robots to access a website’s pages. The spiders scan the pages and copy it to be later added to a search engine’s index. Billions of pages are indexed in massive databases, and when a search action is made, a search engine processes (compares the search string in the search request) with the billions of indexed pages in it’s database. A search engine’s algorithm is then able to begin calculating the relevancy of the near endless pages in the index to the search string requested.

Search engines do the following functions:

- Crawling - Indexing - Processing - Relevancy - Retrieve

Search engines use a set of rules, called an “algorithm” to factor relevancy of requested search queries. The algorithm are kept in secret by search engines from the public to avoid manipulation of their search listings. To date, there are over 200 plus factors that contribute to organic search placement. As you’ve searched on major search engines, you may have noticed similar but not identical results with the different search engines. Search engines have there own algorithm with slight differences with ranking rules but for the most part, all major search engines follow similar rules when it comes to determining search rankings.

On-Page Optimization

The term used to describe the altering of factors on a website is On-Page Optimization. Factors include keyword density, keywords used in Title, Meta, Alt tags, and the type of support pages and number of links used throughout the site. The search engine algorithm also takes into consideration the strength of a keyword based on it’s prominence on the web page. The first two hundred words will usually hold more weight than the words following.

On-page optimization should also target similar words to the keyword, use of videos, blogs, and attention to the way top-level sections are structured on a web page. The type of server being used, the public status of a domain name, and website analytics (such as bounce rate) are also key factors that determine the success of on-page optimization. As important as it is, on-page optimization only contributes 30% of a full and robust SEO strategy. The other 70% of the SEO process is accomplished by Off-Page Optimization.

Off-Page Factors

Factors that can not be altered by a site owner or webmaster is considered off-page optimization. These factors include the type of links pointing back to a website. To search engines, this is considered a vote and the site providing the link is basically vouching for the website they are pointing to. The type of links coming into a site will have different weighing factors. It’s not uncommon to have most of the inbound links providing absolutely no link value to a website. So, when acquiring links, it’s important that a site receives quality links as opposed to quantity of links.

Social media plays an important role in off-page optimization. Utilizing social media is a very popular method of creating attention and building up a following. Attention grabbing viral campaigns can create a large influx of traffic and potential inbound links.

SEO is also the hardest strategy to execute of all the online SEM disciplines. Results take time, and in some cases it may take up to a full year to see the kind of results hope for. However, the wait is well worth it.

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