52 of the Ways to Promote your Blog

In the meantime, here are 52 Great Ways to market your blog:
1. Submit your site to the main web directories - you’ll find a good list at Directory Maximiser
2. Make sure that the whole of your blog is indexed on the main Search Engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN/Live
3. Get a Google Sitemap on your blog to help to get it fully indexed
4. Participate in online business networking sites such as Linked In, eCademy and SoFlow
5. Make it easy for your readers to bookmark your blog on the social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Del.icio.us, Furl etc.
6. Make sure you submit your blog to the main Blog directories (Good list here and here)
7. Also submit your blog to the main RSS directories
8. Ensure that you automatically ping the main blog Search Engines and Directories suach as Technorati and IceRocket to get instantly indexed - good list of pinging addresses
9. Join a number of relevant online communities or discussion groups for your market area
10. Maximise the design of your own blog: highlight posts or subjects that will attract and retain readers
11. Add comments - relevant, useful comments - to other people’s threads or blogs
12. Use Pay per Click (PPC) advertising like Google Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing
13. Advertise on sites such as Gumtree or Craigslist
14. Make sure that you run an ezine (e-newsletter) alongside your blog and make the two work together
15. Make sure that you link out to other blogs in your blog posts and, for special recommended blogs, in your BlogRoll
16. Join MyBlogLog to be able to make contact with other MyBlogLog users and develop relationships
17. Set up a social network part of your blog with Ning
18. Write your own e-book (perhaps using content from your blog) and give away free chapters to encourage visitors or subscribers
19. Start your own meme or viral networking idea (such as 2000 Bloggers)
20. Attend local networking groups such as BNI, BRE etc - tell them about what you do and reference your blog
21. Set up and develop a profile on online social networking sites such as MySpace, Bebo etc.
22. Create a free account on BT Tradespace
23. Interview people for your own regular podcast - perhaps you could make it like your own online radio show
24. Contact other relevant ezines and offer to write articles for them
25. Submit your articles to article directories (Ezine Articles, Article Alley etc.)and link to your blog in the signature
26. Submit your own ezine to ezine directories such as Ezine Directory or Best Ezines
27. Include podcasts as part of your blog to distribute interviews, informational pieces etc.
28. Convert some of your existing articles into podcasts
29. Create a lense at Squidoo
30. Distribute and syndicate your articles and podcasts via your RSS feed
31. Offer free white papers or specialist documents which are branded with your blog and RSS details
32. Set up teleconferences or teleseminars focusing on your main content areas
33. Write a review of books on Amazon.com linking back to your blog
34. Distribute press releases via online news services such as PR Web or Press Box
35. Add a poll or survey to your blog and post/distribute the results - try SurveyGizmo if you are a Wordpress user
36. Read other blogs and leave your own comments on them
37. Use trackbacks when you reference other bloggers’ posts
38. Create podcasts of your best posts and syndicate them, as well as submitting them to iTunes and other podcast directories
39. Sign up to Feedburner and include the Headline Animator in your email signature and the one you use when you post to forums
40. Make sure you include your blog address on your business cards and company stationery
41. Customise and improve your RSS Feed using Feedburner - include special offers, sign up opportunities and make sure the feed delivers the full post
42. Increase RSS feed sign ups by offering a sign up bonus to subscribers - how? Just ask!
43. Offer readers the chance to sign up via email (Feedburner and Feedblitz offer the service
44. Put files and follow ups to presentations, conferences and seminars on your blog for attendees to read and download
45. Offer to become a Guest blogger on other blogs and invite Guest bloggers to write on your own blog
46. Make sure to submit articles to and participate in Blog Carnivals (more on Blog Carnivals here)
47. Optimise your blog where possible and particularly the Categories, Title Tags and Meta Tags
48. Participate regularly in conversations on other blogs
49. Post answers on LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo Answers
50. Try LinkBaiting using controversial subjects or opinions – be careful though!
51. Contact the main bloggers in your market area and introduce yourself or send details of a particular post that might interest them and above all,
52. Write great content that people will want to read, recommend and link to!
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by Mark White, Blog Consultant in Blog Directories and Search , Marketing your Blog , Corporate Blogging , Blogging for Small Businesses , BBB Bloggers Guides , BBB Quick Guides , New Media Marketing , Promoting a Blog

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Tips To Good (And Bad) Search Rankings

As all professionals involved in Search Engine Optimization know, there are no guarantees with SEO. Understandably, major search engines are pretty cagey about how much they let search marketers know regarding their algorithms and ranking methods. Whilst we all know that ethical SEO tries to work with search engines to bring about relevant and useful results for the user, we also know that this isn't as simple as it sounds. Search engines constantly adjust their algorithms and as SEO professionals, our job is to constantly innovate too in order to find new ways to improve our clients' websites so that search engines recognise their relevance and move them up the results listings. In an SEO world with ever-changing goalposts, there are still some methods and techniques which are tried and tested to help in the mission to get on that first page.

Here are my top tips to SEO and ranking success:

Content, Content, Content
A point that cannot be stressed enough is the importance of quality content to a website. Well-written and relevant content is perhaps the most valuable SEO tool that there is, but as with all good search engine optimization techniques, it benefits the user of the website most of all. A website which is a great industry resource for information rather than merely sales-speak is much more likely to be seen by search engines as a site worthy of their attention. A high ratio of text to images, flash or JavaScript helps to ensure that search engines can decipher a web page's subject matter easily and having a website which is rich in useful information for users will mean that visitors are much more likely to stay on a site for longer and return to it again.

Business Blogs & Bookmarking
There has been much debate in the search marketing industry in recent times over whether or not blogs are a useful tool when it comes to SEO. The general conclusion is that the only blogs which really make a difference to your website's online profile are those which really have something interesting to say. Blogging for SEO reasons alone is pretty pointless, but relevant and information rich blogs can help to build your website into a comprehensive industry resource which visitors find valuable and as a result, so do search engines. Blogging can show the "human side" of your organisation too, which users often find more approachable and you may find that visitors will comment on your blog asking questions etc which they wouldn't have the facility to do otherwise.

If you do integrate a blog into your organisation's website, you can utilise the relatively new world of social bookmarking to find a whole new audience and exposure. If your blog post (or video or audio blog) is submitted to a social bookmarking service such as digg or stumbleupon, it appears on their website (or a review and link does) which increases your traffic as users of the social bookmarking service click through to your site. A reputation can be built for producing quality blog content, especially multimedia blogs (e.g. regular video blogs through youtube) and interested users will subscribe to your feeds, receiving updates when you release new content. Regular return visits, more inbound links to your website and the good quality of your content will help you to gain more authority with search engines and improve your rankings.

Online Press Releases
Press releases have also been a bone of contention in SEO circles for some time, mostly because a meaningless press release is a waste of everyone's time. A press release can be a useful SEO tool, but only when you have something worthwhile to say. The point of press releases is that they can be picked up by journalists as well as by consumers and therefore they need to be well-written and interesting. Writing a great article is one thing, but making sure that it is distributed to those who will find it relevant is another matter. With online press release services able to distribute your piece for you to industry relevant portals (for a price), it is entirely possible to target your audience to a large degree. Hyperlinks within the press release point back to the website and with major search engines picking up on it in their news sections for your keywords, increasing the appropriate targeted traffic to your website, raising your profile online and of course, spreading your organisation's latest news far and wide.

Links
Good quality, relevant inbound links to your website are considered vital in any off page search engine optimization strategy. If you take a look at some of your main online competitors' link popularity (using one of the many free online SEO tools) then you can see how well their link building is going and how much catching up you may need to do. In order for links to help improve your ranking, they need to be from good sources. Quality over quantity is definitely true when it comes to backlinks, because links from sites with little relevance or search engine authority themselves will do you no good whatsoever. The reasoning behind this is that good quality websites with great content and good rankings are likely to link to sites of a similar high quality as they only want to be associated with relevant websites themselves. Building excellent links can take time, but is well worth the effort.

For every ethical search engine optimisation technique which works with search engines to produce relevant results for the users, there are many methods which do the opposite. Often known as "black hat" SEO, these methods aim to manipulate search engines into thinking that a website is something that it isn't in order to gain better search results. Although some of these techniques may seem to be working for a very short time, search engines usually penalise website utilising these techniques by imposing bans from all of their search results, sometimes even blacklisting a website altogether. The confusing part is that some of these methods were at some point considered part of legitimate SEO until they were abused by black hatters.

Here are my top 'don'ts' for SEO:

Keyword Stuffing
Although targeting keywords is important because they are the search terms that people use in search engines when your result pops up, there is definitely such a thing as overkill. We will all have seen websites at some stage or another which we click on through a search engine, only to land on a web page which is full of keywords and very little else. This is exactly the kind of scenario that search engines try to avoid and so websites which stuff their content with keywords are likely to suffer penalties quickly. Although a few occurrences of keywords in your website content can help search engines to pick out the main theme, a keyword density of more than 1-2% for any one keyword or key phrase is likely to cause problems with some search engines.

Hidden Text
Even more devious than keyword stuffing is the technique of hiding text on a website. This is usually done either by hiding the text (usually just repeated keywords) behind an image, or making the text the same colour as the background. Either way, the user can't read the text but the search engines can, which means that it breaks the major search engine guidelines that state both users and search engines must have all the same content available to them on a webpage. Search engines will often ban such websites from their listings altogether.

Doorways & Cloaking
Doorways are single web pages which are created to funnel users from search engines to a specific website. You can't get to a doorway page via the normal website navigation and they contribute nothing valuable to a site. Again, as they are created for search engines to see (and rank) rather than users, they breach guidelines and users who find themselves clicking on a search result and ending up on a completely different website to the one they thought they'd be visiting find them very frustrating.

Cloaking is another technique which presents different content to search engines and users. The content it reveals to search engines is engineered with the sole intention of ranking for keywords and the actual 'real' website could be on an entirely different topic. Therefore, as the search result and the actual website are totally different, this is also considered a black hat technique.

Link Farming
As mentioned in the top tips for SEO above, relevant links from other websites with authority are vital to your off page search engine optimisation strategy and quality wins over quantity every time. One 'black hat' technique is to build what is known as a 'link farm' by creating a number of websites with the primary purpose of linking back to a main site. These links are trying to distort search engine results because they are manufactured, not 'real' links from relevant sources and this can also result in search engine bans.
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From visibility Magazine. By Matt Bullas is the founder and Managing Director of Click Consult, a leading UK search marketing agency, and its specialist search engine optimization division, SEO Consult, the UK's number 1 organic SEO company. Established in 2003, Click Consult has over 200 SEO and PPC clients in every major industry, providing a comprehensive range of search marketing services including Search Engine Optimization, Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns, Content and Banner Advertising, Affiliate Marketing, Shopping Feeds, Website Design and Development, E-Mail Marketing and Online Press Releases. Write on June 09

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Ten Tips to Optimize a Landing Page

A landing page serves as a bridge between the marketing message that brings visitors to your website and the site functionality that enables those visitors to take action, such as filling out a lead form or making a purchase. In essence, it’s your organization’s first impression to the online community. In today’s market, first impressions are tough to overcome, especially when the competition is just one click away. The old saying holds true, you only get one chance to make a good first impression – so don’t blow it. Invest some time in testing and optimizing your company’s landing page. If done properly, it can offer a gateway to your business, giving customers the information they need to make purchasing decisions and delivering the essential sales information you need internally to run a successful business. Here are ten quick and easy tips to ensure your landing page meets customer expectations:

1. Are there any obstacles to scanning the page?

Today’s rule of thumb is that a Pentium I-586 user connecting via dial-up should to be able to quickly see your landing page and complete its call to action. Can they? Double-check the page appearance in different browsers, paying special attention to video and flash, as they not only create distraction, but also build additional barriers for the user to overcome.

2. How hard is it to leave the page or get sidetracked?

Check your headline. There’s not always a perfect headline, but there are a lot of bad ones. Most users will make the decision to stay or go within seconds of visiting your landing page. Your headline MUST catch the user’s attention immediately and compel them to keep reading.
Unlike traditional website navigation, landing page navigation should make it difficult for a user to easily leave the page. Allowing website navigation on the landing page offers more exit options and may hurt the conversion rate. Another reason to remove the standard website navigation is to gain better control over what the visitor sees and interacts with on the page.

3. Does the page have a fold?

It’s recommended that any folds on your landing page be eliminated. However, if a fold is unavoidable, make sure it does not take away from the call to action – keep all important components above the fold. In addition, it’s okay to have multiple CTAs (calls-to-action) on one page, as long as the primary CTA is in the top position above the fold.

4. Are you gathering unnecessary data?

Poorly constructed and unreasonably lengthy forms are still surprisingly common in today’s landing pages. Remember to keep the user in mind and optimize your forms to provide the best experience. Evaluate each form field to determine if the information requested is really necessary. To make the form better, allow:

a) the input cursor to hop to the next field after the current field is completed;
b) the user to tab around fields
c) fields to be auto-populated where possible

5. Is there enough white space on the page?

Studies show that white space improves the user experience and allows key messages to stand out. Your landing page should do the same. Evaluate every element on the page for its contribution to user conversion rate. If you don’t need it to get your message across, remove it. It may seem like more is always better. But if you take a step back and really give it some thought, is more really better? Don’t overload your users.

6. Are there testimonials on the page? Is there a link to Privacy Policy?

Testimonials and privacy policies help create the necessary levels of trust required for today’s online businesses. Would you purchase an item from a site that did not have this information? In addition, if you have any awards or other forms of recognition, a landing page is a great place to highlight them and boost your corporate validation.

7. Is it obvious which button to click on?

Make it easy for the user. All buttons on the page need to be big, use full color, and be located above the page fold. Test to learn what colors and sizes work best but take baby steps and test one thing at a time, or you risk not understanding what exactly worked the magic.

8. Does it take too long for the page to load?

Pages that take too long to load produce “barely there” conversion rates, a poor user experience, and Google quality score issues. Use tools to check your page load times and make sure it takes less than the 7.5 seconds to load.

9. How do you feel about the photography used on the page?

Images are probably the most controversial element of any page, but even more so for landing pages. Try testing stock imagery versus amateur photography. An image should compliment your messages, making the entire page look more professional.

10. What about search Engines?

If you are creating multiple landing pages with only slight variations in text, it's wise to ensure that these pages are kept away from search engine spiders. To prevent duplicate content penalties from search engines, make your general purpose landing page available for indexing, but use robots.txt or a robots meta tag to exclude other pages.
Employing these techniques can greatly improve the success of your company’s landing page and in return, increase sales conversion. Taking simple steps to increase the usability and appeal of your page can give your company the edge over competitors – and in these tough economic times, can make the difference for your business and its future.

From Visibility Magazine. By Maria Nikishyna is the Client Manager for Point It! Inc. Maria has a degree from the University of Washington. Write on June 09.

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Generate money from Blog

In this blog I've posted some articles to guide you generate money from blogs. Most of the tips come from extremely long articles of successful bloggers that I've compressed to make the readings much much shorter for you. Trust me, if you have no idea about monetizing blogs, learning to do it from the basics can take a really long time. Having short articles that compresses all the important points can help you a lot, because you don't want to spend too much time on learning how to do it. There are 3 basic questions you should be asking yourself when learning to build a monetizing blog:
* How to get more visitors to your blog?
* What's the best programs to monetize your blog?
* How to optimize your blog and ad designs to maximize your earning?
If you're a first timer on this, I'll give you some quick pointers on what are some of the major things you should know if you want to successfully monetize your blog. It can hurt you a lot if you don't know these things (hurt = cost you time and energy with little in return). This list isn't the most comprehensive ones on the subject, but will give you the big picture on what to learn.

* Adsense - Know Adsense and learn how to optimize its use in your blog. Using Adsense isn't just about putting the codes in your blog. There are tips on how to maximize your earnings by optimizing you Adsense placement, colors, and overall design.
* SEO - Learn Search Engine Optimization (SEO). This is needed to help you get your blog to rank high on search engines, e.g. Google. In other words, you'd want your blog to be in the first page of Google search result when somebody googles keywords related to your blog.
* Keyword Research and Niche - Think carefully on what niche area you want to blog about and what keywords are the best for your blog URL, titles, descriptions, and post titles. Simply using www.yourname.com as a URL will put you at a huge disadvantage at getting rank well, unless your name is Paris Hilton, which gets search the most (to learn from what she has to say about life, I guess).
* Blog Promotion - Money only comes in when there are visitors to your blog, thousands of them. How to get them to your blog isn't easy. You have to learn how to promote your blog.
* Monetizing Programs - Bloggers out there don't just use Adsense. There are tons of other programs, affiliates, and sponsorships. The trick is to know which is the best for you and how to optimize their use in your blog.
* Quality Blog Content - Anybody can write anything on their blogs. But what articles attract the most readers? Blogging isn't just about posting articles. You have to learn the tips and tricks to get others read what you write.
* What NOT to do - There are things that if you do will hurt your monetizing effort. For example, if you have Adsense put in blogs that are 'smart-priced' by Adsense, you'll earn very little. Read also the Adsense Terms and Conditions so that you don't do anything that'll get you banned from the program. 'Smart-pricing' is explained below.
* Social Media - One way of promoting your blog is through networking inside social media networks, such as Digg.com, StumbleUpon.com, etc. There are tricks to get the most out of them.
* Getting Visitor Traffic - How to bring visitors to your blog? And how to get more and more of them, over time? There are many ways to get people to your blog - social media, search engines, word-of-mouth, recommendations. The more you know about this the better.
* RSS Subscribers - People will subscribe to your blog if you have good contents, which means you'll get more readers, more visitors, and most importantly more exposure. Are there tips out there how to increase the number of subscribers? Yes, there are. Sharing from ourblogtemplate.com

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Methods to Make Money Online from Blogs

Darren Rowse has written a long article describing methods available for bloggers to earn money online directly from their blogs. The essence of this guide to making money online, added with some entry of my own, is summarized below.
A number of different monetizing methods are available for bloggers to use. Selection of which methods to use depends on blogs' niche, number of visitors/subscribers, impressions and expertise, among other things.

1. Advertising
* Contextual Ads - This is a pay-per-click (PPC) or cost-per-click (CPC) ads system based on blog contents (e.g. Adsense, YPN). It is a good system for blogs with specific niche topic. General blogs or blogs without any niche will not work well because the systems do not have any context to 'lock' on to when selecting what ads to display (resulting in displays of some very general ads).
* Non-contextual CPC ads - Display ads without having to relate to context, such as Chitika’s eMiniMalls.
* Impression-based ads - Payment are made based on the number of people viewing the ads; only good for blogs with large traffic). Examples: Fastclick and Tribal Fusion.
* Text Ads - A text-link on your blog sold as ads by text-link ads programs (such as AdBrite, Text Link Ads, and Bidvertiser). These programs sell your text-links to their own pool of advertisers; the benefit is that you don’t have to go through the hassle of finding your own advertisers. You also have a degree of control over what ads to run and what prices to set.
* RSS Ads – Many ads programs display ads in RSS feeds. Some programs only offer this option to blogs with a certain number of traffic, impressions, or subscribers.

2. Sponsorship
Well established blogs with large traffic have better chances of directly finding their own advertisers or sponsors to display ads. Typically, blogs with specific niche have more chances of getting sponsors with the same niche (e.g. blogs about camera getting Nikon or Kodak as sponsors). Ads are sold in the form of banners, text-links, buttons, or newsletters. Another type of sponsorship is sponsored posts: bloggers are paid to write specific posts as required by sponsors, or posts reviewing sponsors’ own blogs (positively I suppose).

3. Affiliate Programs
Affiliate program providers (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Linkshare, Commision Junction, Clickbank) pay you commissions for sending readers to purchase their products/services. Participating in these programs may require you to put more effort (than needed to setup ads in your blog) to influence readers to buy the products or services.

4. Selling Blogs
Well established and profitable blogs may be (and have been) sold at lucrative prices. An example is Weblogs Inc. which were sold to AOL for $25 million. But, to reach that level of success is extremely difficult and rare. Some smaller blogs have been sold at auction sites like eBay and SitePoint.

5. Donations
Only a very small number of blogs have been successful at making profitable income through donations. Most of them have large number of loyal readers.

6. Merchandising
Successful bloggers have used their influential blogs as brand names to be sold as merchandises (T-shirts, mugs, stickers, etc).

7. Paid Subscriptions
Selling blog contents to subscribers is an option to bloggers but a difficult one to profit from because similar contents are available free online. Bloggers would need a certain degree of expertise or exclusivity to have readers wanting to pay for these contents.

8. Blog Networks
There are two ways to profit from these methods: (1) Start your own network and pay bloggers to write in your network while profiting from the seven methods above. (2) Join other networks as a paid writer.

If you're new to this, getting too excited to try everything on the list at the same time would be a big mistake. Building your blog from the basics up the ladder - with patience - is the key. It's tempting to try all the different monetizing methods and see if it works more than others, but you'll end up wasting your time too much learning on how to get the most out of the different methods. It's best to start from the most common ones (most likely Adsense) and build up your experience getting the most out of it. Your experience then will make it easier for you to learn other new methods in time. Anyway, Adsense has been reported to bring in the biggest chunk of revenues to many popular bloggers.

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This post is a summary of an original post by Darren Rowse at Problogger.net (Alexa rank: 3185). The original post length of 1993 words has been cut down to 624 words (69% reduction).

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10 Effective Ways to Boost Banner Click-through

Banner advertising is one of the most widely used marketing medium on the Internet. Though banner click-throughs have decreased to less than 1.0% in the past year, it is still possible to achieve reasonably good click-through of 3.0% and above.
Below are 10 effective steps that successfully used to help clients boost click-throughs on their banner campaigns.

1. Employ Action Words
Use action words like "FREE" and "Click Here" in your banners.
Offering something "FREE" in your message attracts the reader to click on your banner. Banners with "Click Here" teasers and similar action phrases also increase click-through.

2. Use Short and Punchy Headlines
A short and punchy banner headline makes a difference. Always load your headline with benefit statements - offer solutions to the challenges that your customers face. If you sell diet products, try "Lose 10 pounds in four weeks!". Work on a winning combination of text and graphics in your banner ad.

3. Animated Banners vs. Static Banners
Animated banners usually outperform their static counterparts by more than 100%. Surfers are more likely to notice banners that are animated. Example: If you have the words "Click Here" flashing in your banner, it will perform better than a static version.

4. Adopt Better Designs
Many of us are not graphic artists. We can create simple banners but it is hard to match the work of a professional graphic artist. You should engage a professional banner ad designer to create your banners. Expect to invest $80 per banner.
The standard sizes for banner ads are 400x40 pixels or 468x60 pixels. I recommend that you design a 468x60 banner. With the clutter of graphics on most webpages, a larger banner has a higher chance of getting noticed.

5. Try Trick Banners
These banners resemble Windows dialog boxes, scroll bars, submit buttons or blue-colored underlined hyperlinks. They attract you to click on the dialog boxes and scroll bars - which you are already accustomed to doing with the Windows operating system. If you use trick banners with short and punchy headlines, you can get click-throughs above 10.0%!

6. Reduce Your Banner File Sizes
Reduce your banner file size to less than 15k. The last thing a surfer wants is a slow-loading webpage. Most websites and banner exchanges do not allow excessively large banners.Create a fast-loading banner right from the start. Optimize your banner file size through your graphic software or an online graphic optimizer.

7. Rotate Your Banners Regularly
Always have 2 or more banners to promote each product. A banner usually burns out after a surfer has seen it 3 times. They will ignore (if not hate) banners which they see repeatedly. If your click-through is steadily declining, then it is time to rotate your banners.

8. Target Your Banners
Place your banners on websites visited by your potential customers. If you promote gourmet coffees, place your banners on sites targeted at gourmet coffee drinkers. The quality of leads generated are higher, and more likely to result in sales.
Running your banners on targeted sites generally yield higher click-throughs and return-on-investment (ROI). You are reaching people who are most interested in what you have to offer. Of course, you can try websites with general audience if they generate substantial ROI.

9. Monitor Your Banners' Performance
Make it a point to check on your banners' performance every few days. Monitor the click-through rate. The click-through tells you how well your banner performs. Most banners fetch a click-through of between 0.8% to 2.0%. If your banner gets more than 2.0%, it is doing a pretty good job.
By monitoring your banners' performance, you can kill under-performing banners before they waste away your advertising dollars.

10. Do Your Mathematics
Do your mathematics for each banner advertising campaign. Calculate the cost-per-visitor, cost-per-sale and return-on-investment ratios.
For example: If a website charges you $20 per thousand impressions ($20/CPM), and you get a 2.0% click-through (20 visitors), your cost-per-visitor is $1.00 ($20 / 20 visitors). And if 1 in every 10 visitors buys your product, your cost-per-sale is $10.00 ($20 / 2 sales). So if each sale of your product produces a gross profit of $15, then your net profit per-sale will be $5.00 ($15 gross profit - $10 cost-per-sale).Your return-on-investment (ROI), before non-marketing expenses, is 50.0% ($10.00 total net profits / $20 investment). This campaign is profitable!
Try advertising on different sites or using different banners. Find the winning combination(s) that can yield the highest ROI. Comparing Deal A which yields an ROI of 20% to Deal B that yields 60%, your advertising dollars work three times harder (and profitable) with Deal B! by Chee Wee from evrsoft.com

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8 Tips To Get More Traffic From Yahoo

With the new Yahoo! "Pay-For-Review" model it might be relatively easier for sites to get into the directory but getting traffic from your listing is altogether a different story. And now with it's new annual recurring payment policy you have to be extra careful while submitting your site for a review.
Here are 8 things to keep in mind while submitting your site to Yahoo!
1) Selecting your domain name is the most vital step in getting a top ranking in Yahoo! and also other directories like Dmoz and Looksmart. Make sure your domain name is "Keyword Rich". You can make your domain keyword rich by simply inserting hyphens to separate words in your domain name. Yahoo! gives more relevance to sites with keywords in their domain name.
Take a domain name for example :
http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com/
It is made up of 4 different high-in-demand keywords: "Home Based Business", "Home Business", "Home Business Opportunities", "Home Based Business Opportunities".
While crafting your domain name, even you should try to keep your domain name such that it is made up of one, 2-4 words main or "parent" keyword; which in turn is made up of 2-4 high-in-demand "child" keywords.
You may or may not get a top ranking for all your targeted keywords but you can be sure of getting one for your main or "parent" keyword (If you do everything else right).
Even if you have to get a separate domain name for this purpose, GET IT! It is absolutely crucial for your ranking.
2) Sites which are placed higher in directory structure are given more relevance than sites which are placed lower or
deeper.
For example a site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities will be given more relevance than a site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities/Directories
Here's a great tip to select the most trafficked category for your website...
Once you have short-listed 2 or 3 category to place your site in to, check out the cost of Sponsor Listings of those
categories.It's really simple. Visit the following URL: https://ecom.yahoo.com/fast/sponsor
Enter the URL of any website that is listed in your desired category (The URL should be same as it appears in Yahoo! and the category should be a commercial category).
-----SIDEBAR-----
Please note that Yahoo! accepts Sponsor Listings for only certain commercial categories and so this tip may or may not work for your category.
-----SIDEBAR-----
You'll be asked for your Yahoo! ID. Once you submit the information, you'll be provided with the Sponsorship charges for that certain category. Repeat the process for your remaining short-listed categories.
Now compare the prices of all your short-listed categories. Naturally the one with a higher price is the most trafficked one!
3) Yahoo! considers keywords in the directory structure while ranking.
For example, if someone is searching for "Business Opportunities Directories", a web site listed in category -
B2B/Business_Opportunities/Directories will be given more relevance than a web site listed in category - B2B/Business_Opportunities
4) Yahoo! DOES NOT spider websites to determine ranking. It ranks web sites based on keywords in domain name, title and description. So having META tags does not make any difference to your listing.
5) DO NOT try to stuff as much keywords as possible in to the description. Yahoo! editors are notorious for cutting
down the description if they sense even slightest hype. Try to avoid words such as - no.1, proven, turnkey, exciting
etc.
Also, make sure that the heading of your home page is same as the description you provided for your site. There should be no confusion in the mind of the editor reviewing your site.
6) Make sure your domain name and business name is the same since Yahoo! is known to use the business name as the title for your listing.
7) Make sure your website is "Content Rich". This is very critical for two reasons. One - to get your site
accepted by Yahoo! and Second - to maintain and get a higher listing.
Yahoo! determines the popularity of a website by the amount of time a visitor spends on your website. If a large no. of them hit the "back button" of their browser as soon as they hit your web site, you can kiss goodbye to your dreams of a possible higher listing.
Once you get a lower listing, it can get very difficult to make up as visitors will not be able to find your site
easily.
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Once a site gets accepted into the directory, Yahoo! ranks it based on the keyword popularity in domain name, title and description. But as time progresses, it determines the ranking based on the popularity of the website itself.

We ignored this and our listing came down drastically within few days of getting accepted!
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8) Before submitting your website, thoroughly research websites that rank higher for keywords you are targeting (Especially the "Most Popular" sites in the directory section). This will give you a rough idea of what to and what not to include in your website. (by Vishal Rao from evrsoft.com)

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