Shankar Rao's

The key to successful long term online marketing comes from building a opt-in email list. This is mainly because your online marketing success comes from building relationships with a large subscriber base, but just how do you go about doing this? (You may thinking i don’t have one? Yes, iam working on a good gift for my subscriber. You should see here soon!)

An opt-in list is when you are given the option to receive bulk emails that are also sent to a large majority of other people. Generally you need a person’s permission to add them to such a list otherwise it will be seen as spam.

Virtually everyone uses email so it won’t be too hard to build your list if you use some of the simple tactics listed below. Keep in mind, using an opt-in contact list should have a place in everyone’s marketing plan as it is cheap, fast, and still more effective than other outdated methods of promotion and marketing.

Here is the surefire 10 quick ways of getting people to sign up for your contact list:

1. Set up an auto-responder which will automatically send out messages to your visitor. It can be set up with a series of compelling messages, which will encourage your subscribers to buy your products or join your business.

2. Have a concrete image or graphic of your ezine or newsletter when giving people the opportunity to sign up as this will increase your conversion rate.

3. Make it real simple for people to subscribe to your opt-in email; it needs to be quick and easy in order to encourage people to do it.

4. Promote your opt in at social media sites like MySpace, YouTube, Twitter…

5. Use forums to get targeted subscribers, ones interested in your topic or subject.

6. Promote your website and yourself — this can be done through such things as article writing.

7. Ezine advertising is a cost effective and quick way to attract visitors to your site in order to get more subscribers. Ezine ads can be a very cheap and effective way of building your list quickly.

8. Have well written content — you need to ensure that your website content is well written, informative and appealing so that when people visit your site they will hopefully opt-in to your email list. Again, if you have nothing valuable to offer your visitors, they won’t join your list.

9. Always use incentives to reward people for joining your opt-in list. Enticing potential subscribers with a free report, video, article, ebook or software is still the quickest way to get subscribers on your list.

10. Last but not the least, keep in touch with your subscibers by providing valuable information, tips and tools related to the niche. The key is your subscibers should not forget you and your site.

Use these list building technique to your long term sucess in internet marketing.

(Oops! I should act fast in placing my optin form)

 A friend asked me how much money do I need to start an online business? He really meant what i have been doing for a while.
This is a common question among the newbies especially when they want to supplement their income or they want to ditch their day job and stay work at home.
In reality an online business can be started without investing any money (ofcourse you should have a computer and internet connection).
Subsequently you can expand you online business by spending some money with the money you earn. One at a time process. This initial process of start an online business is also called as Bum Marketing.

Internet Marketing for Bums
Bum marketing is a name for launching online campaigns that are free of start up costs.
There are so many sites allow nowadays to create your own mini sites and start your internet marketing launch.
Benefits of Using Free Venues to Build Webpages for starters:
1. Great way to gain experience and learn the how-to’s of Internet marketing affiliate marketing, creating a web page.

2. These sites allow you to make money online without spending money from your pocket. They are easily integrated with many affiliate programs, such as eBay, Amazon, and Adsense. These companies also provide how to tutorials for starting the web pages and integrating the ads in your web page.

3. Since these site providers are big enought on their own they rank well in the search engines.

Some of the free Webpage Venues for Internet Marketing:
Squidoo Lenses - Building free Squidoo lenses (lens is a page)  to promote the products you choose is one of the best places to get started  in Internet Marketing and start to make money online.
Lots of webmasters use squidoo lens to promote their main websites. Even i have some lenses in squidoo which earns a decent income every month after month.
You can find plenty of useful lenses created for  newbies on squidoo , if you do a search in squidoo website. This should be self sufficient to start you marketing.

Hub Pages - Hub Pages rank very high in SERPS, depending on how competitive the keywords are. Basically the same concept as Squidoo, except that Hub Pages are more strict and monitored than Squidoo by their admin for quality content and spam. There is less flexibility in placing affiliate links and having the Hub Page be too commercial.

They LOVE fresh content at Hub Pages so focus on that and use your products to support the content. Integrate your Amazon, eBay, Adsense and Kontera affiliate accounts. Just read the TOS, and make sure to follow the rules.

The key to Hub Pages is really networking with other authors. Visit, comment and become a fan of other Hubbers and they will visit you. If you keyword optimize your Hub page properly, same as a Squidoo lens, then you can rank high in SERPS for those keywords.

I recommend Squidoo over Hub Pages, much more flexibility and no one nagging you about what you add to your webpage.

Blogger - This is a service provided by google. You can create your own blog on continious basis and promote relevant products in your niche. Google adsense intregration is a breeze with bloggers blog.

You need to select good keyword and write your blog, as blogger blog won’t ranking well if your keyword is lost in the billions of pages. The interface is very easy and you can start immediately.

Step-by-Step Internet Marketing for Bums
1. Keyword Research

Do some keyword research to find good keywords for your webpage. Aim for low competition keywords and focus on long tails. These are keyword phrases within a main keyword. Example, main keyword “Dog training”, long tail keyword: “dog training for labrador.” Long tails and micro niches can be found with a good amount of searchers and much less competition.

2. Build a Webpage

Use one or more of the free venues to build webpages. As previously mentioned, I recommend Squidoo.

3. Article Marketing

Write a few related articles and link to those webpages from the resource box. Article marketing will bring traffic as well as backlinks.
Submit to these top article sites:
Ezine Articles
Article Dashboard
Go Articles
4. Social Bookmarks

Use social sites and submit your content.

5. Anchor Text

Make sure to use your keywords in the anchor text for any backlinks to your webpages, while Squidoo and Hub Pages rank on their own, those backlinks will just increase the ranking power.

6. US Free Ads

Use US Free Ads classifieds to promote your webpages and drive traffic, traffic that is well targeted as those visitors are looking to buy! Free account gives you 2 adds with unlimited content.

7. Internet Forums

You can also use Internet Forum marketing to promote your webpages and get some links. Make sure they are relevant to your topic and then the traffic is very targeted.

Be patient, keep at it and post good content. Keep persisting. Sucess won’t come overnight.

But, no matter what, you cannot beat the hands-on free Internet Marketing experience. You did not spend any money from your pocket except your time!

All the best for your first taste of internet marketing.

Hi Guys / Gals

I am back from the holidays and had a good one. Hope you all enjoyed a good break from your routines.

Stay tuned i will be posting some of the special post in 2009.

During the holidays some of my friends ask me a question. How much money is required to start a Internet marketing thing.

As you would have known from the previous post the answer is None if you want to.

So i have decided to do a detailed post on this subject tomorrow and also i will be writing about the stuff i use in my internet business to assist me in building a business.

I will recommend only the products which i have used and happy about the product.

Stay tuned and have a wonderful journey in 2009!