Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

Google’s AdWords and AdSense programs revolutionised online advertising when they were launched, allowing greater accountability with advertising dollars and an opportunity for webmasters to make a little cash for their site. In the current economic climate, it allows shrewd spend for businesses looking to maximise ROI.

I have clients ask me my thoughts on whether they should use them, or how they effectively use one or the other. Ultimately it depends on your business model, but there are a few things you need to keep in mind when determining if they are right for your business.

AdWords is a Pay Per Click system, where you bid against other advertisers to appear against specific search terms, and the highest bids are the ones that appear closer to the top. So when I am talking with a client about using AdWords, my first question is around what price they put on acquiring a lead.  Read more...

Anyone who has spent time researching an online business niche and what they can do to make a living online will have come across sites and pages offering you the opportunity to make more money than you thought possible. Usually the sales page will have one or more of the following elements:

• Fonts in about 4 different type faces and 6 different colours
• Pictures of someone standing next to a very expensive car or boat (with their face blurred out)
• Copies of cheques, bank statements or Paypal statements
• Testimonials from people who go by only one name
• Statements like “As seen on CNN, MSNBC, Fox News” etc

Too many times, people can be tempted to look for quick riches online, and unfortunately these types of programs seek to profit from them. The reality is that those selling them aren’t using the methods. They are making the money from selling them to others, and having affiliates do the same – ultimately, the program they offer may have no proven results.  Read more...

I think you all know by now that I am a fan of social media as a business tool, as well as on a personal level. Last week I was trawling through my Twitter feed, as I do multiple times a day, to find interesting content to read or to find a gem of a deal on a new t-shirt or shoes. But what I got (as I always have, but it now seems harder to ignore), is affiliate link after affiliate link with the promise of untold riches from the Internet.

Because of my criteria for following people on Twitter (which I have covered previously), for the most part the information in my feed is online marketing information, and as such the number of links for products that are the “key to unlocking the riches of the internet” are rampant. So for me, it begs the question – is social media just marketing to your competitors? Or perhaps more importantly, how do you avoid marketing to your competitors?  Read more...

Anyone who has been in business longer than 5 minutes knows that no two customers are created equal, and can’t be treated as such. But in a truly global medium like the internet, how can you make sure that all of your customers feel like they are getting one to one service?

One of the most effective ways of communicating with them is email marketing, and should form a major part of an online marketing strategy, for the simple reason that if if you’re not doing it – your competition are.

Depending on your online business niche, your use of email marketing will be different. Affiliate marketers will use it as a means of communicating an affiliate offer that they will reap a percentage of. Finance and business marketers will use it to convey the latest state of the market, and retailers will use it to communicate special offers, coupons and the like.  Read more...

So now that you have considered your keywords, the other part of the SEO puzzle is inbound links and fresh content.

Put simply, inbound links are those that point to your site from elsewhere on the web. It may be from a directory, it may be from a link that someone has added to a social bookmarking site, or someone may consider your site of enough value to link from theirs. Wherever they come from, inbound links are vital to the success of your site.  Read more...