Monday, March 14, 2011

Who Developed Google Search

Google search is a web search engine owned by Google Inc. and is the most-used search engine on the Web. Google receives several hundred million queries each day through its various services. Google search was  developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1997. Google Search provides more than 22 special features, such as: synonyms; weather forecasts; time zones; stock quotes; maps; earthquake data; movie showtimes; airports; home listings; sports scores, etc. 
Most services Google provides are free, the user doesn't have to pay money to use them. The way they achieve this while still making money is through targeted text advertisement links. Although most of Google's profit comes from Internet advertising revenue, the company also sells some subscription services, such as Google Earth Plus and Google Earth Pro. Google also sells enterprise searching tools, servers, and search technologies for corporations.

How to Double Your Online Sales in Half the Time!

As a small business owner your time and resources are limited, but that doesn't stop the bills from coming in and it doesn't change the fact that, if you are to succeed you need to survive. The concept is simple enough to understand - Reduce customer acquisition costs, Maximize the lifetime- value of your customers and Multiply the amount of customers you have.

How you get there and how "inexpensively" you do it is the key to determining your eventual success or demise. You see, business success is to know not only where you are going but how you are going to get there in advance!

Let's take a simple test to determine how prepared you are to evaluate where your business is going and to see i f you are prepared to succeed.

Do you know: What's your average sale price? What's your average margin on each sale? What is the lifetime sales value of each new customer? What's the lifetime referral value for each customer? What is your customer acquisition cost?

If you're new in business and don't know the answers for your specific business, do you know them for your industry as a whole? Without this knowledge it is impossible to put a plan together to increase your sales or to even know how much you can allocate to acquiring a new customer before you go broke.

How do you minimize your time expenditure while maximizing your profit? That's the question. Fortunately, Affiliate Marketing can help. Affiliate Marketing occurs when you establish a network of people as your "affiliates" and they have the ability to sell your products / services for you. Your "affiliates" are compensated only when they make a sale for you.

The Internet changes everything it touches and it touches almost everything. For small business owners the Internet can become a weapon. A "Lethal Weapon" when combined with Affiliate Marketing because it helps reduce unnecessary sales costs, bring in more leads and make more sales with less time and effort.

There is one "Law of Sales," however, that the Internet has not changed. It will always take a certain number of initial prospects to become qualified prospects that then result in a sale. Because sales is a numbers game and you need to go through so many prospects, qualify them and then turn them into sales, the key to success would be how fast you go from step 1 (acquiring prospects) to step 3 (the sale) and then how many times you multiply that process.

Think of Affiliate Marketing as a machine that automatically keeps repeating this process by bringing the most qualified prospects and sales directly to you 24 hours a day and better yet, you only pay when a sale is made. Plus, using Affiliate Marketing lets you reach many more prospects through your "affiliates" who are promoting your products and services for you.

Affiliate Marketing is the perfect solution for the small business owner who needs to stretch every business dollar and who needs to do more in less time. After all, the most time consuming, difficult and expensive sale you will ever make to a customer is the first one. Think of how successful your business will be if you could focus on serving your customers not selling them.

With Affiliate Marketing you will increase your margins because you will decrease your customer acquisition costs. You will be making more sales in less time and proportionately you will make more referrals, which again leads to more sales. When you have your own affiliate program the "Cash Cycle" for your business works with you not against you.

Traditional selling methods are costly and time consuming. There is a better way and its called Affiliate Marketing. Through Affiliate Marketing you drastically increase your sales and only pay when a sale is made. Why would you do business any other way?

How to Convert Hits into Sales

One of the common questions asked by web site owners is: "I'm getting plenty of hits but no sales - what is going on?" This article will give you some tips on how to address this issue.

Your Product

The first area to review is the product or service that you are offering. Does a market exist for it? To answer this question you need to find out whether similar products are being sold on the Internet successfully. If not, you may need to rethink your Internet strategy. If others are selling a similar product successfully, then this would tend to confirm that there is a market for your product.

Next, look at the strategy and pricing being adopted by your competitors. How do you compare? Why should your visitors buy from you rather than one of your competitors? Answering these questions will provide you with valuable information you can use to improve your situation and generate more sales.

Also, take a critical look at your product quality. Does it live up to the claims you are making on your web pages? If not, improve your product so that it does or modify your web page to be more truthful about it.

Provide Solutions

Your visitors are looking for a solution to a problem. Do you know what problems your visitors are looking for solutions to? Does your web site show how your product will solve your visitor's problem? You will need to put yourself into your visitor's shoes to better understand what they are seeking so that you can provide the solution they need.

One way to better understand your visitors is to monitor where your visitors are coming from. If they are coming from the search engines, knowing what search terms they are using can provide some clues. You may find some surprises when you review this information about your site.

Once you understand the problem your visitors want solved, revise your web pages to show that your product will provide the solution they need.

Site Design

Your site needs to look like it is a commercial web site rather than an amateur home page. The design needs to be consistent from page to page and it needs to be easy to navigate. Contact details including physical address, phone numbers and email address need to be shown.

Graphics need to be minimized to ensure that your page downloads quickly. Also, ensure that your web host provides a fast connection to the Internet. Most people will not wait for a page that takes a long time to download. They will just move on to your competitor.

Make it easy to order. We recall seeing statistics recently that suggested that a large number of people abandon a web site in the middle of the order process. A common reason for this is that the order process is too time consuming and complicated. Make yours simple and quick and you will lose fewer sales.

Ensure that your web page has a strong headline that grabs your visitors and makes them want to read more. Your headline should in effect say "You have this problem, here is the solution". Your web site should then demonstrate that you understand the problem and that you can in fact provide the solution

Testimonials and Guarantees

Testimonials and guarantees can have a huge impact on your level of sales. On the web, a key priority is to build credibility. The common methods used are having a privacy statement, publishing a newsletter, publishing testimonials from satisfied customers and providing a strong guarantee.

Take every opportunity to gather comments from your customers about how your product has helped them. Get their permission to publish these comments as testimonials. If need be, provide them with a gift for giving you their permission to publish their comments. A way of getting comments is a customer feedback survey. This can be used for the purpose of gaining testimonials as well as seeking ways to improve your product or develop additional products your customers may need.

A strong guarantee will provide your visitor with greater confidence to purchase your product. Try to make your guarantee simple and without too many conditions. Always honour your guarantee without question or delay.

Conclusion

Getting plenty of hits to your web site is a very positive situation to be in. By implementing some of the hints provided in this article, you can convert these visitors into being your customers.

Crafting An Excellent Press Release


A press release is a message to the media about a product or service. In order to be considered by the media, it must be considered newsworthy. Newspapers and television stations are not interested in giving you free advertising, but they are interested in stories for their readers and viewers.

  1. Making the news As mentioned before, the media is looking for news. They often want the strange and bizarre. For example, a promotion received a fantastic response at a state fair. Anyone who has ever been to the Minnesota State Fair knows that you can buy just about anything on a stick (in fact, Microsoft offered Internet on a stick a few years ago and did very well with it). The promotional ploy was to offer a 'chit on a stick' This was really a round fan on a Popsicle stick with the address of a website on the front and the words 'chit on a stick' on the back. The local media heard of this and had a field day. The website got more visitors than ever before!
  2. If you don't have news, create it! Let's say that you are a local ISP (Internet service provider) looking to drum up some new business. A suggestion? Work with your local library and sponsor a 'get started on the Internet day' where people can come and learn more about the Internet, why it is useful, how it can help them, etc. Offer a chance at the end to sign up with your service. Let the media know that you are having this and you could get published in local calendars, news stories, whatever!
  3. Host an event People love events. They love carnivals and fairs and parades. Use that to your advantage. Work with a local non profit organization (such as the boy or girl scouts) and provide them with the facilities to have a carnival to raise funds for their organization. At the event, put up banners and signs promoting your business. The media will want to know about the event and will publish information about the event and the fact that your company sponsored it.
  4. Be smart about your product You probably think your product is the hottest thing since sliced bread. Make the media think it is as well and you have a guaranteed story on your hands. We have a client who made a product that reduces the glare from headlights at night. we crafted the press release to extol its virtues and the safety that it provided drivers at night. It was a media success.

Above all, be creative. Make your press release news and you will be published!

How to build a quality blog

To build a high quality site you need to focus on 3 things:
     
1.       Build a site that is trusted: Take the time to think about the topics you want to write about and do research on it. The one thing you don’t want to do is fill your blog with articles that are vague or too generalized or in the worst scenario misleading. Whether you want to make a point or give information to your reader you have to validate what you are saying. So do some research and work on your topic.
2.       Credible: The first person that needs to believe in what you are writing is you, if you don’t believe in the content that you are posting, well by all means Don’t Post It. If you are you posting to blog you audience is going your blog within seconds or they won’t subscribe to your blog. If you are mentioning somebody else’s point of view, make sure you are saying that.
3.       High Quality Content: This may seem very redundant but it is the bread and butter to a good blog, content, content, content. It is unbelievable the quantity of blogs out there with hardly any good content or no content at all so make sure that you’re bringing high quality content for your readers.