Guide To Internet Marketing [ CLOSE ]
Guide to Internet Marketing
    The Guide to Internet Marketing is a proprietary document designed exclusively for our business partners. Its purpose is to assist your understanding of the traffic generation tools and techniques available within the Internet market place today. The Internet is a network that has literally collapsed the time and space barriers within communication mediums. Information and commerce is a mouse click away and accessible instantly at will. There exists an infinite bank of data neatly organized and categorized within the network. Search engines provide the portals into these data banks. Imagine the Internet as an electronic super highway similar to the freeways, city streets, and rural roads we drive our cars on. Imagine if instead of getting into your car to drive to work in the morning in the traditional manner, you could simply enter the words "Drive to work" into a keyboard. As soon as you hit the enter button you were in the parking lot of your place of business. With that in mind, consider the search engines as the on-ramps to the Super Information Highway and the search terms entered into the engine as the off ramps. These off-ramps are portal entries into the areas of your specific request with a choice of every site related to your search. You then select an entry that lands you into what is referred to as a "Website" or Portal offering a more defined set of choices. Within this portal you have yet more decisions of navigation to further specify what it is you seek. The objective behind Internet advertising is to divert or redirect that traffic to the place of YOUR desire. To clarify further how Internet advertising works requires a very clear understanding of Internet infrastructure. To achieve this, allow me to expound further by returning to the analogy of the highway. Let's suppose you needed to purchase a gift for your nephew's birthday. Traditional methods would be to get in the car and go to the local mall, park the car, and go to the mall directory to see a listing of the toy stores within that mall. Once in the toy store you chose, you would navigate though that store by the categories listed at the head of each isle. You would evaluate these categories to select which isle would best serve what is you are seeking. The steps and time it takes to achieve this objective in the real world are very time consuming and cumbersome. All in all it would require 1 - 2 hours of invested time to complete. Imagine the same task but when you got into your car you typed the words "Toy Stores" into a keyboard and your car instantly entered the freeway bypassing all the traffic and stoplights at breakneck speeds and exited an off- ramp. Instead of ending up at the mall you came to a stoplight that was the entrance to a city of nothing but toy stores. At this stoplight was a list of all of the toy stores in this city for your evaluation. You simply pick one and instantly you are standing in the store with the car parked safely in the parking lot. You pick the isle, the gift, enter your credit card, and simply think the word "Home" and instantly you are sitting in your favorite chair with the car safely parked in the garage. The whole event was achieved within 5 minutes.

    With this picture in mind imagine being an advertiser in this virtual world and you owned a toy store. You could place billboards specifically on the off ramp of "Toy City". Being that you have a colorful billboard of course it will stand out much larger than the list that's posted at the stoplight. Instead of all the cars picking from the limitless list of choices provided as simple text a great percentage of them chose your billboard. That billboard is encoded with you address so all of that traffic has now been diverted to YOUR store. Consider that everyone that lands at that stoplight is obviously looking for toy stores because in order to be at that stoplight they had to request to be there. That is what is referred to as demographically specific traffic. This demographically specific traffic is infinitely populated within the network.

    Now that you have a clearer understanding of the mechanics of how the network operates we can further break down its components. This will enable you to understand the many options available in regards to traffic manipulation. Understand that in order to access the network there must be an entry point. The entry point is achieved through what are referred to as Internet Access Providers. Internet Access Providers are the companies that offer your computer entrance into the network through what is referred to as Dial-Up. Access to the network is usually achieved through a modem in your computer that dials into a Local Area Network through your phone line. Most Access Providers offer a plethora of different services, news channels, directories, and chat rooms within the menu of their homepage. Once in the Network your journey begins. As you navigate through the Internet you start to notice billboards of advertising all over the place. Big ones, little ones, animated ads, text ads, and many other forms. As you continue surfing you have a window that suddenly pops up in front of you offering you some kind of invitation to a website that offers products that may or may not interest you. For the heck of it you click on it to see what it is and where it takes you. It drops you onto a website where there are more of those banner ads of navigation links. This is the experience of EVERY Internet user. The following is a list of terms you need to familiarize yourself with and links that will take you into further understanding and the vendors that offer this variety of ad methods. We look forward to serving you in your new journey and may you prosper in all the areas of your life.

Technical Training Tools
Offers electronically distributed courses for Internet technology training and cutting-edge tools for professional instructors as well as end users.
http://www.trainingtools.com - FREE

Free Downloads
The #1 place on the net to look for software that you need. Everything from freeware, to shareware, to paid for software. You may have a need for a program that does a specific task... just type in a few keywords in their "search" feature and you may find a program that does exactly what you require.
http://www.download.com
http://www.tucows.com

Who is making money on the Internet?
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue10/page1.html

Newsletters
http://e-newsletters.internet.com/

Subscribe to what you want to see
http://e-newsletters.internet.com/mailinglists.html - FREE

Sign up for free E-Commerce/Marketing newsletters
http://e-newsletters.internet.com/ - FREE

Internet Services
The #1 place on the net to look for software that you need. Everything from freeware, to shareware, to paid for software. You may have a need for a program that does a specific task... just type in a few keywords in their "search" feature and you may find a program that does exactly what you require.
http://www.iprint.com
http://www.staples.com

Shipping Services
http://www.ups.com
http://www.usps.com

Internet Magazines
http://www.gebbieinc.com/
http://www.clickz.com - GOOD MARKETING INFO
http://www.channelseven.com - GOOD MARKETING INFO
http://www.thestandard.com
http://www.ecommercetimes.com
http://www.forbes.com
http://www.cnet.com - THIS SITE HAS IT ALL
http://www.wilsonweb.com

Press Release Distribution
These companies distribute press releases to media contacts that specifically requests this information.
http://www.newsbureau.com
http://www.upromote.com
http://www.businesswire.com
http://www.newsbureau.com
http://www.internetwire.com
http://www.presswire.net
http://www.prnewswire.com/
http://www.prweb.com/
http://www.pressreleasenetwork.com
http://www.us.pressline.com
http://www.usnewswire.com
http://www.urlwire.com
http://www.xpresspress.com

Find all Media types of any kind. Listing Service.
http://www.mediafinder.com

Banner Ad Exchanges
Banner ad exchanges requires different levels of participation from its members. Banner ad exchanges allow you to display your banner ad on other sites while you display banners on your site. Many banner exchanges are free while others may charge a modest fee. We have listed several for your review and you can use your discretion when selecting a program that may be right for your business.

Reviews of different banner programs
http://webworker.com/ww/ww.banners.html

Banner Companies
http://www.free-banners.com - FREE
http://einets.com/stats/gsa/
http://www.bpath.com
http://www.1-2-free.com/banner/global/
http://www.adarcher.com
http://www.bannerco-op.com
http://www.intelliclicks.com
http://resource-marketing.com
http://webmasterexchange.com/
http://www.burstmedia.com
http://www.realmedia.com

Banner Terminology
Ad Clicks - Number of times users click on an ad banner.
Ad Click Rate - Sometimes referred to, as "click-through," this is the percentage of ad views that resulted in an ad click.
Ad Views (Impressions) - Number of times an ad banner is downloaded and presumably seen by visitors. If the same ad appears on multiple pages simultaneously, this statistic may understate the number of ad impressions, due to browser caching. Corresponds to net impressions in traditional media. There is currently no way of knowing if an ad was actually loaded. Most servers record an ad as served even if it was not.

Other Advertising Services
http://www.theAdStop.com/ - RECOMMENDED
http://www.bannerwomen.com - RECOMMENDED
http://www.247media.com
http://www.advertising.com
http://www.amazingmedia.com/
http://www.datais.com
http://www.futurepages.com
http://Opt-Influence.com/
http://www.srds.com
http://www.adrelevance.com

Link Exchange Services
These are reciprocal services that will allow your company banner in their websites in return for you housing their banner on yours. These can cost effective, but be careful of clutter; it can take away from your own offerings.
http://www.fantasticlinks.com

Search Engine & Directory Registration Services
These companies help you save time by registering your website with prominent search engines and directories on the Internet.

The latest news, information, and data about the online search industry.
http://www.searchenginewatch.com/

Search Engine Services
http://www.addme.com - FREE
http://submitplus.bc.ca/ - FREE
http://www.worldsubmit.com
http://www.upromote.com
http://www.infoscavenger.com
http://www.trafficboost.com
http://www.123addurl.com
http://www.altitude-marketing.com
http://www.bruceclay.com
http://www.eliteconcepts.com
http://www.netpost.com
http://www.pegasoweb.com
http://www.selfpromotion.com
http://www.siteads.com

Search Engine Optimization
These services help you understand how search engines and directories work. They show you ways on how to improve your website design to achieve better ranking on the search engines. You can learn to improve web site design in order to tailor your site to what the search engines look for when placing sites in rank.
http://www.searchenginewatch.com
http://www.upromote.com
http://www.submitcorner.com
http://www.webpositiongold.com/

How do they work?
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue15/page3.html

What can I expect from Search Engines?
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue15/page1.html

Where do you get the best results?
http://www.marketingtips.com/newsletter/issue15/page2.html

Search Engine Checkpoints and Traffic Analysis
These services are used to measure the effectiveness of your search engine placements. Some are free for a trial use and then are based on a subscription basis. You can now find out daily where your site ranks in the major search Engines and use the tools necessary to get yourself towards the top.
http://www.webposition.com
http://www.ipro.com

Targeted / Opt-In E-Mailing Services (No Spam)
These services let you send e-mail messages to a targeted group of individuals. The people that are available on these lists have requested information regarding certain products and services via this medium, and thus this form of e-mail is classified as "Permission Marketing", not unsolicited bulk e-mail (Spam).

E-Marketing Reference Guide
http://adres.internet.com/feature/article/0,,8961_481311,00.html

Forum One is a search engine for online forums
Users can search online forums from all over the Net based by subject of keywords. Forum One also offers tips on how to build and promote your own online forum.
http://www.forumone.com

Opt-In Mail Service Companies
http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo/ - FREE
http://www.postmasterdirect.com
http://www.digitalwork.com/tools/directemail/index.asp
http://www.greatcircle.com/majordomo
http://www.lsoft.com
http://www.upromote.com
http://www.mailloop.com
http://www.yesmail.com
http://www.ismax.com
http://www.blanketmail.com
http://www.targitmail.com
http://www.snipermail.com
http://www.pennmedia.com

E-mail Autoresponders
When this service is added to your website in combination with a ListServ database program, your prospects will be able to receive automatic e-mails from you offering additional products and services. The rules of advertising state that the prospect must see the ad up to 7 times before making a purchase. This tool will automate the process for you sending out a series of e-mails according to your instructions.
http://www.aweber.com
http://www.sendfree.com

Lead Generation Services
There are companies that specialize in prospect lists. These are two of the better ones.
http://www.prostepinc.com/proweb/?19322
http://www.infousa.com

Traffic Generating Services
For a fee, this service will guarantee traffic to your website. Watch this kind, as they may not bring the kind of traffic specific to your product or service. These services can be very effective, just ask the right questions.
http://www.upromote.com

Website Statistic and Tracking Software
These types of software enable you to track all visitors to your website and follow them in detail. When they came in, where they came from, and how long they stayed. This will enable you to plan your marketing according to the trends and profiles of the visitors to your site. This service is a must and can have a significant impact on repeat buyers and future sales.
http://www.estats.com
http://www.webtrends.com
http://www.aadsoft.com/agentwebranking/ranks.htm

Pop-up window advertising:
With over 39.8 million unique users through out our network, spanning 20 countries, AdScholar.com is one of the leading Global Internet Media Companies around today. Our network is made up of key demographics, which prove both vital to our advertisers and publishers alike. When a user comes to a website that contains our GianStitial Tags, an Invisible window will open on the user computer. Once the window has fully loaded on the user desktop, it will automatically minimize itself in the users task bar once it has fully loaded. The user will have no idea the ad exists until they activate it by clicking on the window on their task bar. At no time are users shown a pop-up window, which may interfere with their surfing on a particular site.
http://www.adscholar.com - RECOMMENDED

Classified Ads:
Software that will automatically submit your classified ad to the top 400+ free classified ad sites and bulletin boards (as frequently as you like!), all with the click of ONE button, saving you hours and hours of time. We highly recommend it - a very powerful tool.
http://www.marketingtips.com/classifiedad.html

Online Auction Houses
There is only one online auction house worth using. Go to eBay and get noticed.
http://www.ebay.com

BidFind can find an item up for auction on the Internet by scouring the Net's plethora of auction sites.
http://www.bidfind.com

Other Cool Stuff
The Web's 100 hottest websites and more!
http://www.100hot.com

StatMarket.com is a Web site that publishes Internet statistics and market trends.
http://statmarket.com

The POD is not a new website or another browser enhancement- it's a revolutionary, free Internet tool that combines the most powerful online functions into one intuitive and easy to use application- a Personal Online Desktop. When you download your own POD, you can instantly begin playing MP3s, storing your favorite files on 50 MB of free Internet storage, sharing and/or borrowing music and video clips with other PODs, scheduling important events, emailing and instant messaging your friends all at the same time from the same application.
http://www.omnipod.com