'


"An Introduction to Marketing on the Internet,"
by John Davin

From our series of 8 business and computing "How to books."

Here are 25 ways to successfully market your products and services on the Internet... with cutting edge tools like search engine submittal services, e-zines, e-mail responders and more, all at minimum cost but with maximum success!

See you in the seminar!

  

Preface:

"Where else (but on the Internet) can you open a new store or second location for your business at a fraction of the cost of a brick and mortar building, be open almost overnight, be open 24 hours per day, 365 days per year, reduce your overhead, reduce the number or required employees, accept credit card payments electronically, market inexpensively to millions, drop ship products you don't even carry in inventory - the very next day, then mine customer data to create latent sales, and possibly become a millionaire? Only on the Internet!"

J.D. Davin 2000


In summary, my goal and your goal should be to represent quality products, to be educated about our products, be as helpful as is humanly possible, to continually keep in touch with the customer and to continually educate the customer via an on-line newsletter or e-zine, and to make buying from your website or associate programs as enjoyable and as easy as possible for the customer.

We will teach you how to use the Internet to market your products and services, your website and in many ways, your knowledge. Whether you sell one product or many, a service or a product, we want to show you how to make more money on the Internet by showing you how to add value to your products and services and how to educate the customer before, during and even after the sale for additional income.

Best regards!

John E. Davin
The team at MyNewOffice.com

"An Introduction to successful Internet marketing,"
by J.D. Davin

So, you have a business plan, your web site is almost complete now, and you are interested in getting traffic to your site and making sales and profits on the Internet. You've heard the rags to riches stories, and it's your turn to be the one who has the success story and all the nice things in life. I'm sure I don't have to mention these nice things, so I won't mention a new car or more vacation, and of course the freedom to do what you want, when you want to do it! Hopefully as you become more financially successful you will you will spend much of your time and resources helping others, but that's another book.

So, we all know we can be happy without these material things, but the good news is that this plan will help you make more money and have more time for doing good deeds and helping others financially too! Better yet, the business plan works for any business or product if you implement our suggestions and follow through with them. That means once you know how to hit a home run with one product or service, you can hit additional home runs with other products, over and over time. You just have to have hit the ball in the same place, over and over.

Now, here is the outline for making money on the Internet. If you already have a product to sell, you should still follow the outline, simply skipping the first step of finding a product to sell.

ˇFind a product you want to sell.
ˇUse the product, test it, know it.
ˇMake contact with new prospects.
ˇGet new contacts to your new website.
ˇGet their name and their e-mail address.
ˇAdd them to your mailing list / newsletter.
ˇBuild solid confidence with the new prospects.
ˇMake the initial sale on your primary product.
ˇMake the experience enjoyable for the customer.
ˇOffer similar products and services at point of sale.
ˇExpand your relationship with an automated newsletter.
ˇMake backend and additional sales with this customer.
ˇIntroduce affiliate and or viral marketing to your contacts.

The goals of marketing on the Internet:

In summary, my goal and your goal should be to represent quality products, to be educated about your products, be as helpful as is humanly possible, to continually keep in touch with the customer and to continually educate the customer via an on-line newsletter or e-zine, and to make buying from your website as enjoyable and as easy as possible for the customer.

If you do this, the Internet will be your best marketing and customer support tool ever. All you have to do is implement the basic marketing tools of the Internet that others use so successfully. These tools are mailing lists, search engines, e-zines , and more, but we've also mixed in a reference to affiliate marketing game because it's a great way for you to expand not only your product line, but your profits too.

Making a simple referral from your site can earn referral fees that pay you cash for just a bit of your time, and can be as easy as making links from your website to well known brick and mortar stores on the Internet or other Internet based vendors.

The best part of it all is the other company will take care of the entire sale and fulfillment procedures, sending you a commission check at the end of the week or month!

But enough for now about the affiliate based marketing plan. We need to get back to the basics of what you will learn in this book. We will teach you how to use the Internet to market your products and services, your website and in many ways, your knowledge. Whether you sell one product or many, a service or a product, we want to show you how to make more money on the Internet by showing you how to add value to your products and services and how to educate the customer before, during and even after the sale for additional income.

If you are planning on selling just one item on your site and focusing just on that one product, you may wish to go directly to the section on marketing your web site via the search engines and such. However, if you are interested in selling more than one item on your site, or are not sure what you are going to sell on the Internet, you should just keep reading!

Here are just a few vendors and items you can quickly and easily sell from your website, in addition to what you already sell on your site. Again, keep in mind that these companies take care of the standard business tasks such as order taking, collecting the money, shipping the product and returns, but still track the customer from your site to theirs to make sure you get commissions on their sales.

In addition, many programs then electronically connect the customer to you, so you earn commissions from these customer's purchases from this day forth!

Here's a quick summary of vendors:

Amazon, JC Penny, Office Depo and many more. As you can see with this many different companies, There are literally thousands of items you can sell.

Here's a quick summary of products you can offer.

Books, business cards, clothing, computers, office supplies, electronics and much, much more!  Almost any item that can be sold in a standard retail environment can be sold on the Internet, including groceries, which are shipped over night, for the right price!

You can even offer services such as:

  • Computers
  • Computer Services
  • Internet Services
  • Cellular Phones
  • Internet Access
  • Website Development
    And much, much more.

Remember, the Internet has some 70,000 new users per day. Making contact with a very small percentage of these new clients could bring in a very large income for the rest of your life. Many people pull in six figure incomes on the Internet, and you can too!

Now that you're all pumped up and excited about making money on the Internet, let's slow down just a bit and talk about what does NOT work before I show you now to really make income.

Things that don't work - traditional marketing - yellow pages, display ads etc.

It's not that traditional advertising does not work, it's just that it's too expensive for the average small business start up business. It also brings along with it a lot of unwanted baggage. Like a lot of unwanted expense and a lot of unrelated and unprofitable phone calls from customers who don't want what you offer and vendors who want to sell you something you don't want!

Yes, if you're already a business person, you know about the catch 22 of advertising. Just about every one of us who has been in business has probably entered the trap of the yellow page, radio, television and newspaper display advertising system.

You can't make money unless you spend money, they say, and they're right in many cases. Especially for the poor souls who do not know about Internet marketing and Internet based businesses.

Personally, I'm tired of spending $2,000 per month on old-time advertising to have the phone ring more often by telemarketers and people who want to kick tires. I want to make contacts with people who want what I have, get them the information they need via a website, e-mail responder, fax on demand, or any other automated process, then close the sale and even let an affiliate company collect the money, deliver (drop ship) the product to the customer for me, and pay me a commission, period.

When I had my retail computer store for 20 years, even when advertising did bring in bring in more customers and more sales to my brick and mortar retail computer store, I had to add more phone lines and employees to service the new customers, and then I had to make more sales to pay for the growth! Another catch 22!

When you get in this vicious circle, and you need so many sales to pay for the ad, it can become a full time, can't get away for a vacation business. That's why I like the Internet. I can market to a specific group of people inexpensively. I market products I can produce and sell myself, or let someone else do it via the Affiliate network marking plan. Why do I like it? I work by myself. No overhead, no employee issues, no expensive office building. I love it. This is the age of the Internet and the Entrepreneur on the Internet!

So when I say they standard advertising does not work, I probably should say I mean it does not get my hard earned dollars. For those who want to grow a business so that they have more and more responsibility and employees and overhead, that's great. But I'm interested in going the other way, earning more income (even in some cases residual income) and spending more time with my family. 

You make the decision about the type of business you want to run, and we'll help you with either plan. Reading this book is a step in the right direction!

Now, let's look at a few Internet marketing tools that do not work.

Bulk e-mail -new technology, but a still a major headache and a mistake.

Yes. It's a way to make a lot of money quickly, but I highly advise you to avoid it.

Sending out bulk e-mail is something most new Internet marketers investigate. Most smart Internet marketers decide against it because of the repercussions of making people who received the e-mail angry. But that's where your problems will just begin. Here's why.

Bulk e-mail is exactly what it sounds like. You purchase e-mail addresses in bulk and start sending them out at random via e-mail. Chances are, you'll be sending the information to the wrong person, and they complain to those who can make your life very difficult. The following will probably happen.

ˇYou may lose your e-mail account at your ISP (Internet service provider).
ˇYou may lose your Internet account at your ISP (Internet service provider).
ˇYou may lose your website hosting service and your websites will disappear.
ˇYou may have your name reported to anti-spamming organizations - ouch.
ˇYou may have people sending you thousands of nasty  messages called flames.
ˇYou may have people threatening your life. It's happened to more than one person!

People simply don't want unsolicited e-mail, and they have a right to use the Internet without you or me sending them unwanted e-mail. 

All in all, when you consider the ethical side of the issue, along with the fact that it may put you out of business, it's something to avoid. Enough said. Be a responsible Internet marketer, and you'll do fine. Take the quick and easy route, and you will be wishing you had not. Believe me. You'd be better to stick with honest, basic marketing ideas than to ruin you reputation before you even get started with your new business!

So, we'll talk about these honest marketing tips on the Internet next, but here are a few basic things you should do while you market on the Internet.

Put your marketing campaign on auto pilot!

Your ultimate goal should be to place your marketing campaign on autopilot, and have it so automated that you regularly receive e-mail messages in your mail box with an invoice, and a payment from your customers, without you even knowing the customer was shopping at your web site!

This happened to me just today as I was rewriting this book! I received an e-mail message from Paypal stating that a person had just sent me $29.95 for one of the books I had written some time back. Now, I did not recognize this person's name, but there is his money, sitting in my checking account. I did not even advertise the book yet, and had not even talked to him about it.

Only when I sent him e-mail with the book did I find out how he found out about the book. He replied that he had met me at a seminar in Texas where I had been lucky enough to speak, and he remembered me and wanted to see what I was doing now. He looked up my name on the search engines, found my website and ordered the book, plain and simple, without any assistance from me.

You can have this happen for you too, but it does not happen by luck or by sitting back on your laurels. I sold the book and earned almost 100% profit on the sale because I worked hard to get to that seminar (they actually flew me there) and I made a contact (that I did not expect to see again). However, because I did my work in automating my sales process, he was able to find me and my web site some 2-3 years later, and automatically purchase my book without me even knowing about it. Again, this is the kind of sale you need, and it can happen to you too!

And when I say I made nearly $29.95, I mean I actually made $29.95 minus 2-3% or so of the sale price for using Paypal, which was the only expense incurred for the sale and delivery of my book! I need to repeat that. I had no marketing cost or distribution costs, as I sent him the book via e-mail. What other product could you ever find that is 100% profit, and you simply pay 2% for accepting a credit card? Show it to me and I'll sell it for you.

But what is even more important to realize, is that I now have his name and e-mail address for future marketing campaigns. Now I can send him updates of my e-book on a regular basis, which will of course include information about my new products and services that I sell.

And you can do this with your product too! You just need to educate your customers about what you sell on a regular basis, at almost zero cost!

Take a moment to really think about what I said in that last sentence. I'll change it just a bit in case you did not catch the beauty of the concept. Whenever I send updates of my e-book (for which they paid me) to my customers via e-mail, not only am I making the customer happy with the updates, but I am also introducing them to new programs that pay me for making referrals, such as Paypal! The beauty of this is the customer is glad to have the update because it provides news about what interests him and I possibly make another sale or get paid for making a new referral for a new program. A win-win situation if ever there were one.

In fact, if you take a look through this book, 75% of the programs I talk about are programs and services that pay a referral fee. So, in effect, the customer is paying me to educate him and to read my business pitch. Best of all, he happy is to read them as long as I share my ideas and help him automate his life and help him make money. But I better not push that marketing idea too far, because you now know one of my goals for writing my books. My main goal is to help and educate people but I am also motivated by sales to write additional e-books and to send out updates to my e-book.

But that's why e-books are one of the highest profit items and of of the hottest items on the Internet. But Even if you don't sell an e-book, you should consider writing an e-zine for many reasons. Just the fact that it builds your credibility and keeps you in front of your customers at all times is enough reason to write one. No where else will you find a less expensive, more effective way of keeping in touch with your customers, building their confidence in you and selling them whatever it is you have to sell them, over and over and over.

That is why we cover these concepts in our series of books. They are the time saving and profit generating ideas that you need to consider now, before you complete or set your business plan in stone. Of course you will still read about the basics of computers, software and more as well as additional basic marketing tools such as press releases, search engine submittals, newsgroups and web rings and more, but you need to get the big picture first. Do you agree?

Great. Let us also agree that this section of the book is not written for corporations with millions of dollars earmarked for their marketing campaign. This book is for startup, small or mid-sized businesses. As such, one of your main goals for marketing is to get maximum exposure for minimum cost. Our next step is to automate your marketing campaign with these Internet based tools and rules.

Here is the general outline for automating your marketing campaign:

1. Start by building your web site.
2. Set up an automated e-mail responder.
3. Turn your e-mail responder into a full-blown e-zine.
4. Write your own e-zine or submit articles you have written to other e-zines.
5. Utilize Orbittalk to make on-line presentations, both live and prerecorded.
6. Automate and duplicate your system to increase profits tremendously and to ultimately free up your time.

Now that we've explained what we want to do, let's go and start at the top!

Creating your business web site... 

If you have not actually completed your web site, here are a few tips on actually building your own business web site (Read the complete book on creating your web site here). This step can be confusing only because there are so many ways to build your web site today. So many in fact that I wrote an entire book about the topic. And after working with hundreds of clients at different skill levels, all I can say is you need to take one of two paths. Either have someone else do it all for you from the start, or go ahead and build a test site with a free web site package to see just how easy it can be done, with the right package.

This way, you can do it all yourself first, get your feet wet and understand what is involved. That way you'll know what is involved for your web site designer, and be able to know what to expect, time wise and also cost wise. Seriously. Even if you plan to hire someone to build, edit and maintain your site, I advise you and anyone else to start out with the easiest free web site builder you can find and do it yourself first, then turn it over to them professionals if necessary.

Either way, you need a game plan and an outline for the web site to save time, and make the best web site possible. Here is a highly effective game plan. Take 10 legal size pieces of paper, label each page as page 1-15, then go back and label each page, as Home, About us, Our products, Ordering Information, and more, until you have all the pages named and laid out the way you want them. Of course you can use more than 10 pages if necessary, but keep it simple.

To keep it even more simple, you can even cut pictures out of your existing brochures, newspapers or magazines and paste them on each respective page to get an idea of how the site will look. More importantly, you will know how it will work for you and the customer. To get additional ideas for your web site, you should certainly go out on the Internet and look at web sites that are similar to yours before you start to see what they have done, learn from them and improve on their ideas. Take the best ideas and leave the rest. Here is a checklist for what belongs on your web site to make sure you don't forget anything. Also, don't forget to read the entire book on creating you own web site.

You must fill out the checklist, even if you do have someone else make your web site. It will save you time, headaches and money, guaranteed. Once this is done, you can still contact a professional Web site designer if you still feel you need help. However, you might just find out that your skills are better than you thought, and you have saved a lot of money. You may find that you can do parts of your Web site and you let someone else do the things you cannot do. My feeling about this all this: Unless you have more time than money, I would not take the time to learn HTML, Java and the like. Use a free website creator or utilize the many free scripts (forms for example) we show you in the book on creating your own web site and go from there.

Now, if you don't feel comfortable doing any of this, just print the checklist and do the best you can filling it out and hire someone to make your web site right off the bat. Then you can get on to marketing and producing your product and making money! That's my 2 cents worth. To learn more about this decision, be sure to read the book on creating your own web site and promoting it.

Creating your automated e-mail system... 

Now that your web site is ready, your next step is to set up an e-mail responder for your marketing campaign. We will explain why in a moment, but you may figure it out as we explain what an e-mail responder does. E-mail responders are similar to fax on demand. The concept is that when a customer requests specific information from you, you use an automated, 24 hour per day service to instantly send them the information, usually within just a few minutes. In a fax back system, of course your system sends them a document via their fax machine with the details of your offer. If the request is sent to an e-mail based responder, then your system sends them the document via e-mail, again within just a few minutes.

"It's a well-established fact that autoresponders are a necessary tool for selling online, because they automate the follow-up sales process. This means few (people) can do the work of many (people.) Statistics indicate that a factor of at least 7 follow-up messages are needed before people will TRUST you enough to buy from you online. Selling anybody anything is a process.." From ProAutoResponder

Aand believe it or not, a good e-mail responder is better in some ways than a web site. Here are a few reasons why: Let's say you run an ad in the newspaper or advertise on the Internet. If you advertise your web site address, the customer may come to your site, get distracted by a phone call or whatever, and leave your site without fully exploring it or buying anything. However, if you advertise your e-mail responder, there are many more ways and reasons for you to keep contacting the prospect and a higher chance of making a sale.

Remember, it takes an average of seven contacts with a customer before they purchase from you. You have a much higher chance of making money with the e-mail responder. First of all, you can track your advertising dollars as you can advertise different e-mail responders in different media and publications, such as web sites, e-zines, magazines and more.

Second, you can also let the prospect pre qualify himself with an e-mail responder, asking them to visit different sites for different sets of information on your offers, depending on his/her interest. Finally, and most importantly, now you have the customer's e-mail address for additional marketing campaigns, which is what you really wanted in the first place!

The beauty is that the entire process is automated. You probably don t even know that the information has been sent to the prospect. But the customer gets the information instantly, and as in my case, he may even purchase your products or services from your e-commerce enabled site before you (the vendor) even know there is interest in your product or service.

I must repeat this statement again. Even though it is nice to make a sale, remember the two most important reasons to use an e-mail responder.

1. You now have the prospect's e-mail address for further marketing campaigns.
2. You can pre qualify the prospect for further sales, perhaps for years to come!

Here are a few additional reasons to use an e-mail responder:

* e-mail responders can potentially reach 210+ million people.
* E-Mail responders increase sales by improving customer support.
* E-Mail responders reduce marketing costs as you save on postage and printing.
* Your immediate response to inquiries means fewer sales lost to your competitors.
* You save time providing static info-store hours, fax numbers, and so much more.
* E-mail based marketing campaigns can send multiple messages to prospects.
* You can use them to them to quickly test a new product or service.
* You can eliminate the need for additional employees.

Talking about employees, think about this for a moment and let it sink in. Your e-mail responder is like your new employee, but it is simply a computer that waits 24 hours per day for incoming e-mail messages. When a message comes in, the system determines what person, business, or organization is being contacted and what information is being requested The responder then sends out the correct information to the requester's e-mail address - usually in two minutes or less.

The person requesting information encounters no busy phone lines, no waiting, no hassles at all, whatever the time of day or night. You pay no employment taxes or vacation pay, and an e-mails responder does not eat or sleep or ask for a raise. If you want to be competitive and increase sales and market share, you need to work harder than the competitor. You may have to work 24 hours per day, or have someone else doing it, even if that someone else is your computer. And you can pre qualify the prospect for additional services and products over and over for years! That s the concept we talked about before. You must pre qualify your leads, then follow up over and over again with the same product at a different angle, or even a different but related product over time.

If you're hoping to cut labor and expenses from your marketing campaign, you can implement an autoresponder today from many sources. ProAutoresponder is just one good example we review at the end of the book. But whichever service you choose, just get started immediately. Of course we can show you how to get yours for free at one of our seminars or in the affiliate information section. This is a perfect example of what we will be showing you down the line - how to get your technology services at zero cost. Basically, you can test a product, then if you like it, make referrals to your friends and associates. After you refer enough people you get it for free, or you can start making money from it as well!
But if you just want to get started now, you can just pay for it and establish your presence on the Internet right now for around $150 a year.

But whether you purchase the e-mail responder outright or get it for free, an e-mail responder is just a part of your online marketing campaign. The next logical step is to create your own e-zine, and you can easily turn your e-mail responder into an e-zine, by simply changing the name of your letter and the content of your writing to your own (newsletter) e-zine. As you will see, e-zine (e-mail base newsletters) are the very best marketing tools available today, even better than your own web site or e-zine.

Creating your own e-zine... 

An e-zine newsletter is simply an e-mail based newsletter you send regularly via e-mail to educate your readers about a shared topic of interest. Many e-zines will also include a review of a service or product you wish to sell, and some will include a tag line at the bottom with an ad for a related product or service. The amount of advertising in an e-zine is dependent on the topic of the e-zine, the readers and the author.

The number of e-zines has grown tremendously over the past few years because they are one of the fastest and least expensive ways to become successful on the Internet. You can easily make large amounts of money sending your advertisement to a large list of names you have purchased for your e-zine, but you must be careful to avoid building a reputation as a spammer, someone who sends unwanted or unsolicited e-mail.

The true ultimate goal of an e-zine is to build a small but loyal audience! To create a reputation as being the expert of a specific field, building a tremendous amount of exposure and traffic for your web site by giving away free information, then making repeat sales of related products and services.

Of course you don't have to do this exclusively on the Internet. You can still do it the old fashioned way by offering to be a guest speaker on television, radio, and for local groups. You can also offer to provide free articles to magazines and newspapers as well, and these all work as well, but you can simply reach larger numbers of people, less expensively and faster with an e-zine.

Another concept that is working today is providing free articles to web sites as and e-zines to build credibility for your knowledge and to increase traffic and exposure to your Web site. Many of today's e-zines have thousands or even hundreds of thousands (some even have millions) of subscribers. I'm sure you realize that with these sheer numbers of readers, it is easy to make large amounts of money just by sending your ad to any of these e-zines, just because there are so many people reading your ideas or the ads. Just imagine the recognition and possible sales you would make from 10,000 or more people reading your e-zine, or about you in another e-zine!

But again, the most important thing is the loyalty you can build with an e-zine. If you own an e-zine and have done a good job of producing useful material in your newsletter, you should have a loyal following and a higher closure rate for your sales over other mediums of advertising.

Think about it. Wouldn't you like to send a regular newsletter to people who know you and trust you? Do you agree that they would buy from you over the competitor because they trust you? After all, you have shown them your level of commitment and expertise. That's what an e-zine does for you, if you are lucky enough to know how to write one, market it and send it out on a regular basis. Wow.

But what if you are not a writer, you ask. Well, even if you are not a writer, you can still do this! You can still have your own e-zine, you will just have to improvise. You can use articles in your e-zine which others have written, and give them credit for the articles. Of course it is best if you write a review of the articles and the concepts, to show that you know what you're talking about.

We still suggest that you find something you like to write about, and write the articles yourself, for more credibility, but you do what you can do. The reason you really want to write it yourself is that you can send it to other e-zines to be used as articles for their e-zines, building more credibility for you and your knowledge, and bringing more traffic to your site, resulting in more sales directly for you.

You will need a few basic tools you need to create your own e-zine:

-A word processor to write your e-zine.
-A contact manager to track your readers.
-A program to subscribe/unsubscribe your readers.
-A program to send your e-zine via e-mail to your readers.

You can probably start out using your current e-mail program to manage your mailing list. You'll want to start by creating a distribution list in Netscape or a new group, if you're using Microsoft Explorer as your mail program.

If you can spend a bit more money up front for marketing your new business venture and plan on sending out regular e-mails or a professional e-zine, you absolutely need to invest in a more robust program.

One recommended program is ProAutoResponder, which is a very SIMPLE, POWERFUL program that is easy to setup and administer. The main benefits of ProAutoResponder to me is that the system does not use my e-mail server, and I can quickly and easily share my e-mail campaigns with others users! This means I can let you use a marketing campaign I created to sell a specific product, but the customer will think it is your campaign and you will get the profits from any sales! Too simple, too cool!

Another great program is called POSTMASTER, which will also simplify many business tasks for you at one time. Postmaster is a contact manager, appointment scheduler, e-mail responder and e-zine maker all in one. It will undoubtedly change the way you work, and this is one of the services you will thank me for recommending.

You can choose 2 different versions of the software:

Postmaster - Runs on your computer.
Bamboo - Runs completely through the Internet.

Go ahead and download a free demo of Postmaster at the link above and test it.

We provide more information here and compare the programs here. Just know that there are major differences between the two systems, If you would like the latest tips on the programs, simply send me an e-mail and I'll send you a quick update. Mailto: info@mynewoffice.com with the subject: postmaster

You may also want more information on writing an e-zine and trading advertisements with other e-zines, which leads us to the next topic. There are many excellent books on the subject and we plan to write a complete one in the future as well. For now, you may wish to review these resources we have compiled for you.

Simply send me e-mail and I'll send you a quick update. Mailto: info@mynewoffice.com with the subject: e-zines

Now, where do you find your leads for your promotions and your e-zine?

In this case, everyone has the same battle to win in building a good mailing list, yet there are many different battle plans. You can opt for the standard, tried and true marketing tools such as the classified adds, press releases, taking names from your web site with a guest book, sending e-mail to newsgroups or bulk e-mailing to groups of people, but some of these take a long time to work and some may even get you in trouble, such as bulk e-mailing.

Better alternatives to bulk e-mail exist, such as opt-in lists and pre-qualified lists and systems.

Purchasing pre-qualified leads

Purchasing pre-qualified leads is another one way to get the leads you need to get started with your business plan. If the leads are truly pre-qualified, you know they are interested in your products and services, and your closure rate will be much higher than with non-qualified leads.

Here are a few sources of leads.

Beware however, that pre-qualified may mean one thing to you and another to the owner of the list who is selling it to you. More on that in a minute.

Benefits of purchasing pre-qualified leads.

ˇYou can test the marketplace to see if your product will sell.
ˇYou can test the marketplace for the right pricing and terms of sale.
ˇYou can test the quality of the leads you are purchasing before purchasing more. 
ˇHigher closure rates if you are offering a quality product in the right price range.

Some leads are high quality, some are not worth purchasing. Many pre-qualified leads are simply leads that have expressed an interest in a related product or service. Other  companies actually allow you to prepare specific questions for the interviewers to ask before the lead is presented to you.

One program we use allows us to actually ask the prospect our own questions. We send the questions to the person who will be interviewing the prospect before they even call the prospect. Then they ask the customer 3 pre-qualifying questions before their name is passed on to us as a lead. This way, we know we have a very interested party before we actually even talk to the customer. Using this process we have a much higher sign-up or closure rate. 

Here is one source of these leads: MiHinc

Opt in lists: 

Opt in lists are lists e-mail addresses of people who have agree to join in the hope of receiving information on a topic of interest. Opt in lists are also great marketing tools because you can send targeted e-mails to people who are interested in your area of expertise.

There are many sources of opt in lists, some are free, some are very expensive.
The main goal is to find an opt in list that is very targeted, that is, related to one topic, specifically what you have to sell.

 We do have a few caveats regarding opt in lists. Unfortunately, many people who join opt in lists do not realize that they are agreeing to receive e-mail from more than one company, or that their names may be sold to other companies. They may not appreciate your e-mail if it is not related to their interests, so be sure to know whom you are mailing to and that they share your interests.

In addition, I've heard that some vendors who sell opt in lists are selling e-mail addresses for persons that actually did opt in for any mailing list. Be sure to check referrals for anyone who is selling you these lists.

I've also heard of people who will sign up for your opt-in lists just to get YOUR name to send you e-mail about their offers! Many times they create false e-mail accounts and set up an e-mail responder to send you back information, or to add your name to their e-mail marketing campaign.

So, the bottom line is you must be very careful about using these lists, but if you do find a good list or can build your own opt in list, it can be a gold mine for your business.

Load your wallet: Click here!

Purchasing mailing lists

Of course if you're in a hurry to build your client list, purchasing a mailing list is a great way to build your customer or prospect list fast. Mailing lists are usually sold for a set price per thousand names, usually about $25 to $100 per thousand (CPM), depending on the the quality of the lead, how old the lead is and what what format you choose for your delivery.

Most all leads come with a first and last name of course, and then one or more of the following options:

ˇSome leads come with addresses only.
ˇSome leads come with phone numbers only.
ˇSome leads come with e-mail addresses only.
ˇSome leads come printed on labels, ready for you to attach to your brochure.

Remember, you can use these labels one time only so be sure to make them count!

Other leads come on a floppy disk so you can export them to your database or contact manager and print out the labels as many times as you like. If you want to get real value out of the  names, your best bet is to get them the e-mail addresses so you can send more than one message to the prospect, very inexpensively.

The main cost differential here is the better the lead and the easier it is to close the prospect, the more expensive the list will be to you.

InfoUsa: Click here!

Opt-in lists - join an opt-in list.

If you don't want to spend money on the qualified leads, you can join opt-in lists. Opt in lists work because they allow you to advertise to others who have agree to read your ads if you read theirs! Links2u is a great place to start building a customer list. It's one we use to not only learn about other programs, but to build our own mailing list.

Please visit this site, and let them tell you more, as there are a lot of options with this program. But here are the basics. The system allows you to:

ˇPost your site on other reciprocal websites.
ˇSend e-mail to all new members of the service.
ˇSend targeted e-mails to specific demographic audiences.

Here are a few sources of leads:

Links2u: Click here!

Again, your goal is to combine many different tools to collect names and e-mail addresses of people who are interested in what you have to say!

Now on to setting up your computer to accept orders via the Internet!

Setting up your web site to accept orders!

(Excerpts from: "Using computers to Automate your life," Book)

Now that you have automated all of your personal tasks, let's talk about putting your marketing plan on auto pilot to save time and create an explosive growth in sales. Actually, we'd better make sure you're ready for the business once it comes through the Internet, so let's talk about accepting payments automatically via the Internet first.

Let's start out by talking about accepting credit cards. You need to know foremost that it is so very, very important to the success of your business to be able to accept credit cards and bank drafts on your web site. Statistics show you will sell 65% more product from your web site if you do accept credit cards. We cover this topic extensively in another chapter in the book, and in the interest of saving space and paper we will not insert the entire chapter here. However, we do want to make a few very important notes on the following options all the same.

- Accepting credit cards.
- Accepting electronic checks.
- Accepting additional forms of payment.

Accepting payments over the Internet...

If you want more sales with less hassles, it is very important for you to automate this process. There are many ways to accept payments over the Internet, some more expensive than others and some more complicated than others. You will want to review the chapter on building your own web site for more detailed information, but here is a summary of the process and your goals for setting up an e-commerce based web site.

First, the process is as follows. The customer visits your website and reviews what you have for sale. The customer then chooses items he/she wishes to purchase, and places them in an electronic shopping cart. The customer can then add or remove more items from the shopping cart until they are ready to check out and pay for the items. This is called the check out procedure, just like what you do when you go shopping at the supermarket.

Now the customer provides information to the website such as

ˇCustomer name / Phone #.
ˇBilling Address of customer.
ˇShipping address of customer.
ˇShipping method - overnight, 2nd day, ground, etc.
ˇPayment method - credit card, electronic bank draft, etc.

At this point, all taxes and shipping expenses are calculated. Next, an electronic invoice is generated, sent to both the vendor (website owner - you) and customer via e-mail. Payment is collected via credit card or electronic draft check. Once the payment has been deposited in your account and verified (to protect you), the product is then shipped to the customer. In the case of electronic draft checks, the product may not be shipped to the customer until the check has cleared the customer's bank and been verified as being officially deposited in your bank account.

All in all, the system offers a great amount of flexibility to both buyer and seller and makes buying and selling products and services an effortless task.

Of course there are additional benefits to operating your store on the Internet and being an IBB (Internet based business), but one of my favorite concepts I often point out to people who tell me they want to open a second, third or fourth store location is this: "Why open another brick and mortar store when I've shown you the costs and benefits of opening a new location on the Internet?" This statement alone sells more web sites than any other, and it even convinces some people NOT to open a retail store!

(Please review the book on e-commerce for a full review of the benefits.)

The basic benefits of e-commerce are:

ˇCustomers can shop 24 hours per day.
ˇCustomers can perform complete research on products.
ˇCustomers can print out specifications and compare with other manufacturers.
ˇCustomers can save money by not paying sales tax (depending on state laws).
ˇCustomers can shop from the warmth and comfort of their home or office.
ˇVendors can offer convenience, product information, and great prices.
ˇVendors can offer a wider variety of product for sale.
ˇVendors can drop ship products.

Again, because the Internet is a relatively new concept to most people, for these benefits to be realized, you need to be able to make it very convenient for them, particularly when talking about how you accept payments for your products.

Accepting credit cards from your web site. 

There are many ways to accept payments via credit cards from your web site, besides setting up your own merchant account, and they are listed below. If you would like to know specifically how to set up a merchant account, send me e-mail request now, and I'll send you the information via e-mail. It is a complicated process, and the details can change quickly, so we would prefer to send the latest, greatest information via e-mail when you request it. Just send e-mail to: jddavin@mynewoffice.com and enter "merchant account" in the subject line.

Accepting checks over the phone:

If you don't understand accepting bank drafts, keep reading. If you'd like to be able to accept bank drafts, just visit http://www.checkman.com

Just know that it's easy to accept checks without actually seeing your customer. Anyone with a copy of CheckMAN!", a computer and a printer can legally accept a check via Phone, Fax, Email or the WWW! It's now Faster and Less Expensive than you would ever think! We have been successfully accepting this form of payment with tremendous success! Say Good-bye to the high credit card merchant account fees! With CheckMAN!", you will have absolutely no recurring fees, or monthly charges! Your only other expense EVER will be to purchase blank checks! (About 5˘ each!) With this State-Of-The-Art program you can even print checks drawn on your own account ready to be signed made payable to who ever you would like.

The Internet is not the only way you can accept payments of course. The software also allows you to take a check via phone or fax. All you have to do is ask the customer for the information from one of their checks, including:

-The customer's name:
-The bank's name:
-The routing information:
-The checking account number:
-The check number from the account:

Of course, do not forget the amount of the sale, including shipping charges and any taxes that may apply.

Here is an example of how it works: You simply print the check from your computer onto a laser printer, and deposit the check into your checking account! It s that simple! The customer can even fax a voided check to you if that is easier for them. Here are a few words of caution however: You may want to wait for the check to clear their account to protect yourself.

Still, there are some major benefits to accepting checks this way. For one, it allows you to make sales that you might not otherwise make, specifically to people who do not have credit cards. In addition, the checks you print are also less expensive than accepting credit cards. I ve used programs that cost as little as 3 cents per check! All in all, this is a good start for anyone accepting payments for a product, via the Internet, fax or phone.

The only limitation of accepting checks is that you do have to wait for the check to clear at the bank, which is particularly bad for anyone who wants to sell information or e-books via the Internet, because anyone who wants to buy your e-book usually wants to read it right now, and won't buy if they cannot have it in a matter of minutes or hours at most. For selling e-books and such, you need a better solution, and it's called Clickbank.

Accept payments via Clickbank 

Clickbank is probably the fastest and easiest way I have found to quickly and easily sell your products on the Internet, especially if you are:

1. Not wanting to set up your own merchant account
2. Wanting to sell information based products (e-books/e-zines).
3. Wanting to set up an affiliate based program to allow others to sell your products.

ClickBank is the online billing and marketing solution used by thousands of web businesses that deliver unique products and services over the Internet itself (via web pages, files, or email). Their payment technology lets any web business (a seller) automatically pay sales commissions to any other web business (an affiliate) that links a paying customer to the seller.

Clickbank bills the customer, pays the seller, and pays the affiliate. All in all, Clickbank is an easy to use, easy to promote service. What that all means is that if you want to pay someone to sell your products for you and you want to let someone else collect the money for the sales, track the commissions and send out the checks to both you and your sales people, Clickbank is your vehicle.

In my humble opinion, it is the easiest way to sell items via the Internet, if you don't mind paying a slightly higher fee per transaction. But the simplicity of the program and the opportunity to have others sell your products for you make it an easy selection for many Internet marketers.

Of course there are additional programs out there that offer this service. If you're interested in more information about allowing others to sell your products, send me e-mail and I'll send you an update! Just send e-mail to: jddavin@mynewoffice.com and enter "reseller info" in the subject line.

Accepting payments via Paypal

Paypal allows Internet users with an e-mail address to send and receive money electronically through the Internet. The program is free for non-business entities (at the time of this writing) and charges a small fee for business users. This program is truly useful for anyone who wants to pay a bill, send money to a friend to pay for a movie, accept money for a sale or any other need for transferring money.

If you sell subscriptions, you will find this program especially useful. The program even allows you to collect money for subscriptions, and generates names and passwords for your subscribers! With a little work on your end you can set it up so it's all automated and a hands off, no labor operation.

Not only is the program a great concept, but I also believe the company is an example of an aggressive and progressive marketing concept. The company is experiencing tremendous growth, with this main concept: Instead of spending millions of dollars on advertising, they pay for referrals, plain and simple. They start out by paying the person who referred the customer $5.00 and they pay new customers $5.00 to sign up, so everyone wins.

These costs are well below the standard costs of customer acquisition today and they are signing up people like crazy. When I talked to customer support at Paypal today, they mentioned that they had 4,000,000 users after being in business for just a few short years. I said FOUR MILLION USERS! That means the program will become a standard in the industry. In fact, they are even one of the few Internet companies that plan to actually have an IPO this year, this week as a matter of fact.

You can sign up for a Paypal account here.
https://secure.paypal.x.com/cgi-bin/webscr?REDIRECT_URI=/refer/pal=jddavin@yahoo.com

Those are just a few options for completing the sales transaction via the Internet, but here are a few more ways to complete the sales transaction on the Internet.

More options for selling your products:

Here are a few more options to simplify the ordering process.

1. Hire someone to do it for you. However, you'll have employees and the responsibilities that come with employees. I've been an employee and employer (20 years), so I see both sides, and this is not my best option.

2. Contract with a company for the entire fulfillment process, from answering the phone to taking the orders, to packing and shipping the product (or drop shipping the product) and more. There are plenty of companies that will do this, from start to finish.

3. Opt for the affiliate based marketing plan, which we will explain in detail. Affiliate based programs are the most exciting, cost effective, easiest way to sell products on the Internet today.

Let's review these three options. Of course the very best option is to take orders from your customer via an e-commerce solution on the Internet, and let the computer do all the work. The customer simply pays via credit card and you keep all the profits.

However, the world is not always perfect, and the customer may not always be willing or able to pay via credit card or at least not on the Internet. Or you may have a more complicated product to sell that requires contact with a person. Thus, you may want to offer the customer a solution that allows them to talk to a live person to close the sale and take their payment. You ll still get the sale, you ll just have to either be flexible with your schedule and be available to talk to the customer whenever they want to talk to you and give you money. Or you can earn a little less money in the process and hire a professional service to take the orders for you.

Personally, I prefer the latter. I am the kind of person who loves to talk, which would keep me from writing books and making more money, which is bad. So, if you love people, are a great salesperson and don t have other projects going, by all means offer a phone number where they can reach you and personally take the order! You ll have fun, close the sale and perhaps make a new customer or friend for life!

But if you're like me, and you want to spend your time developing a product and let someone else do the work of selling, collecting the money, shipping products, taking care of warranties and paying commissions, here are the options.

Hire an employee to take your orders...

This is the most complicated option, and you should contact someone at sba.gov or score.org to explain the benefits and responsibilities to you of hiring employees. It's a major job to have employees with the responsibilities of taxes, scheduling, training and more, but it is the only option for some of you.

If you go this route, you ll want to set up a script for the person answering the phone for sales and show them the ropes for the tasks you expect them to perform, such as answering the phone, taking orders, accepting credit cards, making deposits, shipping products, etc.

We would then also have to open a lot of discussions of taxes, outside VS inside salespeople and more, but that's all we'll say about employees for now, because this book is oriented toward using technology for small businesses rather than about running a business, and we'll focus on other options.

Finding a company to take your orders...

Your first other option is to find a company who will take care of all the fulfillment tasks for you, such as answering the phone, taking orders, accepting credit cards, making deposits, shipping products, etc.

You may make less per sale, but if you're good at marketing or coming up with new products and services, this may be a good option for you.

First off, you ll need to interview different companies to see which one can offer you the best services at the best prices. Here are a few things for you to consider.

Make sure the company offers an incoming 800 number, which the company will probably already have. They'll simply set you up with an extension off their 800 number, that will look like a private line to the customer.

Next, you'll have to set up a sales pitch script for the person answering the phone for sales. Make sure you role play as the customer as a test, to make sure the salespeople are knowledgeable about your product, and competent to represent you. You may even want to call in and make an order without the them knowing it is you, to see if they're doing a good job of representing you and your products.

You'll need to offer adequate training so that they know enough to talk intelligently about the product and to take the order, but not enough to say the wrong thing to lose the sale or send you to litigation for misrepresenting your product or service. Instruct them to tell the customer they are only here to take the order, and if the customer has questions before they order, they need to view your website for the information they need, or they can contact you via e-mail or your phone (if you wish to offer that option).

Next, you'll have to go over pricing, ordering and payment information. You should be able to accept Master Card, Visa, Discover and bank drafts, as we've already discussed.

 Top ways to promote your website off the Internet.

Here's a quick list of simple ways to promote your website off of the Internet, followed by more complex marketing tools, complete with explanations.

1. Place your website address on your letterhead.
2. Place your website address on your business cards.
3. Join a referral group in your community. Referral groups are (get data from your website.)
4. Run small classified ads in the local penny shopper or advertiser.
5. Write a weekly article or series for the local newspaper or special interest club.
6. Give a presentation at a local group or special interest club.
7. Become a guest speaker on a local radio show, and talk about what you know!

If you do decide to use one traditional marketing tool, be sure to check out this resource!

Classified ads in the newspapers and magazines.

One of the best ways to get the word out is still to spend a bit of money and place display ads in the papers and magazines, or better yet, small text based classified ads in local newspapers or penny shopper type of community newspapers. Try to get your best value and do it quickly by making one call to one vendor.

Place your ad in thousands of newspapers across the country for one LOW PRICE!

Other ways to find the newspapers to advertise in:

Gebbie Press

If you wish to look up the magazines one at a time, another great source is Gebbie Press, which provides a list of America's newspapers and magazines broken down not only by state, but also by industry and other categories!

My advice is to visit the public library and find this book instead of spending the money on the programs you see late at night on television telling you they have the lists of thousands of newspapers. They may be marketing guru's but I ordered the package and was not impressed. It looked like they had a copy machine making copies of the book and forgot to put the papers straight in the copy machines. All you get is a name and a phone number and that's not enough. Just a personal opinion, it's simply not worth the money unless you cannot get to the library or they don't have the Gebbie Press book at your public library.

National Mail Order Association

If you also decide to utilize direct marketing tools, be sure to visit The National Mail Order Organization. They have all the information you'll ever want related to direct mail campaigns, including mailing lists, mailing materials and more.

http://www.nmoa.org

Standard Rate and Data Services (SRDS)

If you do wish to use standard media, please check out the useful data at Standard Rate and Data Services (SRDS), which will include sources and rates for most standard mediums. These standard mediums are magazines, newspapers, television stations and more.

http://www.srds.com/index.html

Starting with the basic business tools everyone needs.

You may not decide on a specific product or service to sell right away, so let's start out with some basic business tools you'll need to start your business, regardless of what you sell. Of course you need a business plan, financing, etc., a but we'll talk about those things in the book on starting a business. Right now we're talking about things you may not have thought about for marketing your business and website.

Important:

We'll be sure to continually add more business tools to this book over time, so be sure to download new versions of our new book periodically so you always have the updated information.

The Basics:

Before you start, you certainly need to make sure you review our check off list for the standard business tools such as matching business cards, envelopes and letterhead as well as a fax machine and other essential tools that any salesperson will need.

Click here for a checklist of items you will need.

Even if you're marketing on the Internet, you'll still want to be able to hand out a business card now and then, or fax a proposal to a customer that does not have access to the Internet. Not everyone uses a computer, even in this day and age! Even so, it is a given that a website is the most basic tool you'll need to build a huge customer base for your services well into the future, where everyone will use computers and the Internet, even if they don't know it now!

Because you've already read our preceding books, such as our book on how to build a web site, you should be able to build at least a very basic website inexpensively to test your market and your business plan. Here is a great source of web site templates to save money and time.

Be sure to go over the web site checklist on what should be in a website and make it an e-commerce enabled site if you plan to sell anything directly on your website.

Target Marketing and automating the process:

Why must you target and automate your marketing efforts? Primarily because Internet marketing is not as expensive as other marketing mediums. They may also think just having lots of people on their mailing list is good, that it will generate income. Not true, and more importantly, time is money. In addition, keep in mind what you may be losing in terms of time with your family or income you could be making doing something else that paid real income.

But targeting your market important on the Internet for two reasons. First, you have the opportunity to save money by marketing to the exact demographic profile that will be interested in your products. Second, there are more dire repercussions to marketing to the wrong markets, particularly with e-mail that can be considered spam, as mentioned above.

Here's a good example of advertising in the wrong place at the wrong time I saw an interesting commercial regarding beer the other day. The advertisement says basically, "Who ever told you drinking would never get you anywhere was wrong". The commercial went on to state that you can win a free trip to a concert by buying their beer in a drawing. Because this is a commercial during a football game on television, a recovering alcoholic may see the ad, and the people watching the football game and society say its acceptable. However, if you ran that same ad in a Newsgroup for recovering alcoholics, you'd be thrown out of the discussion and flamed to a crisp.

The bottom line is marketing to the wrong people is almost as important as marketing to the right people. Along these lines, many people think that Internet marketing is not as expensive as many other mediums, but it's still expensive, especially when you combine your time into the equation. Be sure to make the most of your time and your money, because time is money. If you spend 20 hours marketing on the Internet when you could have gone out and worked on another job, that's money out of your pocket.

So we come back to the real key for effective Internet marketing, which is to advertise to those who want what you have to offer! That means you will do research on who will want your product, who will have disposable income to purchase your product, and who is economically efficient to reach with your advertising dollars.

Always remember, your main goal is to build a targeted prospect and customer list and then to market to the list regularly and effectively. If you're buying customer lists, be sure to be very specific in your criteria. For example, if you're selling online computer training, a good place to start may be with managers of large companies or school administrators, or such similar demographic.

Another best bet is to advertise in trade magazines, which are magazines specific to your target audience. A great source for trade magazines is http://www.tradepub.com. You can even subscribe for many of these magazines on-line while you're at the site if you 're interested in the magazine. If you need a sample copy, try writing to the company for a free issue. Be sure to explain that you are considering advertising in their publication, and ask them if they can send you a complimentary issue.

If that does not work, visit your local public library and see if they have a copy for you to read. The bottom line is marketing is expensive, so use every dime and every minute carefully and deliberately.

We don't believe in spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in advertising on the Net, and we'll show you how to market your products successfully and inexpensively too!

So, at this point we are going to go through some of the basic, well known ways to market on the Internet. Towards the end of the chapter we will introduce you to tools that are the cutting edge of technology that will generate real income for you for years to come.

Just write this down for the quiz at the end of the book.

Back to question #1 -what is your main goal in marketing on the Internet?

Answer:  Your main goal is to acquire as many customer names and e-mail addresses as you can, so you can create relationships with people that last for years and years! If you can remember that and implement all of these ideas, you will be a very successful Internet Marketer!

Getting traffic to your site for sales and collecting e-mail addresses for your newsletter!

Getting traffic to your website is the most important task of the day for the success of your website. Without traffic you have no prospects. Without prospects, you have no customers. Without customers you have no sales. Without sales you have no profit. Without profit you have no website. You get the point.

There are many ways to get traffic to your site. Some tools are better than others and some tools simply don't work anymore. Gateway pages are examples of a tool that does not work today because the rules have changed. Gateway pages were the hot marketing tool only six months ago because they allowed you to basically make copies of your website and post them to the search engines more than once. Well, the search engines figure this out  with dire consequences to those using these tactics. Now the search engines simply may not post your website at all if they find you using this trick. As we say, the search engine business is a science and a mystery all at the same time, so you 'll need to explore other options besides just submitting on the search engines.

Along these lines, your marketing campaign must be a combination of many efforts, not just one of any kind. You will pick up a lead or two here, a sale over there. It takes time to build a good marketing campaign as it does a long time to build a good customer list. Make a plan and work the plan. We'll outline a plan later in the book.  For now, here are a few tools with which you need to familiarize yourself. For now, here are a few tools you need to familiarize yourself with.

Search engine submittal software/sites

Search engines (directories) are tools that that help users find your website. They present your Internet Website according to the words the user types in as key search words. Once the customer hits enter, the systems comes up with a list of all links related to they keywords they chose. At that point, the prospect can then click on each link and visit that respective site.

Examples of search engines (directories) are http://www.yahoo.com, Dopile.com, google.com and http://www.altavista.com

Because your goal is to make sales from traffic (users) to your site, it is imperative that you register your website correctly and often in the search engines.

However, it can be very difficult to get a high ranking because there may be millions of related sites on the Internet that sell office supplies, for example. So you must take time to analyze your website and the way you build your website to maximize your ratings in the search engines.

Some considerations are:

Description - the description of your website.

ˇKey Words -the words that best describe your website.
ˇMeta Tags -groups of words or phrases that are related to your website.

Of course you can pay for hits from most of these services, but you should always start by submitting your website to the search engines with the goal of having your name come up high in the listings.

Note:

I am in the process of working with a major search engine submittal service to provide a regularly updated summary of how search engines work and what to do to get your site to the top of the search engines.

But for today, I will provide links to 3 or 4 websites that are experts in the field, and we will review a few services and software packages to get you started. Just know this: To be very good at positioning your site at the top of the search engines, you must study it like a science. The rules for success are very dynamic, changing daily and it's a constant job to keep learning to stay abreast with the changes in the rules.

Sometimes it is best to pay someone to get you to the top. Even though you can personally and manually submit your website to the search engines, we advise that you pay someone to perform this service or utilize an automated software package or service to help you.

If you decide to do it yourself, we are very happy to suggest Proboost and Submitwolf for your submittal solutions.

Proboost is an automated, online search engine submittal software package. There are many more programs you can use, and we will keep reviewing them and adding new ones to the list, but for now, this is the package to use.

Just remember that some of the top search engines do not accept submittals from these services, so you will still be best off to submit your site manually. As we've mentioned, Yahoo.com is one of the hottest and most used Internet Directories, and you will have your best luck submitting manually to the site.  Another way to get your site in yahoo.com is to submit to google directly as word has it Yahoo is actually using their system for their directory listings.

Of course we still suggest that you still use some of the many available software packages to analyze and optimize your website for key words, meta tags and descriptions. Here are a few places to start!

PROBOOST - PROMOTE your business online!

Here's what Proboost has to say:

Let us promote your business on 1550 search engines and Yahoo!, generate perfect Meta-Tags, link 400 sites to you and make your site Search Engine friendly to get you a higher ranking. We even assist you with Live Consultants whenever you need help.

1. Rank higher on the search engines
Unlimited use of our Meta Tag generator to provide you with the best possible Meta Tag combinations-based on the latest formatting requirements and algorithms from the search engines. Combinations are updated monthly and can even be e-mailed to your webmaster.

2. Get 400 quality sites linking to you!
Increasing your link popularity can dramatically improve your search engine rankings. Most search engines use link popularity as a factor in determining your rank.

3. Keep selling 24 hours a day!
We watch your site every 30 minutes 24 hours a day! If your site is unavailable, we will send you an email or page you via email so you don't lose sales!

4. Need help? Talk to live consultants
Unlimited free telephone support from our promotional consultants via our toll free telephone number. We are the only promotional service to offer unlimited free telephone support.

5. Get listed on ALL search engines
We submit you to 1550 search engines and directories each month to protect your site from being accidentally dropped by the search engines.

6. Stay search engine optimized and friendly
Our 'Members Version' Site Checker finds your site's problems AND tells you in plain English how to fix them. The Site Checker is updated monthly to reflect Search Engine changes.

7. Chat with Web promotion experts
Membership to our 'Premium Support' chat room where our experts discuss the latest search engine optimization techniques with our members.

8. Get your site submitted to Yahoo!
Our experts personally analyze, and submit your site to Yahoo! in the best possible category based on our extensive experience with Yahoo!

Submitwolf Pro-

What is SubmitWolf?

SubmitWolf PRO is an easy to use, professional website promotional tool, which automates the process of promoting your web pages on the Internet. It can dramatically increase the number of visitors to your web site.

You may have the best web site in the world and offer the best products or services, but all of that means nothing if no one knows about you or your website, which means they also know nothing about your products.

When your site is competing with over 400 million other web pages, you need an unfair advantage. SubmitWolf can give you that advantage.

Why pay a submission service to promote just a single URL, when for a flat rate fee, you can own the software which many such services themselv