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Archive for March, 2011

Advertising Marketing Through Online Web Directories

Online web directories are one of the three most popular and free places to place your advertisements for your websites links or other things. These are usually free but your bound to find some people trying to sell this service for a small fee. If you would rather pay someone else to do it for you or if the site offers a membership of some sort that includes some really great items then go for it. But if you want you can also accomplish this on your own and very easily might I add. Heres some steps for you to follow:

Goto your favorite search engine this is where your going to enter in the query to find what your looking for. Try searches like “web directories” “online directories” or “directory submission”.

Check the site out if your looking for something FREE make sure there is absolutely no fees or memberships you can usually find out if there are any fees when you goto “add a link”. Also make sure you check out their stipulations. Example sites must be in English no hate or violent sites do not submit affiliate links do not use ALL CAPS in your ad etc. There are basic “do not’s” to all sites but please make sure you read through these. In order for your ad to be visible you have to get it approved and to get it approved you must follow the rules.

Look for a “add site” “add Url” or “submit” option. If neither of these exist they probably want you to find your category first and then submit your ad. Just go through the different categories and subcategories and find the most relevant area to place your ad. Example: Home Family Cooking.

Once you find the correct place to put your ad and you find the “submit” or “add” area you will most likely be loaded to a form of some sort. If your new to this you might find this to be pretty intimidating. But don’t worry. This is a really simple process and through submitting your sites to several directories you will get pretty used to the course of action pretty quickly. Follow my lead!

Title: This is the Title of your site.

URL: The link to your website. Be sure to add the “http://www” at the beginning.

Description: Add a small description of your site. Be sure to use as many keywords relevant to your site as you can with out sounding like a commercial! Another wards don’t over do it.

Your Name: Self Explanatory

Your Email Address: I know its tempting to put a fake email address here but don’t. Most likely you will need to confirm your ad and may be given the option to update the site or renew your ads.

Thats about it. Once you have submitted your ad to the correct category you will most likely receive a confirmation email asking you to click a link to confirm. Once you confirm your site it will either go up immediately or it will be hand checked meaning an actual human being will check your ad before its submitted. Usually its an automated service don’t be quick to try and fool this automated service. If you put an ad that isint allowed it will be deleted. Maybe not right away but you can bet they will find it eventually.

You are allowed so submit your sites to several different online web directories if you choose to do so. Just remember to follow the rules of the site. If you don’t agree with the rules or your site is of a certain category the site does not allow like “adult” go right back to your search engine and do a search for “adult web directories” or whatever your site is about. The whole point of this is for people to see your advertisement. If you get banned from the directory or they delete your ad it defeats the whole process.

About the writer:  This author is the proud owner of http://www.linkfuze.com. Feel free to distribute this article in any way or form as long as you include this resource box.

Logo Design For Non-designers

The main purpose of this article is to help nondesigners understand the logo design process general terms requirements and things to remember when ordering a logo.

When you decided that your company needs a logo you need to think if you need a completely new logo or redesign the old one of course if you have it before searching for a designer. Redesign of the existing logo is often cheaper than design of a new logo.

There are a huge number of companies which offer logo design services. All of them have different prices number of concepts and revisions offered. Some of them can design business stationery for you. Lets talk about every point in detail:

Price is important factor; it is very unusual to receive high quality at low price. But Internet is the place where designers work from all over the world and logos are going down in price. You can buy logo of satisfactory quality for 100 yes one hundred dollars. One of the very important factors affecting the price is whether design company uses clipart premade pictures or graphic elements or creates unique logos. Be sure to find out this. Custom logos are much better because you will have exclusive logo nobody has.

Number of concepts is a number of ideas for logos which you will be offered after answering the logo design questionnaire. It is good to have more than one idea for logo because you will be able to choose. Usually you will receive a couple of ideas in different styles. When you choose a concept for your logo you will be able to change it using revisions.

Number of revisions is a number of possible changes which you can request for a chosen logo design concept free of charge. You can change everything including color font graphic element arrangement of the elements. The more revisions you have the more chances you receive a logo of your dream.

Turnaround time is an amount of time needed for work on your logo. Usually design process takes from 3 to 10 days. There are companies which can do urgent orders but the cost of logo will be higher.

Number of designers recently design companies started to indicate number of designers working on your project. Big number of designers should guarantee diversity of the concepts but this factor is difficult to control and it is difficult to find out how many designers really worked on your project.

Stationery design it is good if your logo design company will design business cards letterhead and envelope for you. Usually you will receive a couple of concepts of business stationery to choose from.

Things to remember during the communications with logo design company:
1. Number of colors of your logo. The more colors you have the more expensive will be cost of printing services.
2. Files optimized for print. Be sure to request files optimized for home and professional printing tif pdf jpg eps.
3. Source files of your logo ai cdr. Be sure to request source files of your logo; you may need them in future.
4. Use of photos in logo. It is very bad idea to use photos in your logo. Such logos are overloaded with graphic elements and have nonprofessional look.
5. Logotype with abbreviation or without company name. It is very difficult to advertise and promote your company with such logo. Logos with acronyms are good for very big companies which have a lot of money for marketing.

Logo is very important for each company and serves the crucial role of successful marketing. It is vitally important to have good logo from the beginning because redesign of logo will cost you a lot because of need to inform you clients about rebranding change business stationery and logos on signs cars etc.

About the writer:  Vitaly Pedchenko is a professional freelance logo designer Company Logo Design

How To Avoid Web Traffic Disasters Part 9

Disaster 10. Polishing Your Car But Never Using It

You know those guys who wax and polish their car every day yet never seem to drive it anywhere? You know the ones who treat their car like some Godlike creation that is to be admired and not used.

Well you can fall victim to this same disaster with your website. I know I did.

There was a point when I looked at my website I only had one at the time like it was my baby. And it WAS my baby I created the darn thing from scratch. Chiseled every edge and hammered every nail on that sucker.

It was a work of art. But it also made fewer sales than a Saharan umbrella salesman.

“My site looked amazing but it was making me NO MONEY and yet still I treated it with kid gloves.”

People would come up to me with all these ideas;

Person: “Why dont you put some ads onto the site to make money?”
Michael: “No.”

Person: “Why dont you put some sponsored items on the pages to make some money?”
Michael: “No.”

Person: “Why dont you start offering something for sale via the site to make some money?”
Michael: “No.”

I would not budge. This was my site. This was my beautifullydesigned website that visitors loved and adored as much as I did. So what was my problem?

I thought content = good and advertising = bad.

It cost me a lot of money in those early days.

Let me tell you from bitter experience dont get too close to your website if you want to make money online. This doesnt mean you need to sell out completely and plaster ads and promos everywhere.

You dont need to put anything on there if you dont want to. UNLESS you want to make money!

Its all about balance of course. And what I found is that my visitors tolerance level for ads and suchlike was a LOT higher than mine. I put the first lot of big ads on my site expecting the worst from my sites regulars and you know what happened?

Precisely nothing at all. Not one email. Not a peep. Nobody cared!

And you know what? I made easy money right away! I had been sitting on a gold mine all that time.

In fact this is one of the easiest ways to monetize your traffic get ads on your website. Whether its private banner ads sponsorships or AdSense its sure to generate you some money on autopilot. And if youre already doing it do more of it!

Done right more ads on your website can actually IMPROVE the appearance of your website and improve the experience of visitors. You need to get relevant ads that add as additional resources AFTER people have read the information you are providing them with.

Forget worrying about losing traffic. This was another thing that held me back. I worried that if I sent visitors to other places then Id be losing them.

But the truth of it is this;

People will click on what they WANT to click on. If they dont find what they want on your website then theyre going to leave anyway.

“So why not let people exit your website and PAY you for it at the same time?”

What happens is if you always focus on adding lots of fresh regularly updated great content then people will come back to your website time and again and each time they might click on an ad and make you money!

How cool is that?

So remember dont be a car polisher who never fully utilizes their vehicle. Maximize the virtual real estate youve already built up and dont be afraid to put more ads on your website to MAKE MONEY.

About the writer:  You can grab a a free 30minute MP3 Audio “How To Get Traffic Insider Secrets Revealed” and a free 40page Ebook on how to get traffic just by going to http://www.michaelstrafficvideos.com