High Tide Web

Basic Graphic Design

By: Kelly Paal

Whether you design your business brochures, flyers, web page, or ads there are some things that you need to know. There are some basic graphic design principles that those of us trained in the commercial art/graphic design field don’t always share. Here’s a short list of elements of graphic design that you can use today.

Color

This is the first and most important. Color is everything. It’s why we buy HDTV sets to get better color. You want to consider your product first. Is there a color that fits the item? Are you selling beach items, chose a sand color. Are you selling electronics, chose a metallic color. Next make sure the color is eye-catching but possible to look at. If you can’t stare at the color for at least the minimum amount of time that you’d want your customer’s attention, then don’t use it.

Line

And I don’t mean “a line” I mean the line of the elements in your project. Stand back and squint at your creation. Notice the line of the text and the images. Where are the lines moving? They should all direct your customer’s attention from the top of your page to the bottom in a seamless movement. If you notice an out of place line the directs your eyes back to the top of the page or stops it all together then you need to rearrange a few items. (Continue….)

Search Engine Optimization for Everyone

by Sherry Holub

There are many facets to SEO and the search engines continually change their methods of indexing sites to help prevent the same sites from staying up in the ranks all the time.

Here are some strategies we have personally used with our web design firm:

1) Google AdWords. This is an excellent and cost effective method of getting good search results. You set the maximum daily amount you would like to spend on your key words and phrases. Within the first month we were getting more client contacts through using AdWords.

2) Overture Keywords. A lot like AdWords, but we found that their system did not really allow you to set a daily limit to how much you wanted to spend and it quickly got out of hand with some of the phrases we had chosen! Still, pretty cost effective in the grand scheme of things.

(Continue article…)

How to Make a Living as an Affiliate
by Hans Hasselfors

95% of all affiliates make $0 – $100 a year. I don’t know about you, but in my books, this is not a living. In this quick “How To” guide, we’ll take a look at how you can become part of the 5% who ARE making their living online. This guide does not guarantee that you’ll make a fortune, but it will point you in the right direction if you’re interested in making a living as an affiliate.

1. Mindset: Get in touch with your grey matter. Program your mind with positive, committed thoughts. If you can believe it,you can achieve it. It sounds a bit like a sales seminar, but bottom line is, if you don’t believe you can make a living online, you won’t. You have to be committed. Commit to yourself that you will develop an income online – no matter what it takes. Think of your business as a bacon and eggs breakfast. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed!

2. Viewpoint: This is your business. Once you’ve accomplished your first hurdle and committed yourself to making this work, you have to look at your business from the proper viewpoint. No rose coloured glasses here. This is your business. You are the CEO of your own marketing company. You can choose to offer your services to one or several companies. Bottom line, you are responsible for every action in your company. Every decision you make affects your bottom line.

3. Learning Curve: Expect it. Becoming an affiliate is like going to college or university. You start at the beginning, learn the basics and build on what you learn. Take it step-by-step and you’ll build a much stronger business. Think of it like becoming a doctor. One doesn’t decide to become a doctor with the expectation of opening a successful practice one week from now. It takes time to learn the products or services you’re marketing and it takes time to learn to run your business.

4. Budget: Time and money. Set a general budget for both. As a business owner, you’ll use plenty of time developing and promoting your affiliate business. Budget as much time as you can each day and make sure you use your time wisely. Set up a budget for your monetary expenses too. You can run a business online with a shoestring budget, just don’t expect a mammoth income in the beginning. The more you can invest in your business, the better. This doesn’t mean that simply throwing money at your business will make it grow. Every dollar that goes out your door, needs to come back in and bring another dollar with it.

5. Goals: s/he shoots – s/he scores! Your goals will get you through the tough times. There’ll be lots of days when you feel like quitting. If you make your goals tangible, you’ll make it through the tough days. Money isn’t a motivator, but what money can buy, is. Set your goals for a family vacation, a new car, boat, or home. It’s much easier to get excited about a shiny red corvette in your driveway than $100,000 sitting in your bank account. Money is only numbers on a pieceof paper or a computer screen, but it can bring you a luxurious lifestyle, and that’s where the fun is.

6. Nuts and Bolts: Once you’ve got your house in order, with the proper mindset, you’re looking at your business from a realistic viewpoint, you’ve got an open mind and you’re ready to learn, you’ve set aside some time and money and you’ve got pictures of your dream house, car and vacation plastered on your wall, you’re ready to go hunting. The next step is to find a business that interests you and offers an affiliate program with a reasonable commission. For information products, one of the most popular and profitable online, you can and should expect a commission of 25% or more.

Pick a product that interests you. Buy it and use it. Your business is based on your recommendations of a product or service. If you haven’t used it, how can you recommend it? Avoid running around in circles after the newest, hottest selling product of the day, it only leaves you dizzy and broke.

Choose a product you’re interested in. If you like astronomy, becoming an affiliate of a star chart company may be a good fit. Selling women’s pantyhose may not.

7. Look before you leap: Finding a company to represent as an affiliate is one thing, finding a company that respects its affiliates is another. Do a bit of research before you jump on the bandwagon. Send an email to the company as if you’re a potential customer. 24 – 48 hours is a good response time. This shows that someone is actually running the company. It also gives you an idea of their commitment. Generally, the faster the response, the more committed the company is to doing business. The quality of the response is also important.Did the response answer your question? Was it written in a friendly, professional manor? Did they answer your question directly or simply send you to a FAQ sheet?

8. Flip the switch: If everything checks out up to this point,then your next step is to take action. Fill out the affiliate application form and get your affiliate URL. Now the ball is in your court. It’s time to get down to brass tacks. If you freeze now, you make no money and flush your goals down the toilet. If you take action, you make it one step closer to your goals.

9. If you build it – they will come: OK not really, but you do have to build it. If you want to maximize your income and be taken seriously, you need to own a website. Just like a brick and mortar business, you need a professional location to offer your products. Yes, you get an affiliate URL when you sign up as an affiliate, but promoting an affiliate link looks amateur and will help you LOSE 98% of your sales. We’ll cover this in point 10.

10. Follow-up = Sales: Only 2% of your prospects will sign up or buy what you’re offering, on their first visit. 98% of yoursales will be made from your follow up. There’s a very simple method for following up and making sales automatically.

i. Check your favourite search engine to locate a free ebook, software program or report that relates to your offer. If you’re promoting a website that sells peanut butter, a free peanut butter recipe book would be a good match. Your give-away must always relate to the product you’re promoting to maximize the results of this system.

ii. Build a page on your website to give away your free peanutbutter recipe book. Design the page as if you were designing a sales page. Make people’s mouths water until they want the recipes so bad they’d gladly pay for them, but then give it to them free. All they have to do is fill in their name and email address in the simple form and you’ll send their recipe book to them instantly via email.

iii. As soon as your peanut butter prospect fills out the formon your site and clicks the send button, they are taken to your affiliate URL where they can buy peanut butter. At the same time, the peanut butter recipe book is sent to their email address.

iv. Now your peanut butter prospect receives an email from you each week with new tips and useful peanut butter information. This information positions you as a peanut butterexpert and gives you the opportunity to promote your peanut butter affiliate website once a week, to hot prospects. This is where you’ll make 98% of your sales.

Although this may seem like an overwhelming amount of work for the beginner, it’s all very simple. The whole process is run from an autoresponder, a simple piece of email software that automatically sends your prewritten email messages on a predetermined schedule.

Your success as an affiliate is determined by you. 95% of the people that read this simple How To guide will do nothing withit. 5% of the people that read this guide will put all the pieces in place and start making a living as an affiliate. You have to decide which side of the coin you want to be on.

Hans Hasselfors is a successful business entrepreneur and internet marketing consultant. Get the net working for you. Join a community of like-minded entrepreneurs and make your living online. Become a member of The Business Professional network. http://www.internet-marketing-experts-online.com

Jump-Starting Your Forum Community

Author: Dax Christopher

Forums are an excellent addition to a website to attract visitors to interact with the site and to return to the website freqeuently. While there are many other website additions that can retain visitors and have them coming back for more, forums are perhaps the most engaging for visitors to your website and offer the most benefits to both the website’s owner and the visitor.

Unfortunately, having a forum addition to a website does not guarantee its success and usefulness in gathering the hypothesized attention and attractiveness. A new forum with no content, no members or no active discussion is like an empty hall. Anyone who steps into such an empty room would most definitely get the creeps and run away as fast as they can. Similarly, your forum can quickly lose its purported usefulness if it is empty and bare. Continue….

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Simple Survey Leads To Big Profits Online

– by Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
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Success online follows a simple formula…

“Ask and you shall _______.”

Most people fill in the blank with “receive”. Not only is it
a well-known phrase from the Bible, but it’s also a very
powerful online marketing principle.

If you operate a business and want to sell massively more
products and services quickly, the fastest way to do it is
by simply asking your customers and prospects what they
want… and then give it to them.

In the past, gathering critical research information through
customer surveys represented a very time-consuming,
expensive and labor-intensive process available only to
large organizations.

However, with inexpensive online tools, even a one-person
business can now quickly and easily conduct powerful surveys
to discover exactly what customers want – and then give it
to them.

Virtually any business can benefit from conducting a survey
because the information you get is priceless for your
planning purposes.

Do you know what your customers plan to purchase next?
(If you did, you could be the one to sell it to them!)

Do you know why they’ve purchased from you in the past?
(If they’ve bought once, they’ll buy again for the same
reason!)

Do you know what other products and services they have
purchased from your competitors and why?
(So you can be the one they buy from next…)

Knowing the answers to those three questions could literally
transform your whole business plan (and wallet) overnight!

The sad fact is most business owners just *guess* what their
customers want. Sure, they might make an educated guess
based on past experience, but it’s still just that — a
guess.

By conducting a survey you don’t guess what people want -
you *know* what people want!

When conducting a survey (online or offline) it’s critical
to remember these three points:

1. Keep your survey short and sweet.

People don’t want to spend more than a couple of minutes
answering your questions.

I personally try never to ask more than 6 questions and they
are always “yes/no”, multiple-choice questions that don’t
take much time.

Short questions also allow you to get instant “gut-level”
reactions from people, which is helpful in figuring out what
people will buy. People purchase on emotion, so a fast
response will show you their true feelings on a subject
since they don’t have time to think about it.

2. Give people a “bribe” for taking the survey.

You will increase response rates by 1,500% (15 times) or
more by offering people a reward in exchange for 2 minutes
of their time to take your survey. With so many time
constraints, giving people a “perk” for giving you some of
their valuable time will make the difference between getting
a dozen responses and getting several hundred.

3. Use simple, easy-to-understand questions.

When first surveying any group, you simply want to know what
they like/dislike, will/won’t buy in the future,
have/haven’t bought in the past.

As you get to know a group better, you can ask more detailed
questions, but also make sure you offer better bribes if you
expect people to take even more time answering your
questions.

When choosing an online survey tool to help you administer
your survey, make sure it meets the following criteria:

· It should require no programming on your part. You want to
just plug in your questions and have it generate all the
code, etc. so you can copy and paste it into a web page and
send it out.

· It should automatically calculate all survey results for
you in ‘real-time’ so you don’t have to manually calculate
responses. Do not get stuck doing “number crunching” because
your survey tool doesn’t automatically calculate results.

· It should send a “thank you” letter to people taking your
survey so you can send them a “gift” for participating.

Thanking people for participating goes a long way toward
leaving them with a favorable impression of you, as well as
setting the stage for both your next survey and your next
sale.

For a free report on how to quickly and easily conduct your
own simple surveys to increase business profits, go to
http://www.ebookfire.com/survey.html. Though the report is
aimed at a specific online audience (ebook publishers), the
principles will help any business succeed using surveys.

===============================================
Jim Edwards is the co-author of the NEW
“eBook Secrets Exposed”: How to Make MASSIVE Amounts of
Money – In Record Time – With Your Own eBook!
WHY are some people getting positively RICH selling ebooks?
Click Here Now ==> http://www.ebooksecretsexposed.com

Web Surfers Revolt Against “Pushy” Advertising

– by Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved

http://www.thenetreporter.com

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As the Internet continues to populate with websites trying
to turn a buck, two drastically different schools of thought
have developed on how to advertise online – “Push” and
“Pull.”

“Push” advertising involves the use of “in-your-face”
advertising tactics such as pop-up windows and direct email.
“Pull” advertising entails using search engines and posting
articles that literally “pull” interested consumers to a
website on their own terms.

As web surfers revolt against pushy advertising, site owners
who understand how to pull consumers to their sites will
come out the long-term winners.

“Push” advertising tactics worked in the past because they
had not reached a saturation point. Since not everyone used
pop-up windows, a site owner could use them without fear of
backlash. Now it seems pop-up windows hit consumers from
every angle and even multiple times from the same sites.

The cycle of events with online advertising always unfolds
the same way. Someone finds something new that works and
people immediately jump on the bandwagon. As a technique
saturates the ‘Net and loses effectiveness, instead of
finding an alternative, site owners just do it more!

Result: instead of pop-up windows going away, many site
owners just run more pop-up’s – more often!

Well, if recent developments indicate anything, they show
that consumers have said “enough” to pushy advertising.

AOL, infamous for their pop-up ads, has agreed to cut down
on the intrusions even though their earnings could use a
boost right now.

Major ISP (Internet Service Provider) Earthlink even offers
a “pop-up killer” feature on their new service.

Almost all email programs come with filters to fight
unsolicited email and many email add-on services have sprung
up to help consumers eliminate the unsolicited offers for
pornography, business opportunities, and promises of instant
riches.

This “anti-spam” sentiment has also caused an unintended
consequence for legitimate marketers. Many major newsletters
have found their emails blocked by spam filters intended to
stop unsolicited email. Through no fault of their own,
legitimate email marketers have found themselves casualties
of the war on spam.

The future of the Internet lies in “Pull” advertising driven
by consumer wants and needs.

The successful Internet companies of the future will invest
in search engine promotion and in providing valuable, on-
demand information consumers receive only when they ask for
it and want it. When a web surfer goes to their favorite
search engine and enters the keyword phrase “MP3 Player” or
“tax advice” that means they are receptive to information on
those subjects.

If they read an article about using vitamins to improve
health and click a link for more information, only then they
will they be truly receptive to a marketing message about
vitamins.

Consumers have taken back control of Internet!

Not with laws or more regulations, but simply by flexing the
muscles of their wallets. By pulling money away from
advertisers who annoy them and putting it with those who
meet their needs, the average web surfer has brought the
Internet powers to their knees and will continue to reshape
the Internet into an effective, consumer-driven
communications vehicle.

Any site owner who wants to have a thriving online business
and survive the next year had better take this fact to
heart!

— Jim Edwards is the co-author of a step-by-step, “paint
by numbers” guide that guarantees to teach you how to go
from zero to making real money online in about a month!

“33 Days to Online Profits”

=============================================
“Finally — a Simple, Video-Based Training System on CD-ROM
that Teaches You Step-By-Step How to Make Real Money Online-
100% Guaranteed!” You can start with a few bucks and a good
idea to make lots of money online! I did, and I’ll teach you
how no matter what product or service you sell…
Click Here => http://www.33daystoonlineprofits.com/video/10/
=============================================

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Crying For Help Online

– by Jim Edwards

http://www.TheNetReporter.com
(c) Jim Edwards – All Rights reserved
=====================================

Anyone surfing the Internet for more than a week eventually
needs help from someone else. Whether regarding an online
purchase, technical support on computer hardware, software
support or some other type of help, sooner or later everyone
needs assistance.

The way in which you ask for help has everything to do with
how fast and how well you receive assistance. In the online
world where email rules, the following tips will help you
get what you need and get on your way quickly.

* Remember the “person” on the other end *

When something on your computer or a particular website
doesn’t function properly, irritation seems a natural
reaction, especially when you have no clue why things don’t
work or how to fix them. A sense of helplessness often leads
to feelings of frustration and anger. However, no matter how
upset you get, you must always remember that a live person
will receive your email communication and, in many cases,
they didn’t cause your problem directly.

Remember, those email “missiles” that make you feel better
in the short term will almost always come back to haunt you
over the long haul.

When first asking for help, never send notes with phrases
such as “If you don’t respond to me within two hours I’m
going to contact my lawyer.” or “I sure hope this isn’t a
scam.” Rarely do such comments produce the cheerful help or
assistance you actually want.

* “Please” and “Thank You” *

Common courtesy goes a long way towards getting what you
want, especially regarding technical support. Notes with
nasty comments put the person on the receiving end in a bad
frame of mind. However, notes with a polite tone sprinkled
generously with “please” and “thank you” will usually
receive prompt and courteous attention. You can always get
more severe later if you must.

* Don’t use ALL CAPS *

Using all capital letters in an email rates the same as
SHOUTING in someone’s face! Ignorance of this custom online
does not excuse the behavior.

Though you may think typing certain words in ALL CAPS merely
shows emphasis on your part, to a “computer geek” you will
seem rude and offensive. Once you have offended the person
from whom you seek help, your chances of receiving that help
diminish significantly.

* Get to the point *

Everything happens quickly online. Time ranks number one as
the customer support person’s scarcest resource and they
don’t have time to read long emails to figure out what you
need.

When asking for help, always include your name, contact
information, order information, specific dates and a clear
description of the help or information you need.

Avoid including any extraneous information that won’t
contribute directly in assisting someone in giving you
exactly what you need.

Though the Internet and email may seem like an instant
solution to many problems, people still run the technology.
If you need help from another person, don’t treat the person
like a machine. You’ll get a lot further by doing it this
way.

- Jim Edwards writes a syndicated newspaper column in plain
language for non-technical people about current Internet
issues, challenges, news, HOT new tools… and much more!
“The Net Reporter” ==> http://www.thenetreporter.com

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
“Finally – a Simple, Video-Based Training System on CD-ROM
that Teaches You Step-By-Step How to Make Real Money Online-
100% Guaranteed!” You can start with a few bucks and a good
idea to make lots of money online! I did, and I’ll teach you
how no matter what product or service you sell…
Click Here => http://www.33daystoonlineprofits.com/video/10/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The article linked below is kind of unsettling. Especially the question begs to be asked, “What’s next?”

Researchers Snoop on Keyboard Sounds

Hightide-Web

by ddawg

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website.

To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ?00 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

by Dale Sexton

Effectiveness of banners are declining. Most web surfers can spot banners and have trained themselves to ignore them. Cooperation between webpage owner and advertiser is needed to resolve this.

Billions of dollars are spent for website promotion, over 75% is spent on banner ads. Large corporations spent most of this money on branding. For us in small business, only a very small group know how to use banners to there full potential.

-Tips for the Webpage Owner-

Page design and banner placement are vital for a higher click-through ratio with affiliate banners for the webpage owner. If you use banners, build your site around them to get maximum benefit. Why use banners if your not getting some form of payment?

Banner placement within the first screen a user sees will pull higher than those placed further down a web page (requiring a visitor to scroll down to see it). Most banners at the top of a page are ignored.

Banners placed 1/3 down the page are more effective. Banners (or buttons) placed on the lower right side of the screen (near the scroll bar) pull twice as much than banners placed at the top of the page.

>>>>Click HERE for the rest of the article.