Open Journalism For All - News, Documentaries And Information Services

Many “brick and mortar” stores have failed to realize the gold mine that is waiting for them online. It is quite simple for them to set up an ecommerce website and receive
customers on the Internet as well. In this way, they can maximize the revenue received both offline and online.

If you are looking to start an ecommerce website for you local business, it is best to hire a professional website designer if you are not able to do the work yourself. A
professional looking website is much easier to navigate, and can allow your customers to feel more secure shopping with you.

After you have gotten your new ecommerce website set up with your products listed it is time to consider what type of payment system you will use. If you only accept checks or
money orders that have to be mailed in, you will lose a lot of business. This is due to the fact that it is time-consuming and inconvenient for the customer to mail a check and then wait for the check to clear before they receive their package. If you can provide other
payment methods such as electronic checks or even better, credit card processing, more many more customers will purchase from you. Also be sure to offer secure processing for the customer’s purchase.

After you have decided on methods of payment you will receive it is time to consider shipping and the costs associated with this as well. Will you create a separate department to handle shipping of products ordered from your web site? Before you started a website, customers would walk into the store to buy anything they needed. Now you will
have to consider how to ship the merchandise safely to them. It is also a good idea to include shipping and handling fees in the price before the merchandise is shipped.

Another area of importance for any ecommerce web site is customer service. Most businesses will have a local number that customers can call in case of a problem. However, now that you have established your online presence, your customers will not all be local but located around the country, or even around the world. It is important for
them to have a toll free number or email address they can use to enquire about their purchases or ask general questions.

With these tips in mind, you will be up and running your new business web site in just a short time.

Copyright 2005 Burke Publications All Rights Reserved

Dr. J. E. Burke, an educator and entrepreneur, has been involved in various business enterprises via his business, Burke Publications for 11 years. Dr. Burke is an educator, writer and motivational speaker on a variety of topics. He is also known for his expertise on nonprofit organizations and grant proposal writing. Dr. Burke can be contacted at http://burkepublications.com or http://news.burkepublications.com

Link bypassing is the number one trap affiliates fall into online. Also known as the “affiliate links theft”. This “piracy” costs hard working affiliates promoting programs both time AND money. First, let’s do some simple math if you please:

Say that you are a beginning affiliate. Your income may be $100 per month. Does this sound reasonable to you? It is an example anyway…

So, referring to the study case, you may be losing 100 x 0.30 = $30 per month in sales.

This is $30 in pure loss Each and Every month that’s passing by without you protecting your links.

Or, let’s say you are an active “power charged” affiliate. In this case, your income might reach $2000 per month.

Your loss in sales is 2000 x 0.30 = $600 per month. Hmm…

Finally, let’s suppose you are one of those “super affiliates”! Your monthly income is at least $10.000. Let’s do the math again.

Your loss is 10000 x 0.30 = $3000 each month! Ouch!

Get the picture now? It is up to you to estimate your own losses — I don’t mind if you send me your stats. So I can do the math for you

Seriously. You know how harmful “link theft” is for any affiliate, I have to tell what exactly it is.

So. What Is Exactly “Link-Bypassing”?

You definitely know that your earning commission is in the link you have received from the owner of the affiliate program — a.k.a the merchant.
In other words, you get your money when you make a sale - Assuming you have joined a “pay-per-sale program”. And precisely, you earn money when your visitor ‘clicks’ on your own link and make the purchase!

Right?

If done properly, the visitor hits your link. A cookie (or any other tracking system) will be deposited in their computer. After that, the merchant program rewards you as the sale referrer. So your account is credited immediately. And you receive an e-mail telling you that you have just earned a commission. Fair you said!

Well, that’s the best scenario.

“Link-bypassing” happens when the visitor knocks at your website and notices the service you are promoting. And then she figures out the service “home URL” and specifies it into the web browser’s address bar directly…

In this case, no cookie was deposited in the prospect’s computer. And that means NO referrer… So YOU get NO MONEY.

Huh!?!

You Have Just Been Bypassed!

Unfortunately, this happens everyday and it will continue for the years to come because most of the marketers are not aware of it. Note that this also applies to referring 2nd-tier affiliates. As people want to be at the top of the tree. And they just don’t want to be another member in the downline. Even if it is fair because you worked hard to achieve that!

Am I right?

Don’t get me wrong, “link-bypassing” may be the consequence of a deliberate action of a pirate. But it may also be an innocent action from a curious prospect.
It is a fact, curiosity is a human nature. And you, as an affiliate in the Internet, you have to work with it!
So if you please, let me take you by the hand, and show you how you can deal with link theft.

How Can “link-bypassing” Be Possible?

Because the link you receive when you join an affiliate program may look like one of these:

http://www.site.com/page.cgi?username=yourID
http://www.site.com/?YourID
http://site.com/index.php?referrer=yourID
http://site.com/index.php?sponsor=yourID

All of the affiliate links listed above have got a flaw.

Here it is. Your ID number (or username) is clearly mentioned and the merchant website is quite obvious! Right?
The average visitor can figure out the merchant website easily. And this is not good news.

In fact, the status bar from the web browser shows the URL link when the mouse cursor is pausing over your affiliate link. And it’s at the reach of a “Copy & Paste” operation.

Here is the solution…

The alternative to this, is to add a piece of HTML code to your affiliate link. Actually, it should include this code inside:

onMouseOver=”window.status=”;return true”

You can see my website for more details.

What have we done so far? The web-browser’s status bar will remain empty to protect the URL. Okay, that is a good one!

But there is still another dirty trick to get access to your affiliate link. Here it is:
Visitors can open the context menu from your link and hit the “Properties” command. Form there, a dialog box would appear and tell them your exact URL

And there is even another way to your affiliate link: Viewing the source code of your web page…

But, the most important thing to keep in mind is this:

In a “link-bypassing” case, you (the affiliate) are the ONLY losing part in the transaction! Because the merchant gets the payment in full and the customer receives the product he/she has paid for. BUT your commission is simply discarded… Will you continue to stand there and take it?

Don’t you think it’s time to take action and get your share of the profits you deserve?

All the links in this Article were checked and verified on
August, 10th 2005

Get a FREE Consultation with the Author to Help You Protect Your Website and Increase Your Sales. Download the Website Protection Software Tool. No Code Knowledge Required. And it’s FREE. Request download links and instant detailed information! mailto:commission-saver@sendfree.com

For the real travelling worker out there, the handiness to connect up and employ your tools back at work can be a considerable plus. Now found in a great proportion of Nokia phones available now are Business Phones. These exceptional bits of high-technology make it possible for you to receive your data through internet browsers & e mail any of your customers and co-workers. In reality your business phone performs in much the same way as your note book might, the difference is it is much less than half of the size.

Nokia, as it’s said, makes its business connecting people. Nokia also believe that transportability makes firms healthier. Mobility gives you the ability to collude and carry out business outside the conventional work environments and times. Nokia provides a broad number of business devices. Each of the devices is for various types of consumer.

From their business range Nokia offer four particular makes of business hand set. These are communicators, smart phones, messaging hand sets and mobile hand sets. Nokia business sets support solutions such as Nokia Intellisync Wireless Email. Nokia carried out some research & was evident that employees utilizing wireless attained an average of an extra fifty-five mins. of work a day. This is assumed to expand to 80 mins extra productivity per day Christmas 07. Another perk of utilising their Business sets is that they will save some cash for your company or even for you yourself because you will not depend upon two discrete hand sets - people can have all they need in one set. There are many business phones on the Nokia website.

Their telephones are marvellous for companies and for professionals. All sets have outstanding designs, they are all incredibly compatible and not forgetting simple to use, once you’re accustomed to them. The email functionalities are excellent with support from Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Microsoft Office 97, 2000, 2003 and XP and don’t forget it is compatible with zip manager & Adobe Reader. Users can send and receive e-mails whilst conversing on the telephone but also they can access the up to date calendar and the contacts details. The e-mail facilities are also able to function in offline mode which means one are able to read and write e-mails when the network is down.

Even though the business hand-sets provided by Nokia aren’t all outstandingly petite, what you have to remember is the sets are great dimensions considering what they’re capable of. Nearly all the hand sets have a full featured keyboard and backlight, a large landscape screen plus an easy to use one touch feature to access email .

A business hand-set might not suite everyone but for the improvements it gives people who will make full use of all the facilities, its surely going to make their life a lot easier.

How to Become a Successful Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing is not an easy task to master for those who
are just starting their new online business and wish to make
money with affiliate programs. There are many software tools and
guides that teach you how to do it, but a lot of them are
worthless and simply waste of money. To become successful in
this industry you need to learn about some most effective
techniques that can make your online business profitable. The
most known affiliate marketing techniques are email marketing,
pay per click, search engine optimization, and joint ventures.

Email marketing is probably the most effective way of promoting
affiliate programs or your own products. If you have an opt-in
list of thousands subscribers to send a promotional email to,
you can make a nice amount of money within short period of time.
But how do you build a list of subscribers of that caliber?
First you need a tool that will be able to manage this many
subscribers and email them all at once. I highly suggest
AWEBER.COM which provides great service for marketers. With
AWEBER.COM you can manage unlimited amount of lists in one place
which is really neat and convenient. Next you need to have a
website where you will be able to offer a subscription to your
visitors to a free newsletter or whatever you want to offer.
Once you get traffic to your website you will build your opt-in
list to promote your products to.

Pay per click method is the easiest and the fastest way to
profits. You must remember that it can get very expensive to
promote affiliate programs this way. Sometimes cost per click on
Google Adwords can reach dollars per click. You need to be
careful if you decide to get into this industry and make sure
the product you are promoting will convert into sales to cover
all the expenses and bring profit. How do you start promoting on
Google Adwords and is there valuable information to help you get
started? Yes, you can find some great e-books written on that
topic by reputable marketers like Perry Marshal, or Chris
Carpenter. You should visit affhelper.com
/google-adwords.html for some great reviews of products and
services that will help you get into this form of advertising.

Search engine optimization can be the most profitable way of
making money with affiliate programs because of the free highly
targeted traffic from search engines like Google, Yahoo, and
Msn. If you can optimize your website for top 10 search engine
rankings for some high traffic keywords, you could have a
constant flow of visitors to your web site which would result in
constant flow of sales and money in your pocket. How can you do
that though and compete with some of those gurus that keep doing
it constantly and laugh at others. See, you do not need special
skills to do it. All you need is the will to get there and
patience. Almost every marketer online is using some kind of
software that helps him with search engine optimization and get
high rankings. You should arm yourself with those tools and use
them for your website just like they are. For some unbiased
reviews visit a
ffhelper.com/search-engine-optimization.html where you will
find many great tools and guides to jump start your business and
get you seen by search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Msn.

Joint venture is another great way to market your product and
get it to profits over night. What is a joint venture? Let’s say
you just created a product and you have your sales page and
everything set up. Now all you need is traffic to start making
sales right? What if you don’t have the time for search engine
optimization, money for pay per click campaigns, or even your
own list to send announcement of your product or service? This
is where a joint venture partner comes in. Joint venture partner
is someone who has, for example, a huge list of subscribers
where he can send out emails to. All you have to do is ask him
to help you market your product to his members for a nice
commission on every product sold through him. This way you can
start making sales with your website immediately with no cost on
your part.

Above you read about some of the most known ways of promoting
products or affiliate programs online to make money. You should
research them for yourself and get the most out of them for your
own web site business. Affiliate marketing is booming right now
and you should get your share of this profitable industry.
People spend more money online every day and soon the internet
will be the biggest market to sell products.

The advent of the New Media and Internet have increased possibilities of online marketing and internet retailing with new features of interactive shopping, pod casting and e-marketing. Consumers are connected to online shopping sites with WiFi, Internet or 3G mobile phones. E commerce has taken a new dimension in retailing with increasing number of people shopping online and even making flight bookings online (Papers4you.com, 2006). One such example is the traffic on the British Airways website. A comparative analysis of popular travel related websites and online ticketing facilities give us details on transaction costs, and individual and company perceptions on e commerce facilities for ticketing and travel.

Internet marketing however meets with major challenges of keeping pace with consumer demands and developing relationship marketing to maintain consumer loyalty (Enzmann and Schneider, 2005). The advantages and disadvantages of internet retailing could be studied in contrast to traditional marketing considering issues related to online branding, consumer loyalty, spam, and advertising strategies. The challenges of online marketing could be studied with the same models used for general marketing management such as 4Ps or 7Ps models and trends in internet marketing and transactions can also be studied (Papers4you.com, 2006). Online pricing remains one of the major challenges and so is the prospect of virtual interactions with customers as opposed to face to face interactions in a traditional market. Issues of security and privacy are important in e marketing and shopping through secured sites is one of the major concerns of consumers (Enzmann and Schneider, 2005). Direct email marketing of goods and services has led to debates on spam and the need for strict legislation on email marketing.

Online marketing seems to have completely revolutionized marketing techniques although it has limitations on usage, privacy issues and security. The different traditional and non traditional advertising media such as newspapers, television, magazines, newsletters, direct mail, telephone, and internet may have to be compared more thoroughly and extensively to understand whether in the future online marketing would replace traditional marketing completely.

Apart from ease and convenience of internet marketing, one major advantage of internet marketing is customization or personalization of products and services to suit the needs and tastes of individual customers (Ho, 2006). Tailored products or services may not have been a very wide option in traditional shopping which shows that interactive shopping has moved a step closer to the needs of the consumer and has improved the shopping experience in general. Online branding has made local consumer goods popular in global markets (Ibeh et al, 2005). The concept of relationship marketing is an important strategy for the new media and is an important tool within the contemporary marketing environment in all spheres of business, from financial services to electronics products. Online marketing has been used by banks and supermarkets and charities like Oxfam suggesting the rapid change in marketing methods used by a wide variety of organizations and show the wide acceptability of online retailing and marketing in changing business environments.

Bibliography

Ching H.L.; Ellis P. (2004) Marketing in Cyberspace: What Factors Drive E-Commerce Adoption? Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 20, Numbers 3-4, pp. 409-429(21)

Enzmann, Matthias; Schneider, Markus (2005) Improving Customer Retention in E-Commerce through a Secure and Privacy-Enhanced Loyalty System Information Systems Frontiers, Volume 7, Numbers 4-5, pp. 359-370(12)

Ho, Shuk Ying (2006) The Attraction of Internet Personalization to Web Users Electronic Markets, Volume 16, Number 1, Number 1 pp. 41-50(10)

Ibeh, Kevin I.N.; Luo, Ying; Dinnie, Keith (2005) E-branding strategies of internet companies: Some preliminary insights from the UK The Journal of Brand Management, Volume 12, Number 5, pp. 355-373(19)

Papers For You (2006) “P/M/445. Internet marketing: problems and prospects”, Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmrk8.htm [17/06/2006]

Papers For You (2006) “P/M/434. E-marketing vs. traditional marketing: upsides and downsides”, Available from http://www.coursework4you.co.uk/sprtmrk8.htm [18/06/2006]

With an increase in consumers using the internet to shop and perform business transactions, ecommerce has become the future of the online community. It is estimated that shoppers are spending billions of dollars online each year, with a few stores even outselling their offline parallels. Benefitting completely from the ecommerce boom can be achievable. To keep consumers coming back, you need to create a unique ecommerce site, one that reaches beyond all levels of excellence.

When designing your ecommerce website, you should have a welcome or introduction on your home page. This statement should establish the advantages of your site, and assure those visiting that they should be comfortable doing business with you. State your purpose, express your beliefs, and let the consumer know why business done at your ecommmerce outlet is always secure.

A quality website has smooth navigation. Categories to scan through and obvious search boxes on the site are a must. Design a simple site with large, easy to read fonts and images that will load quickly. Be sure to have a page with specific questions regarding some of your common business policies such as shipping and returns. You may also want to have a link on your home page that leads visitors to a privacy policy. This policy will ensure customers that you will never supply a third party with information they have entrusted with you. It is nearly essential for all ecommerce shops to display this declaration somewhere on their site.

Just as when shopping offline, customers want checkout to be as fast and easy as possible when visiting your online store. If your online store is equipped with a secure server, make your customers aware. This will put them at ease and keep them coming back. Your checkout or Òshopping cartÓ needs to be just one click away so the customer can be in and out in a minimal amount of steps. In this day and age, it is advisable to offer a variety of payment selections such as PayPal and other online payment sources, credit and debit cards, online checks, and money orders. Include a contact telephone number for customer support so the customer has assurance that they will have assistance if there is a problem with the order.

Organize a special section of your ecommerce website dedicated completely to special discounts and current sales. If you have an extraordinary amount of sales items, create a separate webpage devoted to the ones that are most preferred, and have another page with a complete listing of all discounts. During the holiday season, have a certain portion of our website set aside for customers to purchase gift certificates.

Producing a profitable, reputable ecommerce website can be a simple task with a well constructed site plan, some time and patience. Taking full advantage of the ecommerce phenomenon, you can succeed in your business marketing dream.

Robert Michael is a writer for Fyi Ecommerce which is an excellent place to find ecommerce links, resources and articles. For more information go to: www.fyiecommerce.com

The online poker industry is a booming business making millions each day for companies world-wide. Poker sites just like any other business need to advertise through a variety of avenues in order to reach a wide enough audience. Advertising through billboards, magazines and even television can be an expensive business, which is why so many use affiliate programs. With these programs websites can reach huge audiences without having to pay a penny. That is until one of these affiliate sites bring a customer to their address, then it’s time to share the profits.

The genius in the poker affiliate system is that nobody can lose. Affiliate sites that don’t attract any guests simply receive no money, whilst those who attract numerous people reap the benefits. The poker site can offer affiliates advertisements or banners directly or the potential affiliates may join any one of the number of online poker affiliate vendors. This middleman approach disperses the funds further but offers affiliates more opportunities to advertise extra sites and earn revenue elsewhere.

Most sites offer new affiliates a percentage scheme, whereby the affiliate receives money each time somebody who has joined through one of their banners spends money on the poker site. Making money in this way can start out as a bit of a dribble rather than a raging torrent of income, but given time it can increase. The more people that join from your site the more money you can earn. It’s a simple enough equation but it works. Some schemes also offer programs for affiliates who attract more affiliates. You can pick up a small percentage of each member that the associated affiliate attracts, or even that of further affiliates that they encourage to join. Once the ball gets rolling it is easy to gather clients and affiliates, which in turn means money for you.

A select few poker sites also offer a second option for affiliates, which involves a one off cash payment for each member that joins and makes a deposit through them. These are rare and whilst they may lead to short term gain, it can be less profitable in the long run. It is a way of guaranteeing a substantial cash reward, without having to wait for it to come over many months. Although you may or may not lose out in the end for some affiliates this is the more preferable option.

To become an affiliate website will have to join either a affiliate site vendor or a poker site. This not only allows them to receive relevant advertising materials, but more importantly also allows them to receive funds after picking up a customer. This process is almost always free and is just like signing up to any site, taking just a small amount of time and no deposit. With everything in place a website owner can finally become an affiliate and begin reaping the rewards of being an Internet entrepreneur.

Learn the secrets of top online poker affiliates and discover how to find the best poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/

If you are like most new affiliate marketers, you have signed up as an affiliate and posted links and are actively promoting products but you are making few sales. Here are things that you can do to start making real profits:

#1 – Build your own Website:

You need to build your own website to promote the products. Make sure it has its own paid for domain name (mybizsite.com), not a free site like (mybizsite.othersitename.com). If you have been using free hosting, people looking at your site will not take your business seriously. If you don’t know how to build a website there are many services that offer simple website building programs for a small fee or you can hire someone build a site for you. Check out elance.com where website designers will bid for the opportunity to build a site for you!

#2 - Write reviews of the products you are promoting:

You need to know the products you are promoting! It is crucial that you purchase all the products you are promoting so that you can write honest reviews about them. Let potential customers know that you are using these products and why they are worth buying! You then need to post these reviews on your website, in your newsletters and in articles.

#3 – Get yourself a Blog:

I recommend that you get a Blog and link it to your website. This will allow you to create discussions on the blog about the products you are selling and list any updates to your regular website. Blogs that are updated and posted to regularly (I recommend every other day) are indexed quicker by the search engines than are new websites, and after the blog is indexed, the pages you have linked to the blog will also get indexed. This is a very powerful way to get your site indexed and to get more links to your website. I recommend posting link to your website at the end of each post you make to your blog. This will give you even more links to your site

#4 - Write Articles:

One of the best ways to become an expert on your product is to write articles on the Internet and include a link to your website in the resource box. The articles you write can be the reviews of the products you have written or any topic related to your business and what you know.There are many places to submit articles and the more you write the more exposure to your website; more click thorough of your affiliate links and purchases of the products you are promoting which will in turn make you more money. The top place to post articles for free that will be picked up by webmasters is;
Ezinearticles.com
You can also search google for article sites!

#5 – Join forums on the internet related to your products:

Go to google and search; forums (your affiliate products), Join the forums you find After you join the forums make sure you use your signature in your posts and threads .You then need to have your website links in your signature line. Make sure you post regularly! It is important to post relevant and useful information in the forums. You will find an incredible amount of free, useful information in the forums. They are an indispensable resource. I highly recommend this tactic! Signature links are also indexed by the search engines and will provide you more links to your site thus increasing your ranking in the search engines and driving more traffic to your site!

#6 - Use text links not banners or buttons:

Due to the enormous use of pop-ups and flashy banners that we see each time we visit a website, It’s much more professional looking and effective to have a text link with a few lines about the products you are promoting. Stay away from banners and pop ups, Most web surfers are sick of pop ups and have pop up blockers built into their browsers.

Utilizing all of the above mentioned tactics will help your affiliate commissions grow
Significantly!

Mark Davies has been reviewing internet businesses for over 5 years and has over 8 years of experience selling and marketing products on the internet.
http://bestinternetbusinessesreview.com
The #1 site for Work at Home Businesses that Make Money!
10,000 free articles on making a living online @

http://freeinternetmarketingarticles.org

Shoppers expect a bargain when they connect to your website for online shopping. They might browse your shopping website out of curiosity, but they’ll only buy when they find real bargains. Your challenge is to appeal to whatever combination of price and products or services they want to capture their business.

In effect, you must “tell” your visitors what their bargain really is what they really want. That’s what online marketing of any kind is all about, just as it is with brick-and-mortar shopping malls: You turn visitors or shoppers into buyers as you appeal to their “wants,” rather than their “needs.”

The reality of life is this: Our needs are simply food, water, shelter, perhaps clothing, and social companionship. Our wants or desires motivate all the rest, from earning money to buying cars, clothes, and collectibles.

So a “bargain” might mean cheap prices to most of us — but you can make it mean, “Ah, wow, I really want that Russian legacy teapot,” if you sell Russian legacy teapots, for example.

If your website offers discounts and merchant sponsored coupons, all the better. Make those coupons and discounts a focus for visitors. But if you specialize instead in unique services or products, then focusing on those products or services will be what you show your visitors as the bargains you have to offer. A Victorian flowered wall mirror becomes a bargain to the visitor looking around your for one, if you feature such collectibles and they happen to find it.

Think and plan carefully as you design your site. Show your visitors what you have to offer, whether that’s a bargain price or a unique gift product. You will begin to shape their ideas about bargains. It’s really up to you, through your site design and content, to help your visitors understand exactly what bargains you offer. Their concept a bargain as they shop online becomes what you want it to be.

Shoppers indeed expect a bargain when they go online. Help them understand and find that bargain at your website. Master this and word will get around. You’ll find visitors turning into buyers.

Gary Speer, former newspaper copy editor and news editor for a major Christian denominational publication, is a freelance writer and marketer who focuses on writing tips and online marketing. Gary offers writing tips at Writing Tips at garyspeer.com. He also owns a number of affiliate marketing sites, such as Expect a Bargain Online Shopping.

Search engines are now starting to penalise websites that link to other irrelevant websites. Search engines are incredibly important to online success. The chances are that once your website is established, much more than half of your website traffic will come from people who have found your site after searching for a particular query. In the past, all you had to do is swap links with other websites to achieve a high search engine ranking for your chosen keyword phrases in your meta tags.

Google changed the web

However, in 1998, Google - which was founded by former Stanford University students Sergey Brin and Larry Page - created ‘Page Rank’. The search engine world hasn’t been the same since. It’s becoming harder and harder to ‘trick’ your way to the top. And even if you manage, the chances are that you’ll crash out of the most important search engine rankings (Google, Yahoo and MSN) and never be seen again for a few months. So how do you give yourself a much greater chance of getting to the top of search engine results and staying there?

Appear in industry relevant blogs and discussion forums every week

You need to become respected in your field. To achieve this online, every week you have to appear in the blogs and discussion forums that are relevant and popular in your industry. Whatever business you’re in, there must be at least a dozen global and a couple of local websites that you can start discussing your business sector on right now. One of the best places to start out is Technorati, where you can search around 40m blogs. Google have also recently introduced a specialist Google Blog Search.

To be respected in your field, you have to at least appear to be informative and impartial. Don’t overtly advertise in your blog comments. The chances are that when you’ve registered with the industry specific forums, or whenever you post your comments on the industry specific blogs, you’ll be giving your business name and URL (website address). This means that every comment you make will be accompanied by a link to your site. If somebody appreciates your comments and wants to find out more about you, they will.

Think long term, viral growth

If you’re consistent and persistent about placing relative comments on other industry specific websites each and every week, search engines will start to love you. They will deem you an expert in your chosen field and reward you accordingly by ranking your website highly. It won’t happen overnight, but sooner or later other websites will start referring to you as the expert that you need to be. Before six months are out, if you stick with it, you’ll start to feel the compounding effects of viral growth.

© Copyright 2006 www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz

David Bain is founder of the independent business articles resource, http://www.BuildYourOwnBusiness.biz. BuildYourOwnBusiness offers the latest business news & management advice on how best to build your own business - business articles on Strategy, eBusiness, Change Management & much, much more.