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Wordtracker just launched a new keyword search tool. I read about it yesterday at http://seobook.com

With all the problems that marketers have had for the past several months with Yahoo’s keyword search tool, this is great news. The Yahoo tool has not worked at all for the past week which leads me to believe that Yahoo has no intention of fixing the problem.

People are talking about the new tool on other blogs and are all saying how quick the new search tool is. I tried it myself and it is a lot faster than the Yahoo tool was. Because the search tool was just launched, I would have to assume that many people are not aware of its existence yet. I’ll be interested in seeing how the keyword search tool performs when there are as many users using the tool as Yahoo had using their tool. I’ll withhold my opinion until then.

You can find the new wordtracker search tool here. http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com

Getting noticed when first starting out with an online business can be a bear. There are some things that you can do to move things along a bit. Here are a few things that you can do to get things moving forward.

1.) Writing to article sites is a great way to get some good quality back links to your website and will help you to be seen as an authority on whatever it is that your article is about. It may take a week or two for your article to be accepted, but it will give you some additional traffic to your website once the article goes live. The best part of writing articles is that other websites may pick them up and post them on their website giving you additional traffic and back links. I still get clicks from articles that I wrote months ago and they are still getting picked up by other websites giving me additional links. If your article is well written with good information you can do quite well with this method. To learn more about article writing read this post.

2.) Commenting to posts on other like minded blogs is another great way to drive some quick traffic to your website. Most blogs welcome comments as long as they are related to the topic that the reader is commenting to. Because blog sites allow you to place a URL back to your website you will have yet another great way to back link to your website. The more blog sites that you comment on the more back links and traffic you will get. Make your comments count for something otherwise people won’t click back to your website. Do this on a continuous basis and people will begin to notice you and it should drive some good traffic back to your website. Be sure to comment on blog sites that are relevant to your own website.

3.) Join some forums that relate to the subject matter on your website. This is another great way to get some good back links to your website which will get you some additional traffic back to your website. Forums also allow you to place a link in your signature file which will be automatically placed on all of your posts once it is setup. Unlike most blogs, most forums require you to register before you can post to them.

The three ideas mentioned here all have one thing in common. They all require that you write in an informative and concise way. If you come off as not knowing what you are talking about, you might as well not bother doing this at all. Give good, helpful, information and not only will you get results rather quickly, the search engines will take notice as well.

Blog blaster is a submission software that is supposed to submit your ad to 2 million blog sites. The software is a piece of crap and doesn’t do anything that it claims to do. Don’t waste your money on something like this. In my opinion, this software was developed with one thing in mind, to separate people from their money.

Since most blog sites have some kind of plugin that will stop outside submissions should tell you that Blog Blaster is not capable of doing what it claims.

Sebastian Foss, the creator of Blog Blaster, from my own experience and what I have read about him is not exactly the most upstanding Internet citizen. He has also been involved in other crooked schemes as well.

I’ve never used blog blaster myself. What I’m telling you here is what I have read about the software and its creator. From what I’ve read, and what I know, both are pretty bad.

I’ve known about Sebastian Foss for quite awhile because I was on one of his spam lists that I never opted into. I tried to unsubscribe several times from his list but that request was ignored. I ended up having to put a block on his spam mails.

Before I blocked him, I did get an email from Foss about a data entry program that he was promoting. When I ran a Google search on the data entry program followed by the word ’scam’, I found a nice tidy list about the program and that it was nothing but a scam. The program has a money back guarantee that was not honored when people started requesting refunds. Emails went unanswered, and from what I can see, these people never got their money back. You hear the same type of complaints about Blog Blaster as well.

The biggest shocker is that Michael Glaspie endorses Blog Blaster and does so from the Blog Blaster website. You can check out the Blog Blaster sales page here. http://www.blog-blast.com

If you look here you will find the data entry email that Sebastian Foss sent me along with the sales pitch on his website. I submitted this as an article to Ezine Articles a while back as well as posting it on this blog. I removed the program name and Sebastian Foss’s name because I felt that Ezine Articles might reject the submission if I included them.

Anyway, stay away from anything that Sebastian Foss is involved in. Chances are whatever it is that he is selling is probably not on the up and up.

I was on a blog today and read an older post about how the owner of that blog was really frustrated about the amount of traffic that he was getting to his blog. I thought about answering to that post and thought it better to leave it alone. He went on to say that he was getting about 40 clicks a day and wasn’t making any money. He also said that after he wrote that post his traffic went from 40 to 190.

There is a point here. You should never under any circumstance tell your visitors how poorly your website is doing. In that one post this person lost any credibility that he had earned with his readers.

Depending on how long that blog has been in existence, 40 clicks a day may not be all that bad. If it’s a new blog of say 3 months, then 40 clicks a day is pretty good. If the blog has been around for 3 years then that’s a different story.

Don’t think that because he got more traffic that there may be something to trying something like this to see what happens. I can tell you that it is human nature to go see what is up. As they say, misery loves company. I wonder what his click through rate is now that the dust has settled. I’m guessing that he is probably getting less clicks now than he was before that post.

I will bet that he lost the bulk of his returning visitors. People are not going to listen to anyone who is unsure of themselves. I will also have to assume that any newcomers to his blog will not read any farther than that post and probably will not be back.

The point is, it takes time, persistence, and patience, before you will see a regular flow of traffic. Realize this, and keep whatever frustrations you have to yourself.

I read this on another blog site. You can read about it here.

It’s nice to see that Microsoft is getting its due. I for one am glad that someone has taken from Microsoft for a change instead of the other way around.

I remember the release of MS Dos 6.0 that had Symantec’s defragger included in the software release. I originally thought that Microsoft and Symantec had an agreement since Microsoft never bothered to remove Symantec’s name from the software or change the name of the defragger.

It wasn’t until Symantec sued Microsoft for copyright infringement that I realized that Microsoft had ripped off Symantec.

I guess the bigger, and more powerful companies get, the more they figure they can get away with. With all of the money and power the two companies have, I guess they can. What’s a few million dollars to these two business giant’s? Bottom line, what goes around comes around. It finally has come around for Microsoft and Bill Gates.

There are so many great ways to deliver digital information products. The question you have to ask yourself is which is the easiest to use, and comprehend for the end user. I vote for video information products because of the ease of creation and it makes it far easier for someone that has little or no understanding of the topic in which the information is being taught to understand.

I know that I personally have read some ebooks that where the information being presented was very difficult to understand. Just because the information may seem very easy for the author to understand doesn’t necessarily mean it will be for the novice in that topic area. Then there are some strategies that may be written in the ebook that may be a bit vague or that give you a feeling of does he or she mean this, or that?

I think that audio would be my second choice. At least with audio the information is verbally explained but then again if the person who is presenting the information talks over your head by using terms that you don’t understand, you are again left to wonder whether you understand the information or not.

With video you get the best of both worlds. You get an explanation on the information that is being presented along with a demonstration of how to do it. If you don’t understand something that is being said, at least you can see how it’s done to get a better understanding of what is being presented to you.

If you think that you will have to get a lot of expensive video equipment to do a video, think again. All you need is a piece of software that will capture all of your on screen actions and a microphone to talk into and a piece of software to record to. You should be able to get everything that you will need for less than a hundred bucks. Simply run a google search for the items mentioned here.

If you are thinking about writing an ebook or doing an informational audio, you may want to reconsider and try going the video route because an informational video will far out sell audio or a written ebook because of the reasons mentioned here and most people are much more comfortable if they can see it in action opposed to the other 2 options and will put a much higher value on it.

I was reading through different Internet Marketing blog sites today and found some really interesting posts that had absolutely nothing to do with Internet Marketing at all. A couple of them that I read had me scratching my head.

On one of the of the blogs that I visited, had about two weeks of posts that talked about the blog owner’s vacation in Florida and was basically about the sites he saw and the different restaurants that he ate at etc.

On the other blog I read about how thrilled that blog owner was about the bears winning the NFC championship game and how excited he was that the bears were going back to the Super Bowl for the first time since their Super Bowl win in 1985.

Now the two posts came from two different blog sites that were both about Internet Marketing. So what in the hell does the Super Bowl and a vacation in Florida have to do with Internet Marketing? If I want to know about the Super Bowl teams I’m going to look for that information on a sports site such as nfl.com and if I want to ramble on about how great it is that my team finally made it back to the Super Bowl, I’m going to do that on their forum. I don’t know what to say about that vacation post except that I don’t care what places that this person went, or where he ate for that matter.

The point is, if your website is about Internet Marketing, then that’s what you should write about. That’s what people came to the blog to read about. I can only imagine how some poor schmuck will react when his or her search for more info on the Super Bowl lands him or her on an Internet Marketing blog.

Ezines are a quick and easy way to drive targeted traffic to any website. Among the main advantages of advertising in Ezines is that they have a highly targeted audience. Top marketers agree that ezines are the best medium you can advertise in. With ezines, you know that the reader is interested in your type of product before you place the ad, because ezines are about very specific topics.

I read somewhere that ezine emails never get opened. There is no way that this is true. By its very nature, emails sent by an ezine will be opened more often than any other email that one might get. People subscribe to an ezine because they have an interest in the subject matter that the ezine offers and many are very passionate about the information on the topic that the ezine offers.

You can advertise in most ezines. Ezines periodically send new information to its subscribers via email. Inside of those mailings are advertisements of products or information that are directly related to the ezines topic. Anyone can advertise in an ezine if they pay for it. Most ezines will not accept ads that are unrelated to the interest of its readers. You can never be accused of spamming because your ad is sent by the ezine to recipients who have subscribed to the ezine.

Most ezines will offer solo ads to its advertisers. A solo ad is a standalone ad that usually stands at the top of the ezine email guaranteeing that your ad will be read. While a solo ad will stand out more and will get you better results, they are a lot more expensive.

Ezines are an excellent place to advertise because they are very targeted and will convert very well. If done right, advertising in an ezine is one of the best and easiest ways to advertise. Unlike any other avenue of advertising you will never wonder whether or not, the right people are seeing your ad. As long as you choose an ezine that is laser targeted to your product, the right people will see it.

The ezine that you choose is very important. It must be highly related to what you sell or what your website is about in order to do well with your ads. For example, if you sell fishing equipment, you want to advertise in an ezine that is only about fishing and nothing else. The ezine must have a decent amount of subscribers. Anything under 50,000 subscribers should not be considered.

You should always subscribe to the ezines that you are considering to advertise in to make sure that they are targeted enough for what you sell. The last thing that you want to do is advertise to an ezine that you thought was a good choice to find that it’s not as targeted as you thought. Besides, you want to advertise to an ezine that provides good content to its subscribers. Ezines that email good content will get opened more often and will be seen by more people. Don’t advertise with the first ezine that you come across. Research them first and subscribe to the ones that you may consider advertising to before you put out any of your hard earned cash.

You should be able to find a decent list of ezines on your topic by doing a google search. Keep in mind that you won’t know anything about any ezine unless you subscribe to them. Make sure that you do. It will save you a lot of money. Do the research. It’s well worth it.

I’ve seen an affiliate tactic that offers the perspective buyer a rebate if they buy from the advertised affiliate link. The buyer is told that the rebate offer is only available if he or she buys from the provided affiliate link.

Here’s how it works. The buyer would purchase the product from the affiliate link. If the buyer doesn’t request a refund after a certain period of time, (usually after the refund guarantee expires) the buyer can then redeem their rebate. Most of the offers that I have seen require you to redeem the rebate within 30 days from the first day after the refund guarantee has expired. If the refund guarantee were for 60 days, the rebate offer would begin on day 61 and expire after day 90.

I’ve seen rebate offers that will give you a 100% rebate. You may be asking yourself, how can the affiliate make money if the affiliate marketer gives back 100% of the profits. The answer is quite simple. Most people end up forgetting about the rebate and never redeem it or don’t remember until after the rebate has expired. Only about 20% of the buyers will redeem the offered rebate, which is what the affiliate marketer is counting on. By offering a 100% rebate, the affiliate will make a lot more sales than he or she normally would. Giving back a 100% rebate to 20% of the people who purchase the product is well worth what the affiliate marketer will make in additional sales.

Rebate offers for digital products began to pop up in the middle of 2005. The first to do it is a well-known guru that I will not mention here because I don’t have permission to do so. To say the least, that guru made a killing using this strategy because it was the first time that it had been done with a digital product. Today, you see this idea being used all over the net.

While I don’t see anything wrong with doing this, be aware, that many affiliate site owners don’t allow their affiliates to do this. Affiliates that use the clickbank system are not supposed to use rebate offers to make sales. I know for a fact that many clickbank users are in fact doing this. Clickbank has really cracked down on this practice. It’s not a good idea to use the rebate strategy if it is not allowed in the affiliate program that you are involved with. They could ban you and even worse, not pay you for the affiliate sales that you have made.

If you are going to offer rebates to make affiliate sales, make sure to read the affiliate site’s policy to make sure that it doesn’t say somewhere that this is not allowed. Below is clickbank’s policy on offering rebates. Check your affiliate site’s policy to make sure that there isn’t something similar written in it before going out and offering a rebate.

If the product is your own, then there will of course, be no problem. I myself, think that this is a great idea just as long as the affiliate site owner allows it.

There is a right way and a wrong way to market your products via email. Of course the wrong way is to purchase a list and spam people with your offers. Stay away from this type of thing, it will get your website shutdown when someone complains about you spamming them. The right way would be to have people optin to your list. This is known as permission email marketing.

Here’s how it works. You would put a form on your website that would allow people to optin to your newsletter or ezine. A newsletter is simply an email that is sent periodically to your list with updated information about your website. An ezine is basically the same except it is generally published on your website and pulled in through an email and gives the email a look of your website. The subscriber can view the ezine from your website or through an email while the newsletter is in plain text and generally is not published on the website.

Your newsletter or ezine would be loaded into your autoresponder and sent out periodically depending on how often you choose to send your subscribers updates. To get more info on autoresponders go here. You would add your offers to the newsletter or ezine that you send out to your subscribers.

The biggest thing that you want to do when sending out a newsletter or ezine is that you send your subscribers useful information on the topic for which they subscribed. If you send useless information they will opt out of your list.

Always include a unsubscribe link and the reason why you sent them an email. Many people tend to forget what or whom they subscribed to. Include a link to your website so that your subscribers can follow it back to your website. If your autoresponder has a timestamp, use it. It will protect you by giving proof that the person did subscribe to your list by giving the date they subscribed. This will be very important if someone complains about you spamming.