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It’s a sticky situation. A prospect, a site visitor, or just a casual acquaintance asks for your help or advice on something. You gladly give it, thinking it’s a one-time “favor.” But instead of providing a little free advice, you’ve opened the door to an onslaught of mooching! Now, every time you check your email, you find question after question. What do you do?

This is a problem many online business owners face. You want to appear friendly and helpful, but the person on the receiving end of your favor is draining you dry. After all, these are services you charge for. This is how you make your living.

Like many folks, you don’t want to appear rude or unprofessional. But the time you take to answer questions and provide help is taking away from your ability to earn an income. Let me tell you about one approach that seems to work wonderfully.

Minimal Information

When the repeat offender asks for help, offer a minimal response to the question. For the sake of illustration, let’s say your area of expertise is in Web site design. If the person asks for information on making his/her site design more professional, you might consider saying that adding a top border to the site would create continuity. You might also mention that having black text on a white background makes for easier reading (as opposed to white text with a deep purple background). However, don’t go into details.

This lets you give an answer to the question (instead of just ignoring them), but doesn’t reveal any information you might charge for.

Honesty Is the Best Policy

Next, be honest. Explain that designing Web sites is what you do for a living. It’s how you earn your income. Let the person know that you would be more than happy to offer consulting services or full-fledge design and maintenance services, but these would come at a cost. Outline your pricing structure for people so they’ll know exactly what each service costs.

This action gets you “off the hook” (so to speak) and frees you from having to answer any future questions.

Provide Alternative Resources

Go one final step further and find some alternative, free resources the person might check into for additional information. By offering a list of design forums, free ebooks, or information-packed sites, you’re getting yourself out of the picture in a kind and professional way.

Nine times out of ten, “moochers” either don’t have the money to pay, or they are unwilling to pay for products and services. In either case, you’re unlikely to make a paying client out of such people. By using the steps above, you gain your freedom, and at the same time provide helpful resources where the moocher can get free information.

Diane Hughes is an accomplished Internet entrepreneur and editor of the popular ProBizTips Newsletter. Subscribe to her newsletter for more tips, tricks, and secrets of the trade — plus get HUNDREDS of eBooks, software, and tools just for subscribing! http://www.ProBizTips.com

For the beginner, understanding PPC (Pay Per Click) services can be utterly confusing. With so many search engines to choose from, and so many options within each one: different billing schemes, different terminology, and different techniques for ranking in the top spot, the learning curve is quite substantial. So why would anyone go to the trouble?

For quite some time now Google has been the primary source for web search. Nearly everyone who has ever use a computer has either used or at least heard of Google. But as the Florida update has shown us, free placements in the search engines are not as stable as we would like them to be. Sure after an algorithm change we can go back to the drawing board figure out the newest line of attack, re-optimize a site, and bring back that first page placement, but how much traffic and sales are lost as a result of the down time?

When it comes to most PPC campaigns you can be sure of one thing: Your rankings are stable. When you go to bed, you know that when you wake up the next morning you placements will still be there. Now, of course in many cases you may be out bid in overture and find your self slipping a couple of notches, but after a quick adjustment to your maximum bid, you’re back in contention. This is a far cry from the potentially months lost after slipping, in some cases off the charts, into the dark abyss of positioning into the thousands.

Google is not going away any time soon, so it is still very important to optimize and try to get those top placements regardless of whether or not you wish to pursue a PPC campaign. If you are ranking well on Google, in many cases it is still well worth it to pursue PPC placements as well to get that extra exposure. With a PPC campaign its important to remember that it isn’t always as simple as paying top dollar to dominate the number one spot. Regular tweaking and maintenance will be required.

So what is involved in achieving top spot in a PPC campaign?

Google Adwords
Your Google AdWords Ad is given a ranking value by multiplying your maximum Cost Per Click (CPC) with your current Click Through Rate (CTR) and ads are sorted according.

For AdWords you must constantly monitor the performance of your keywords and ads. If the CTR of your keywords begin to slip then your position will most likely drop, and its time to either re-write your ads to draw attention, adjust your max CPC, or a combination of both. What will work best, depends on a variety of variables; your CTR, current CPC, how competitive your keyword phrase it, and the wording in your competitors ads. Remember you want to stand out as the obvious best choice.

Looksmart
Looksmart has a PPC Service that is somewhat different than AdWords and Overture. With Looksmart you write your own title and ad text for your listing and pay a set rate of 15 cents per click. The ranking order for listings is “ based solely on their relevance to a user’s search as determined by LookSmart’s proprietary search algorithm. Payment does not influence the appearance or rank of the listings in the Reviewed Web Sites section.” - Looksmart

If you choose to use Looksmart, it is essential for your website to be properly optimized. The one main downside to Looksmart is that your payment of 15 cents per click is just to get you listed, and does not guarantee any positioning.

Overture
The ranking of your Overture listings is determined by one thing and one thing only. How much you are willing to pay. If your ad position drops, increase your bid and within seconds you are back to where you left off. Now remember, being number one is not everything. If people see no interest in your listing they will simply click on number two. Of course this doesn’t cost you anything directly, but indirectly you may be losing the all so important sales. This is why it’s important to have carefully written copy for your listing.

In the case of Overture, Looksmart and Google ads, the copy you choose does not affect your position, so you don’t need to worry about the ad being ‘search engine friendly,’ but you do need to ensure it is searcher friendly. Carefully select the wording to use in your ad copy and be sure to include the keyword phrase in either the title or the beginning of the text. Say something that will jump out at the reader. You want them to see your ad as being highly relevant to their search, as well as being interesting and inviting. Remember; just because you dominate the top spot, does not mean you will necessarily draw all the traffic (although it does help!)

Before you get started with any PPC Campaign be sure to understand the billing practices of the search engine before you starting using it. Google AdWords charges a one time, $5.00 setup fee, and after that you pay only for delivered traffic. Overture does not have a setup fee, but they do require a minimum charge of $25/month regardless of weather or not your click through’s have accumulated to that total. Looksmart bills 15 cents per click flat rate, and a minimum usage of Each Search engine has different billing plans, and its important to understand them so that you don’t get burned.

Once you have selected what search engine, or engines, you wish to use start off by reading through their FAQ page, guidelines, tips pages, and absorb as much information as you can to get a good grasp on how their PPC system operates. If you are new all this, at first glance AdWords and Overture will seem extremely overwhelming, but you will find the more you explore, the better understanding you will develop. It doesn’t take long to get a firm grasp of the various systems.

Article by Scott Van Achte, StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc

1. The first page appears quickly.

It’s a good way to have your brief tagline in the starting page of your web site and your company logo. Highlight the benefits and advantages of your products on the starting page.

But don’t dump all the information on it so that it will appear quickly. Limit your graphic to a file size of 20 KB or less.

2. It’s purpose is immediately and clearly identified.

Say what you want to say and say it briefly and straight to the point to get across your purpose why you existed in the web.

3. It’s well laid out and well-written.

Take advantage of positive space and check the spelling and grammar of your web site. Tables can be a good tool to place your graphics and text on proper position. Maximize also the use of cell padding and cell spacing.

Hire somebody to write marketing materials for you. A good way to start is to access my archive of my newsletters and do a quick research on it. Try the arhives here

4. It’s links accurately suggests what the viewer will find.

Make use of tags in your graphics so that if a browser will not display graphics, the visitor will have an idea of what you’re talking about. Try turning off your graphics display in your browser and then view this site:

5. It’s links behave as advertised when the viewer does use them.

I usually describe my site on classified ads web site as “Everything Essential To The Web, Nothing Less!” and I can prove it. I have freebies, online shopping, e-commerce, communities, mailing lists, web directories, and so on. Every week I have something new for my visitors so they keep coming back for more.

6. It supplies the content the viewer expects, or a quick path to that content.

When I describe something on my site, I usually follow it with a simple instruction like this: “Please visit http://Weblord2000.com and click on “Subscribe” under “Members” section.

William Nabaza http://www.Nabaza.com specializes in building, designing, implementing, managing and maintaining corporate website to boost sales of your company. Email william@nabaza.com for information on functional, dynamic webpage designing with affordable packages. Subscribe for free! http://www.Listlord.com

Nabaza.com provides solutions to everyday webmastery task like search engine submissions, internet promotion, and sticking your visitors to your site. Become a member now for as low as U.S. $100.00 a year.

You’ve likely heard of the movie, Jerry Maguire, with its famous line, “You had me at hello.” Jerry Maguire was luckier than web sites we find in search engines. Many web sites don’t attract user devotion at the first word, let alone after scanning the home page.

How many times has this scenario happened to you? You’ve performed a search in a search engine or directory, reviewed the results and found a page description that fits your needs. When you click on the page that looks the most promising, you often arrive at the web site’s home page, where one or more things might happen:

1. The page loads slowly due to too many graphics, dynamic applications or scripts. 2. There are terms used on the page that you don’t understand. 3. It promotes products or services that were not mentioned in the page description from the search engine. 4. The products or services are unrelated to your search. 5. The page is “amateurish” in appearance and you’re not feeling confident about things like customer service, user privacy and security, experience with the product, or other credibility issues. 6. The page is so busy you don’t know where to go to next, or distractions caused you to forget your original mission. 7. Something has turned you off, such as swimsuit models that don’t look like you do, corporate images of businessmen, not women, or multiple animated things. 8. An invasive advertisement appeared that you had to click away so you could read the content underneath it. 9. The page loads but your scumware radar starts beeping like crazy or popup and security alerts appear. 10. You need a magnifying glass to read the content.

If a keyword search brings back an inside page, more common frustrations occur to drive people away from the web site. They include:

1. There is no navigation to the rest of the web site. 2. There is navigation, but no visible, easy-to-locate link to the main home page or main web site. 3. A link “home” is offered, but sub-navigation is missing, so that the user must start at the beginning to figure out where they landed inside the web site. 4. Link labels do not explain what the web site is about, so the visitor may not be inspired to click around. 5. There is no suggested click path to follow. For example, if the page happens to be an article, it might be useful to say “Did you find this article helpful? Here are more articles that may interest you.”

We often forget that search engines index more than our home page. People often stumble into our web sites while searching for other things, linking from another web site, or receiving an email link from a friend. The starting place isn’t always home base.

So, how do you make a web site page approachable in a crowded room of search engine results? First, make sure your title tag is accurate. Every page requires a title tag unique to the content it represents. The home page is an overview page, so focus on the main goal, which is often also your primary keyword(s).

Next, write a genuine, honest description that isn’t all hype and glorified self-worship about your great website. If the site is going to sell something, what does it sell? Does it specialize? Avoid words like “unique”, “amazing”, and “special” because, frankly, everybody makes these claims.

It’s important to not “stuff” keywords in your title and description tags because these are displayed in search engines as your site or page description. When read by humans, they don’t make sense. People are getting wiser. They know that you are trying to get higher rank but it doesn’t mean your web site is any better in quality that those lower in search results.

Regardless of where the page is in your site, there are lots of ways to attract attention or generate curiosity so that your visitor becomes a potential customer, or least finds the content interesting enough to keep browsing around. My favorite part of discount stores are the displays where they toss clearance items, or the impulse “Oh yes, I forgot I needed that”-type items. You can do the same thing with your web site. Simply place the toenail clippers, scotch tape and calling cards out front where they’re easily seen. In other words, remind your visitors you carry the items they didn’t know they needed.

Here are some other ideas to try:

1. Provide a good reason to enter your site. Don’t expect anyone to take your word for anything. Offer incentives. 2. Put a visible text link to your sitemap on every page. Even your local shopping mall has a map with a “You Are Here” pointer. 3. Be forthcoming and descriptive with pictures. If you sell shoes, show the tread. If you design and make your own crafts, show close-ups of the detail and workmanship. The sunglasses line you offer is likely filled with brand name shades, but what types of faces will they complement? I have a difficult time buying artwork online because I can’t visualize the dimensions in my head. A picture of a framed version, hanging in a room with furniture, will help me understand what I’m trying to purchase. In a virtual world, you must go to great lengths to sell things people can’t touch or see in use. 4. Place words like “sale”, “getting started”, “first-time user”, “learn more”, “try now”, “buy now”, “free”, “download”, “we deliver” and “free shipping” on your pages, above the page “fold”. 5. On your home page, provide an introduction and suggestions for where your visitors might like to go next, based on their needs. 6. Search engines can only bring a visitor to your doorstep. It’s your job to grab them by the hand, invite them inside and show it off.

Kim Krause is the Administrator for the Cre8asite Forum http://www.cre8asiteforums.com, author of the Cre8pc blog http://www.cre8pc.com/blog, and owner of Cre8pc Usability and Search Engine Optimization http://www.cre8pc.com. She’s a contributing writer for the High Rankings Newsletter, Search Engine Guide, ISEDB.com and WebProNews as well as other publications.

“The quickest way to wealth That I’ve found to be true; Is to stick out your chest, Give your best And do what others don’t like to do!” -Primm

It’s been said the difference between the “haves” and the “have-nots” - can be traced back to the people who did … and the people who did not!

When it comes to creating a moneymaking niche, consider using what I call the “principle of yucky.”

Using the principle of yucky is one of the quickest ways to make money you’ll ever find. Period. No hype here. Keep reading and you’ll agree!

Master this principle and I can guarantee you’ll never be broke another day in your life.

In fact, if everyone would use this principle the unemployment numbers would melt like an ice cube in July. The Welfare rolls would shrink like a cheap suit, and business failures would drastically decrease.

So, what exactly is the principle of yucky? I’m glad you asked, it’s simply doing what other people find disgusting, irritating, or in a word yucky.

A billionaire once said, “The quickest way to success is to do what others don’t like to do.”

Don’t laugh, most people are willing to gladly pay money to people who will do the things they find disgusting, irritating or stressful. Wouldn’t you?

For example, if you had rats running through your restaurant would you pay someone to get rid of them? Of course, you would.

But rats aren’t the only things people find disgusting or yucky. Thousands of potential yucky services exist that people will gladly pay you to do.

The point to remember is the thing may be yucky to them, but not to you, especially if you can grow rich doing it. Believe me, money in your pocket will make it less yucky - whatever it is.

For example, take the man in Florida who has a business that makes over $100,000 a year picking up dog poop in parks.

The single mother who started a business cleaning bathrooms earning over $5,000 a week.

Or the husband and wife team who clears $2,000 a week bathing dogs in the client’s home.

You’d be surprised what people will pay you to do, just to get out of doing it themselves. Use this fact to make money.

Yes, the most penny-pinching, tightwad, miser will gladly throw money at you. Why? To get out of doing something they find yucky, irritating, or stressful. Haven’t you been listening?

I predict after reading this article you will soon notice yucky things you can do to earn more money. Whatever your business.

You now have the niche solution that could increase your sales, very quickly and with very little risk. From a business point of view what could be better than that?

Thousands of people in your local area or the Internet will gladly pay you to help them do the yucky routine stuff in their life.

People are waiting for you to offer your services to them. An added benefit will be little or no competition!

If you have an established business, you can use the principle of yucky to get an edge on your competition.

You simply do what your competitors don’t like to do. Believe me your customer’s will take notice. Wouldn’t you?

So start using this secret to quickly increasing your cash flow. Find out what your competitors don’t like to do - and do it now!

Roy Primm (The Niche Man) has written hundreds of articles on the secret powers of a niche. Read more of his wealth building “niche creation secrets” at www.NicheBrain.com

As noted in my previous two columns, the Internet is in the midst of another technological revolution, the effect of which will change the ways we will access information and entertainment. Innovation on many core technologies has changed the online marketing environment and the ways commercial information is offered to us. Paid placement based on keyword targeting is a rudimentary example and is currently a major force driving decisions in the industry. The two most successful paid-placement/contextual-delivery programs, Adwords and Overture have been joined by dozens of smaller paid-placement/contextual-delivery engines such as E-Spotting, FindWhat, and Kanoodle. With a market that appears to be growing exponentially, the business potential of providing truly guaranteed listings is enormous. Effectively managing paid marketing efforts is important and tailoring advertising campaigns to maximize revenues will be an artful science.

Paid-Placement/Content-Delivery
Like most great business ideas, the concept of contextual-advertising is simple. When search engine users type in keywords related to a product or service, paid-advertising appears above and beside the non-paid listings. Advertisers bid for placement under specific keywords and phrases based on the amount of money they are willing to spend per click, with the best placements going to the highest bidders. These ads are displayed on the major search engines and distributed through millions of partner sites across the web. Partner sites might include online newspapers, other search engines, Internet Service Providers, and increasingly, privately owned web sites. Distribution of paid, contextual advertising has become a strong secondary income for many webmasters. The next time you find yourself surfing the web, be on the look-out for examples of paid-advertising on non-search related pages and try to figure out which keywords triggered the appearance of the ads. Webmasters interested in gaining a secondary income should check out and compare programs offered by the various search tools. Advertisers should think about exploiting the power of these growing distribution channels.

There are many ways to tailor ads and advertising campaigns to maximize income and minimize costs. Like many other SEOs, StepForth’s Senior SEO, Scott van Achte has developed several writing methods and combinations of different programs to bring better than expected results to his clients. By understanding the working environment and the various options available under each program, Scott has helped several clients find visitors and sales from sources they would never have considered open to them before, such as the New York Times which displays Google Adwords. Knowing that ads appear against articles in the NYTimes (and hundreds of other major newspapers) based on keywords found in the news-content allows Scott to target a huge market that was previously unavailable to most small businesses. There is a definite trick to writing ad-copy that is general enough to appear in many places yet specific enough to target the most effective audience.

Personalizing Results
There have been recent articles stating that contextual advertising is beginning to flat-line. Speculation that the sector is starting to dry up is more likely an indicator that a new twist or innovation on content delivery is necessary than it is that advertisers have gone sour on the concept. It is a short step from keyword targeted advertising to content delivered based on information gathered about your personal preferences. Think about the use of your credit cards, bank-cards, customer loyalty cards (such as air miles or supermarket discount clubs), magazine subscriptions, and your other public interactions. You already know that a great deal of personal information is tracked and recorded. Now, think about your behaviors on the Internet. Did you know you are being watched?

In one way or another, each of us is being electronically monitored while using the Internet. I have a G-Mail account which displays advertising based on keywords found in the text of emails I receive. I noticed that different ads might display each time I open a specific message. I also have a number of super-handy toolbars installed on my computer. I use them for almost instant reference to tons of information about web sites and search engines. The price of my usage is my allowance for the makers to monitor my behaviors while online. The information I feed back to them determines to some degree the information fed to me during searches. For example, Lycos knows I am Canadian. For some reason, it will only allow me to see Lycos.CA and not Lycos.Com. I find this annoying. The results shown at Lycos.CA are not always the same as seen at Lycos.Com. Google also knows I live in Canada and would automatically send me to Google.CA if I hadn’t previously clicked the “Go to Google.Com” link at Google.CA. As the search engines collect information about me, they begin to form a profile of me. The most blatant profiling is currently found at A9.com (see our A9 article). Soon, I suspect I will see advertising directed from my region. I also expect to see advertising that reflects topics of many of the sites I commonly visit, with the sad exception of hockey related advertising which is likely going to be on hold for a while.

Now, if you were an SEO or an advertiser, what would you do with the knowledge that advertising is being directed to specific persons based on basic personal information? Speaking to a search engine placement firm might be a good start. Incorporating geographic targeting in ad-copy and campaign planning was complicated enough for SEOs. Now we need to start thinking about lifestyle-copy, regional-copy and other general identifiers that might produce personalized hits. The upside to the complexity is that personalized targeting should result in stronger revenues at lower long-term advertising costs. After all, personal targeting of paid advertising is getting stronger and much more sophisticated.

Jim Hedger is a senior editor for ISEDB.com. Also he is a writer, speaker and search engine marketing expert working for StepForth Search Engine Placement in Victoria BC. He has worked as an SEO for over 5 years and welcomes the opportunity to share his experience through interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Hedger can be reached at jimhedger@stepforth.com

My first real foray into Internet Marketing was a Pay Per Click ad campaign. I really had no idea what I was getting myself into and the results were predictable. I soon had a mountain of debt with little in the way of results to show for it.

It wasn’t the Pay Per Click company’s fault. They basically did what they pronised to do. They got people to my website. The blame was all mine. I had made a couple of serious mistakes during the planning of my campaign. I will share those mistakes so that you can avoid making those same errors yourself.

My first, and probably biggest, mistake was not “looking before I leaped”. I did not take the time that I should have in researching Pay Per Click and learning just how much it could potentially cost. As a result, I was completely caught by surprise by how quickly my credit card was being charged over and over again. Take the time to do the proper amount of research before beginning a Pay Per Click campaign or any other business or advertising opportunity. You should always be aware of the cost or risks of any program before you invest money or time on it.

I made another major mistake when I did not set a daily budget for my campaign. That was a direct result of my ignorance about how much Pay Per Click could actually cost. I did learn an extremely valuable lesson though. Always set a budget. Determine beforehand exactly how much you can afford to spend per week or per month. Be disciplined and stick to it. You should always try to avoid going into debt unless it is absolutely necessary.

The final mistake that I regret was waiting too long to pull the plug on the campaign. I suppose that stubborness set in and I just did not want to admit defeat. However, admitting defeat is sometimes not so bad. If you sense that an opportunity is not working out, then cut your losses. No purpose whatsoever is served by throwing more good money after the bad. Always know “when to say when”.

Learn from my mistakes. Alway do your research before pursuing Pay Per Click or any other new opportunity. Be sure to set a weekly or monthly budget and stick to it. And, finally, if an opportunity is not working out, then don’t give in to stubborness. Cut your losses right away.

Ronald Gibson is a Web Designer and Web Marketer. He is the Webmaster of AffiliateUtopia.com, which offers information about some of the best money making opportunities on the Web. For more information, visit: http://www.affiliateutopia.com/