Facebook Has The Power To Grow Your Business

If you have been on the Internet for some time to sell products or services, you already know that it is very difficult to attract people to your website cost-effectively. In order to do it, you should work beyond your competition to discover cheaper ways to find customers and by now, Facebook is one of them, if you do it right.

The Genesis Of Advertising On The Internet

You can do advertising on the Internet by several ways besides Facebook. You could buy links on other sites, create a PPC campaign to display your URL in the search engines, you could create videos pointing to your site, comment on blogs and many forms, but from approximately 2,002 Google Adwords offered a very cheap way to advertise your business and it was the Facebook of the time.

How PPC Works

PPC on Google works this way. Users are doing searches on the Internet all the time and you could decide which phrase you like and put your URL in front of the people typing it. This is very form of targeted traffic, because people are actively searching for that information to solve a problem and many will be willing to spend money to fix it. There is another advertising system in Google known as the display network (known previously as the content network), that is similar to Facebook because it works with keywords that match certain demographic.

How Facebook Works

Facebook advertising is very different from the search network of Google, because in Facebook you will have to target demographics and not keywords. Demographics are groups of people that share certain things and could be a very powerful way to reach customers. Take into account that when advertising via demographics, the prospects are not so "HOT" or ready to buy as when you advertise with Google, because they are usually at the beginning of the purchase funnel, they are only somewhat interested in the information you are providing, but don't ready to buy anything from you. They even don't know you are you or what specific thing you have to offer to them, so you will have to warm this people through the purchase funnel and some will get with you to the end of the funnel completing the sale, but most won't. This is the natural process because customers decide for other products, other pricing options, even other opinions, but you have to work with the percentage of people that will buy from you and that is money on the bank if what you paid to acquire them is less than you are making from the sale.

The Warming

So, how do you warm these cold prospects? The answer is easy: You should have to build a lot of trust to these people with all the marketing arsenal available like: Email, Videos, Comments, Articles, Email Replies and so on. Some will buy from you immediately, but most people will take a lot of time, but eventually you will get 2%-3% of buyers from your efforts or more (some are reporting conversion rates of about 12% which is huge). Don't get discouraged by the fact that only a tiny percentage of people that gets through your funnel buy your product because that is completely normal.

The Acquisition

The price of acquisition of a new client is very high at Google because the medium is very mature and there a lot of skilled advertisers there, but Facebook is still relatively young and you will not find as much competition in Facebook as in Google. Facebook requires different kind of skill, so you won't see people migrating too much from Google in the short term, but this is changing fast as people is discovering that you could get a new client for less than a dollar, where you would have to pay tens of dollars on Google for the same.

The real secret to advertise successfully in Facebook is to filter the people as much as you can, so you could get the most from your advertising dollars and this is especially true if you are on a small budget.

Things You Should Know Before Buying a Domain

Domains are one of the most valuable assets that any business could own on the Internet because they have the ability to build a brand and also accumulate the power of links into them. Traffic is one of the most difficult things to build on the Internet, because more traffic is really more money, but when your domain converts itself into a brand you will be getting one of the most powerful ways of traffic: "Type-in Traffic" which is people typing directly your domain name into de address bar of their browser to get to your site.

The Power of Type-in Traffic

There are only 2 ways to get type in traffic. One is buying a generic domain with a lot of searches that will naturally get type-in traffic, for example: cars.com, vodka.com and such, but currently the high traffic domains based on type-in traffic are now all taken as they are very valuable. Recently, vodka.com was sold to a Russian company for 3 million dollars.

The other way you could get type-in traffic is being a brand. Domains like cocacola.com don't need much traffic generation to their websites because they are recognized by all people. While building a brand is very tough, this is not only one of the ways that you could be independent to an extent from Google or other website to generate traffic, but also one of the most profitable things you could for your website.

Carefully Select Your Domain

Many people select their domains based on keywords. If they want to rank for used cars in Minnesota, then try to register UsedCarsInMinnesota.com (the case doesn't matter on domains, I wrote it this way only to show the name better) in the hopes that they will have easier time ranking in Google for that key phrase because Google gives strong valuation to pages that have the exact match on the domains. While this could work for SEO, a name like that could be harder to turn into a brand because there are generic words and also because the name is long.

You could register two domains also, one for SEO and the other for branding pointing to the same space, but it is not a good strategy because Google dislikes duplicate content, so the best advice here is register the SEO domain and develop it like a blog to encourage comments, linking and other SEO stuff and register a good brandable name for your normal marketing activities, without taking care of technical stuff, because the brandable domain is not intended to rank for anything, just communicate the message you want.

The Owner Of The Domain

You should be the owner of your domain. As I told you above, the domain is the most important asset of your online business and you should take extreme measures to protect it. First of all, the administrative email from the domain should be one that you will always own, so avoid any email that is paid because if you leave the service, you will lose this point of contact with your domain. All the data you put for the domain should be real, because if you put false information you could lose the domain, this is especially true if you are hosting your domain with Godaddy.

Domains In Other Languages

In other languages, like Spanish, you will find sometimes letters like "ñ" or "á" which doesn't exist in English. The domain system was originally designed in English, so it is only recently that special characters are available to register, but take into account that most users are now trained to don't use special characters, so using them could harmful. Sometimes you would see gibberish when reading some Spanish posts. Recently I build a page about Comprar dominio.com and the gibberish is difficult to fix (is something about Wordpress and the language configuration of the database, but support can't fix this easily), so take into account this when hosting a domain in a host the offer a different language.

Conclusion

The right domain almost always is based on the brand you want to build and not always on keywords and second, take care of your domain because if you lose it, you will be losing one of the most important assets for your business.

Survival Guide For Beginner Bloggers

After invention of Web 2.0 standards, bogging comes into Internet arena. Now a day, there are several Blogging platforms (like Blogger) takes place for example - micro-Blogging, corporate Blogging and many others, However, the importance of the individual Blogger still sky-high. The main reason of it is - people trust more then a corporate blog to an individual. The main reason of it is the result of a research can be independent when an individual, on the other hand a research conducted by a corporate, publishes it then the result may bias. They found more reliable information in individual's blog.

In today's Internet jungle, Bloggers classified under two platforms, they are - Blogger and WordPress. The difference and the pitfalls of both platforms are beyond of this article. However, in this article, we assume that, you are using Blogger. The same tricks working fine if you are using any other platform like WordPress. You start a blog, and what next? First thing first, you need to survive and for survival, you need traffic and some basic knowledge about Blogger and Blogging so that you can compete in long run.

Find Your Niche - before you start posting, make sure that - you've done a excellent research about your niche that can establish you a expert in other Blogger and find some catchy keywords that can easily visible in search engines but not very competitive. It is proved that, nearly 80% of the traffic comes from all major search engines no matter whether it is your blog or your personal website and rest of the traffic comes from other sources - mainly from social networking platforms and other platforms. So, it is a good idea to penetrate on your low competitive niche keywords and start Blogging.

How Many Posts Do You Need To Start? - Well, there are lots of people talking about this, but according to experts nearly 20-30 quality post is essential for start. The standard blog post word limit is - 250-300 words. Also, remember that, your post must be informative, free from any errors and add some value to the reader's life. Not only that, do not try to copy other Bloggers work, this will permanently destroy your reputation. Plagiarism is a serious offence over Internet, and this may cause your blog banned from Blogger and Google. As a Blogger, you must keep in mind that, the "Label" of your post working as keywords in search engines and don't forget to add them.

Back Links - Back links are essential for better search engine rankings. There are several ways to leave your links in different sites. The best way to leave your Blog's link to other Blog, share your post with social media like twitter and Facebook. Additionally, write relevant articles and submit those articles into different article directories, Hubs, Squidoo, forums and other places. Fortunately, Blogger has excellent blog network, and you can easily communicate with other Bloggers to exchange your link. Apart from this, if you post something that is linked with other blog posts, you must mention that and mention their URL.

Monetize Your Blog - Without money you can't survive and it is a good idea to just not leave your blog alone, rather try to monetize it. Numbers of advertising networks and affiliate programs offers their promotional activity through Blogger, for example - Google AdSense and Amazon affiliate program is the perfect example and Google and Blogger both also affiliate them. So, don't waste your time - just "exploit" the Blogger platform.
Convert And Getting Involved Your Visitors - involving other Blogger with your conversation is the first sign of your success. Ask other Blogger for their input and participation about the subject that you're discussing. The next step is prove yourself as diversified Blogger and if you are promoting something that are related to your affiliated program, then motivate your reader/ other Blogger and convert them to a potential buyer.

Finally, there are lots of other Blogger/blog optimization tips equally important, but their success and application completely depending upon your need and what you want to achieve as a Blogger. So, deciding your goal as a Blogger is essential and then makes a short list of your requirements and finally kick-start the promotion, for example - if you are writing and sharing something about software, then sharing a related video can enhance your presence and you can submit your videos in all high traffic video sharing sites and get visitor from them.

Hostmonster Better Than Free Hosting?

Hostmonster is well known, but here we will discuss if it has advantages over the free services.

There are several types of web hosting and among them is free web hosting service. In free web hosting the host company is often supported by advertisements, which is the hosting company's source of income, in the case of Hostmonster, you won't see advertisements on them that you couldn't control and some computer users do not want ads on their website and for this reason, they avoid using a web host offering free hosting for their website. Another type of web hosting is paid web hosting which is normally not very expensive for individuals or small business owners paying for a business website. Paid web hosting for business owners with a large website or one doing E-commerce the web hosting can be very expensive. Hostmonster is in this category and costs only $5.95 a month, which is very affordable.

Another type of web hosting is shared web hosting service in which the web host supports many websites on one web server connected to the Internet and Hostmonster offers this type of service. This works well for those who want others to deal with the technicalities of a website. Some servers can host hundreds or even thousands of websites. An example of this is a company with one main web server connected to the Internet and the computers in all of the company branches are connected to the Internet through the main company server.

Reseller Hosting

Reseller web hosting involves web hosting services to companies who in turn function as web hosts for other companies. The reseller often offers website management and design services and space for websites. This is the reason you should be very cautious about picking a web hosting company, because you don't know if you are dealing with a true vendor or simply a reseller. They offer a simple interface and easy to use website tools to keep the site updated. A reseller is a company, which buys a product or service and after repackaging offers the product to other companies under their own brand name. Many people buy the services of Hostmonster to turn themselves into resellers.

Dedicated Server

Another type of web hosting is a virtual dedicated server sometimes called a virtual private server or a virtual and each has the same meaning. A virtual server is a physical server, which is divided into several smaller servers. Each of these servers is called a virtual server. A virtual server is independent of any hardware. A virtual server cannot interact with the processes and file system of any other virtual server. Virtual servers appear to be single, private servers but they are one of many smaller servers. If, we think of a tree trunk as the virtual dedicated server and the branches of the tree as many smaller servers we can grasp the idea of a virtual private or dedicated server. When you reached the limits of your website, you should plan to migrate to at least a VPS or "Virtual Private Server". Hostmonster only offers shared hosting, so if you have a very huge site, you should look to another company.

Managed hosting service is another type of web hosting and it provides a dedicated server and overall technical support, maintenance, and monitoring services for the client. The ability to control a server is limited by the hosting service for quality control and preventing a user from toying with the configuration of the server.

Dedicated web hosting service means a computer user has a web server and has control over it but does not own it. Because the user controls the server the user is responsible for the security and maintenance of a dedicated hosting service. In this area, Hostmonster is a better choice for the average user, since managing a dedicated server could be a very daunting task for someone without the necessary experience.

Similar to this is the collocation web hosting when the user owns the colo server and the web hosting company provides space and internet access to the server. The collocation provider/hosting service does not provide any support for the owner of the colo server.

Conclusion

Clearly, Hostmonster is the choice for most users, but power users or business owners with very large websites will want to search for other options instead of Hostmonster.