Making your online business does not require a lot of money. Making a few worthwhile investments here and there can go a long with with your Internet business. One investment-type that I’d have to recommend is the submission to web directories. Let me explain…

As you’re probably well aware, a web directory is basically a library of Internet websites with titles and descriptions of websites listed in their respected categories. There are thousands upon thousands of web directories on the Internet, but very few are worthwhile investing into.

Web directories are a great way to achieve quality backlinks. Free web directories give webmasters the ability to gain backlinks without a cost, and quality premium web directories cost to have a site listed, but are well worth it.

If you’re looking to have your site spidered and indexed more frequently, and possibly achieve better rankings in search engines, as well as a higher Google PageRank, I’d highly recommend submitting your website to a few HUNDRED or so quality web directories. Better yet, I’d recommend investing some money into a few worthwhile premium web directories - most of the high traffic, high PageStrength, high PageRank web directories have gone commercial, but getting your site listed in one really boosts your website in search engines (especially Google).

Directory Lister is a new website dedicated to serving the webmaster community with the Internet’s best, strongest, and most worthwhile web directories. I’d really suggest checking out the list of premium web directories on that list as there is no list that compares to it if you’re looking to invest a few hundred bucks into your site. Commercial sites, sites that sell products (even through affiliate programs), and sites that offer paid services will always make the best ROI (Return Of Investment).

I’ve been using the list and investing in some premium web directories myself, and have been getting quite a bit of success out of it.

From one webmaster to another, my name is Justice McCay, and I wish you the best of luck with your website. Drop a comment should you have any questions with investing money in web directories.

The deal means Google will take control of Doubleclicks software, But more importantly it means they now have access to Doubleclicks vast member base which has been growing rapidly since Doubleclick was founded 11 years ago.

Doubleclicks yearly income is estimated at $300 million a year.

Retail stores are doing research in hopes that they may be able to:

1) Stay competitive price/product wise.

2) Prevent their customers from doing there shopping elsewhere.

You owe it to yourself and your customers to use this same example with your home-based business.

So just how can your competitors help you with your home-based business?

Let’s take a look at a couple of items that may help you become and stay successful in internet marketing.

Website Design and Layout

Take a look at your competitors website and see how it is designed …

a) Is it easy to navigate through?
b) Can you find original content?
c) Does it capture your interest?
d) What about the colors and fonts used?

These are some of the things you should be comparing to your website. Some ‘experts’ will argue that website design has nothing to do with the success of your business … but, I beg to differ … if your website is pleasing to the eye and easy to navigate through and features your main product or service, then you have increased your chances of success. But, if your potential customers arrive at your website and they like the way it’s designed, they are more likely to stay and take a look around which increases the likelihood of making a sale.

Links, Content and Page Rank

Once again take a look at your competitors website and find their google page rank (this how google ranks websites in terms of importance) to see how your competitor measures up. A high page rank of 5 and above is very good — a page rank of 4 is average, but you shouldn’t worry about pages that rank lower than 4.

Page Rank is not a highly important factor as it was once touted to be — fresh new content is “King” and new articles / information uploaded weekly will cause search engines to spider your site on a regular basis.

Now take a look at your competitors links directory - what you’re looking for is quality link partners not so much quantity … click on some of their links and start adding these to your reciprocal links directory; search engines love websites with quality reciprocal links. The higher you rank in the search engines the better off you will be when people search using your keywords.

What we will be doing in this blog post is give you some basic tips that are often overlooked that will help you create a successful forum. You still wont be guaranteed a successful forum, That depends on you, But we hope to increase your chances.

Make sure you know your topic

When your forum is new it will be down to you and your friends to answer most, if not all questions. So make sure you know what you are talking about. You don’t have to know everything, But you do have to know more than the person posting. If the thread sits unanswered for weeks that will be a member you have lost. If you have to, Google it. You may be able to find the answer online somewhere else.

Forum hacks and features

Some may disagree, But i think one of the reasons WMT has become such a successful webmaster forum is because of the hacks and features they have. Ad-share is a great way to get people posting and karma points are a great way for people to easily see which member is likely to offer good advice.

Not too many topics

Don’t flood your forum with empty topics. Something people usually do is create about 20 different topics that remain empty for some time and make the forum look inactive. With a new forum the fewer topics the better, It will condense your content and make it appear active.

Make the forum appear active

Who wants to join an empty forum? Nobody does. When you start your forum create a bunch of names and start posting, Have some conversations with yourself and generate something that appears to be an active popular forum.

Affiliates

A good way to promote a forum is to have your own affiliate program. Offer people $10 for every person they refer that eventually makes 250 posts and have a minimum payout of $100. Of course, Money isn’t the only incentive you can offer. Things like a free advert or free hosting also work well.

I have been noticing a chain reaction sweeping the Internet ever since the great publicity of the ‘Million Dollar Homepage’ . The chain reaction is causing quite a few people to strike gold (wealth) easily. How? That’s an easy one…for some people: unique, innovative ideas.

It really amazes me sometimes how simple or just outright impossible an idea or one of these success stories may be, but I have realized something: I am not the only one amazed by unique innovative ideas; in fact, millions are, too! This amazement leads to interest, and thus interest converts visitors, and visitors bring in income, which turns a unique idea into success.

My equation:

unique innovative idea = interest
interest = amazement²
amazement² = promotion (one person telling another or even you telling other people)
promotion = interest²
interest² = visitors
visitors = income
income = a sign of success
unique innovative idea = success

It makes sense. Unique ideas are interesting, and I must admit: most things don’t interest me on the Internet since I’m a webmaster, but occasionally when something “new” comes about, I’m at full attention.

Just look at this site 1 Million Diggs. A brand new idea; so simple, yet so unique, as nobody has ever tried it. It took my interest…I even dugg it! Bah, see this! The interest I developed toward the site just ended up with me promoting it (I just noticed this live as I am writing up this post), and I never promote other people’s sites!

In final words, if you’re looking to market a website, be sure to offer something unique. Obviously, people really like that.

Guidelines For Marketing With Forum Signatures

Add links to your signature. Here are some good reasons to do so.

1. It’s good bulletin board edicate. Have you ever been to a group or lunchin or a training course and everybody wear nametags? Same idea here. Not many people online know who you are when you are new to a forum and a signature is a non intrucive way to let people know a little bit about you and what business you are in. It’s like leaving a business card for anyone who reads your post. It’s good just good edicate.

2. Signatures are a good way to introduce people to your website. If they liked your post they have instant access to your site via the link you provided in your signature. It’s a good way to get readship or introduce potential customers to your products or services.

3. An optimized keyword in your singature link can greatly improve your keyword popularity on search results. You rankings will only go up as your post count increases and if you want to change keywords all you have to do is change the links in your signature.(Note that exactly how forum signature links effect your search engine rankings is beyound the scope of this article. The general rule is more links for higher rankings)

Observe/respect rules of each forum site regarding signatures. E.G. Size of font, maximum number of links, size of graphic (if any), and character or line count.

Why? You’ll get banned if you don’t. Also it’s just good common courtesy. If it was your site you could do what you want, but it isn’t.

Use common sense. When rules about signatures are a liberal in what you can post use a little sense in what kind of signature you use. I know I have seen some terribly huge signatures with 700 X 100graphics in them. Signatures like that make pages rediculously slow toad load and suck up huge amounts of bandwidth, why bother. A 234 X 60 half banner will do just fine. Or consider only using an avitar.

If the response to italic fonts is positive, and it seems it is, I think we may see more power given to advertisers in the future. Currently AdSense only allow advertisers to pick what text appears in the advert, And then publishers are able to pick what colour each element of the adverts should be.

As the person paying is the advertiser i think it’s fair that they have more power when it comes to how their adverts look. We wouldn’t allow owners of billboards to decide how the adverts displayed on them should look, Would we.