What's Froogle? Can people find your website's products or services listed?

What's Froogle? Can people find your website's products or services listed?

As A Website owner, the first question you need to ask yourself is: "Where do customers shop?"

• Consumers frequent places that are familiar
• Consumers frequent places that are convenient
• Consumers frequent places with fair prices
• Consumers frequent places that are well advertised
• Consumers frequent places they ve shopped at in the past.

So what does knowing where customers shop have to do with Froogle, the comparison shopping engine? Well simply put; many people trust Google's Foogle and they are familiar with Google because it's well promoted, they've been there before and it's always convenient. While Google's Froogle doesn't establish pricing on any items listed in their comparison shopping engine themself, they do allow shoppers to find good prices and merchants to set pricing as they wish. Google has hammered the consumer's nail right on its head.

Perhaps is one of those unusual exceptions to the old expression, "there's no such thing as a free lunch". At Froogle, if you're looking to marketing something, lunch is on them. It's as easy as 1-2-3.

After some few facts about Froogle, I'll cover the steps for uploading your products or services information.

Froogle Info

Froogle is on the Google home page.
Millions of people come to Google each day, and many are actively looking for the products you're selling. Froogle connects shoppers with merchants.

You can list your products on Froogle for free.
Unlike other online shopping sites, Froogle costs nothing. There's no spending account to set up and maintain. No cost-per-click. No cost, period.

At Froogle you control your product information.
Simply upload a new product feed at any time to ensure Froogle displays the most accurate descriptions and promotions for your products.

Froogle provides store ratings and product reviews.
Google's technology scours the web to identify relevant information about listed stores and products. This information is in the form of review 'snippets' from independent ratings sites.

Let's talk about your website's products or services. Question: can they be listed in Froogle.

Below are some simple tips toward getting your website's products or services listed in Froogle using their data feed system:

1. Sign in to the Froogle Merchant Center
   Create or use your existing Google Account to enter the Froogle Merchant Center.
   
2. Create an FTP account
   Set up your FTP account, which you'll later use to upload your 'product info' feeds to us.
   
3. Specify your feed's settings
   Set your feed's filename and other parameters.
   
4. Create and upload your feed
   Create a feed according to Froogle's instructions and upload it to them. Be sure to name your feed using the filename you chose in Step 3 (above).
   
5. Final content review
   We will review your feed to ensure that its content is consistent with our program policies.

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Your website | Froogle | Dan Hollings |
Other recommended blogs:
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Does your website target Mompreneurs?

Does your website target Mompreneurs?

Source: DSA.org

I recently checked the "gender stats" available from the Direct Sales Association, 79.9% of people in "direct sales" are women. Even without a calculator, I can figure the men total a paltry 20.1%. Many of the women in our industry (and prospects we seek) are current or future moms. It was only a matter of time before a new term has come on the scene: Mompreneurism.

Yes, you're reading it right. According to authors Patricia Cobe and Ellen Parlapiano, who trademarked the term "mompreneurs" and were recently featured in Time magazine and various other programs like Oprah; their mompreneurs online website draws millions of visitors each month.

In reading through the Mompreneurs Online web site you'll learn that they've interviewed hundreds of work-from-home mothers. Their interviews revealed that these 'Mompreneur' women share certain secrets for their savvy web strategies. Don't miss the interesting points they offer. For example, below is a sampling of why and how mom-owned businesses are surviving and thriving on the web according to Parlapiano and Cobe:

• Web Wisdom. Work-at-home moms understand that a dot.com name alone is not enough to power success. But the Internet can be a very valuable tool when used in conjunction with more traditional business strategies.
• The Control Factor. Moms start home businesses for family flexibility, so they grow their enterprises slowly and steadily to retain control over their work/family time. The 24/7 availability of the Internet lets them work when THEY want to.
• A Natural Niche. Cyberspace opens up a wealth of business ideas, allowing moms to tap into their talents, skills and passions to create products and services for highly targeted audiences.

Maybe you think Your website is a wonderful place for moms? Maybe you're hoping to attract work-from-home mothers to your site, blog, product or business? Or, maybe you already have lots of moms and a true mompreneurial spirit?

Whatever the case, at home mompreneurs are an important niche and your pay-per-click marketing strategies can target these moms. Moms are both a consumer and a business force to be respected and understood.

Perhaps your website's products or services will be just the thing these mompreneurs are desiring? Now, let's continue (below) with more tips in our series on techniques to assure a successful PPC search engine campaign. Maybe you can get some moms clicking!

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

• When thinking up keywords, use examples of specific things your product is used for: 'clean floors', clean countertops', 'wash floors', 'mop floors', 'polish stove top', 'remove grime', 'shine appliances', 'disinfect bacteria', 'hide furniture flaws' etc.
• Explore variations: 'soy milk', 'soymilk', 'soy-milk'
• Add plurals: 'protein bar' and 'protein bars'
• Use abbreviations and acronyms
• Use US and UK spellings
• Keyword phrases may be questions: 'how to repair bad credit', 'when should I diet', 'how do I lose weight', 'where are discount cosmetics', etc.

How to Reach Out to Mompreneurs

Here's one way you can be relevant and attractive in reaching out to work-from-home mothers:

SOCIAL SYSTEMS: Social system technology is a new and exciting technology comprised of blogs, tags, photos and the sharing of many other things. Find ways to connect like-minded women. Use technology if you can. Being a mompreneur can be isolating, so business owners are eager for information, resources and social connections.

Looking for more search marketing tips? Check my posts from previous weeks for more ideas and strategies.



For additional tips visit:
Internet Marketing Tips for Your website

Check back next week for the next in this series of pay per click marketing tips...


Technorati:
Your website | mompreneur | mompreneurs | mompreneurism | entrepreneur | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Dan Hollings |
Other recommended blogs:
Tastefully Simple | The Traveling Vineyard | Tomboy Tools

Let's talk about your website's products or services. Question: can they be marketed using a pay per click approach

Let's talk about your website's products or services. Question: can they be marketed using a pay per click approach

Perhaps the product or service offered by your website is not widely known by consumers. This can be a positive or a negative depending on the mindset of your potential visitor. What's important in all cases, is that you provide the features and benefits that your product or service offers and focus on that at your site. If a customer likes what you offer, they will naturally want to recommend it to others and this helps grow your business through positive word-of-mouth.

As A Website owner you know your product and you've set your goals. Your web page, site, or blog is up and you're pondering methods to get targeted traffic.

Can your website's products or services be sold using a pay per click approach or not? That's your first question, right? But equally important, can you figure out a pay per click campaign that generates more solid customers than expense?

Promising news, the answer is: "YES!"

Tricks of the trade for the successful PPC campaign...

• If your product or service is something that can be related to a locale, like a city, state or region you may be able to find some ripe tomatoes in phrases like: 'retirement homes in Florida', 'Mississippi flat rate phone service', 'herbal sunscreen for southwestern sun', 'indoor air filters for Los Angeles'.
• Discover more keywords by narrowing down to extreme specifics. People can be VERY specific when they search. Use names of months and years like '2004 tax savings', 'May flowers', 'Christmas of 2005' or 'September back to school supplies'.
  
  Let's say you are marketing a broad line of herbal products... why not get a list of all herbs (there may be thousands) and use that list as a keyword list. Maybe your product doesn't contain every herb on the list, but people searching for any ONE herb specifically may be interested in others. Try specific model numbers, makes and designs if your products are sometimes referred to this way: 'Epson stylus CX6400', 'Apple G5', etc.
• Add adjectives to your keywords like: big, purple, new, cheap, affordable, soft, aromatic, healthy, etc.

Check back next week for the next in this series of pay per click marketing tips...


Technorati:
Your website | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | AdWords |

Yahoo Sponsored or Google AdWords? What's Best for Your website.

Yahoo Sponsored or Google AdWords? What's Best for Your website.

There are many PPC search engines, with some being better than others. The top two are Yahoo and Google. It's a good idea to start your attempts to generate traffic through search engines with a small budget, spreading it out over a few different search engines to experiment and see where your target market may be lurking.

There's no better way to begin than by viewing the wonderful tutorials and flash overviews offered by Google and Yahoo. Below are samples, you'll find others at Google and Yahoo:

Yahoo Sponsored Search: Flash Introduction
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/rc/srch/tu_srch.php
Learn advantages of Yahoo's PPC program.

AdWord Options for Keyword Matching Explained
https://services.google.com/marketing/stats/tutorial_redirect
Perfecting your Google AdWord targeting and filter worthless clicks.

The AdWords Billing Statement Explained
http://services.google.com/tutorial/billing/billing.html
Don't be confused by your monthly Google invoice.

Next, We'll Review How Google and Yahoo Deal With Your Bids...

Yahoo Sponsored Ads

• Yahoo sets your keyword bid only 1 penny over your next lowest competitor. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, and the next highest bid is $1.95 per click, you will only pay $1.96 per click.
• Yahoo allows you to see who you are bidding against and what they are bidding, so you know exactly where you will rank, and how much you will pay.
• Yahoo's maximum bid is $999.99
• Yahoo's minimum bid is $0.10

Google AdWords

• Google doesn't tell you how much you will pay per click. Thus, if you bid $3.00 per click, you will pay anywhere from $0.05 to $3.00 per click.
• Google does not allow you to know how much your competitors are bidding per click.
• An advantage with Google is that you will rank higher if your click-through rate (CT rate) is better (a CT rate is the ratio of clicks on your ad to the number of times your ad is shown). Thus, you may have a better rank than your competitor, even if he or she bids more than you (because of your CT rate).
• Google's maximum bid is $100.00
• Google's minimum bid is $0.05

New Google AdWords keyword status changes: Simplified keyword states and quality-based minimum bids.

NEW: Google announced in early August 2005 that they will simplify their keyword status system and introduce quality-based minimum bids, giving us more control to run all keywords we find important.

Let's See How This Works

Each keyword will now be assigned a minimum bid that is based on the quality (also called Quality Score) of your keyword in your account. If your keyword or Ad Group's maximum cost-per-click (CPC) meets the minimum bid, your keyword will be active and trigger ads. If it doesn't, your keyword will be inactive and will not trigger ads.

Previosly, keyword statuses were called normal, in trial, on hold, and disabled. Under the new rules, this will be replaced with active (triggering ads) or inactive (not triggering ads). No more slowed or disabled keywords if no do not have a minimum clickthrough rate (CTR) threshold.

More Pay Per Click Marketing Tips Below:

Pay-per-click advertising tips for the Website owner continue below:

• Expand your keywords by asking your spouse, friends, neighbors, relatives, existing customers and strangers to look at your web page and offer their keyword suggestions. In this phase you cannot have too many cooks in the kitchen.
• Put your biscuits in the oven and watch'em rise... That is, use web based 'keyword expanders' and research tools to expand your keywords beyond what you can come up with on your own.
• Remember, searchers may type in something that describes your product, but more often than not they will be typing in words describing their problem. If your product or service solves, fixes, heals, masks or even distracts them from their problem, you want those keywords on your list.
• "In-house" keywords (those used frequently by others in your industry or business) are often the most costly because lazy business owners don't often think beyond their own nose. The result is these limited keywords get bided-up sky high. Customers on the other hand seldom search using "in-house" keywords. Your goal is to find keyword niches popular with customers but less popular with your competition.

Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


Technorati:
Your website | PPC | pay per click | Google AdWords | Network Marketing | Yahoo Ads | Dan Hollings | Sponsored Ads | Contextual Ads | AdWords

Your website? What's the public's impression?

Your website? What's the public's impression?

Have you ever thought about the public's perception of what you do?

Your website

Perhaps the product or service offered by your website is not widely known by consumers. This can be a positive or a negative depending on the mindset of your potential visitor. What's important in all cases, is that you provide the features and benefits that your product or service offers and focus on that at your site. If a customer likes what you offer, they will naturally want to recommend it to others and this helps grow your business through positive word-of-mouth.

Do you truly believe that visitors already think this about Your website?

That's an important point you must not overlook in any search engine marketing campaign; you should consider upfront (as you are preparing your keywords, your ads, and your landing page) what the majority of visitors already 'know' about you and the website's products or services you offer. In most cases you are best to assume they've never heard of you. That's always the safe bet.

If you're selling iPODs or something very well known, you can approach things much differently. Less time explain 'what' you've got and more time explain 'why' they should buy from you.

If your selling something that has become a common commodity (vitamins, shoes, cosmetics, telephone services, etc), then you must differentiate your product from the other seemingly similar items visitors could associate you with.

Much of these consumer 'mindset' challenges must be addressed on the page your visitor arrives at after clicking your ad; so before you start any strategies for getting targeted visitors, stop and think for a moment about what your potential customer might perceive as they arrive at your landing page.

More tips for your PPC campaign:

So as promised, below you'll find this weeks installment of search engine tips...

• When cooking-up your keyword phrase list, use an extended "keyword discovery" phase. Your competition, like you, will do basic keyword research. You can only beat them if you take it to the next level, and that won't happen in the first day. Having a large number of targeted keywords in your campaign is a side effect of an extended period of brainstorming, discovery, research, or whatever you want to call it.
• Not very wood with gords? There is a hidden target market of quality visitors who type in incorrect spellings of what they are looking for. Site owners often overlook this. In a recent 30 day period on a major search engine at least 108 people where searching for a 'buisness'? Hundreds more were searching for: 'vitiamins', 'vitimans' and even 'vitamens'... You can bid on misspellings and have very little competition on the search results page.
• Assume that at least half your keywords will be rotten eggs, that is, no one will ever look for them and end up at your site. Because there is no extra cost to add as many keyword phrases as you can think up, treat them like biscuits and bake-up as many as you can... 100 or more keyword phrases for each destination page you list in any PPC search engine.

Check back over my last several blog posts for many more sets in this series of PPC search engine tips.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


Technorati:
Your website | PPC | pay per click | Google | Network Marketing | mlm | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Contextual Ads | AdWords

FadSense for fashion, "wearable ad sponsored cloths" designed to earn Google participants extra income...

FadSense for fashion, "wearable ad sponsored cloths" designed to earn Google participants extra income...

Just think, you slap on some jeans and a t-shirt and head off to the bank. You had no money when you left, but when you arrived you had a few bucks in your pocket! That's how I envision Google FadSense. Any takers?

Don't miss this: Google FadSense™

As A Website owner, you might be wondering why I'm talking about a futuristic contextual AdSense (AdWord) program like FadSense. It's partially because it's funny, but more importantly, it's because I feel the type of advertising we have been discussing here at my "Internet Marketing Tips for Your website" blog, is critical to your future. What I'm hoping to teach you are skills and tips that will not only work for Google today, but for any similar type advertising in the future. Google FadSense, real or not!

Some of it turns out to be as basic as:

• How to determine "tags" that help categorize your content.
• How to track your traffic, results, and advertising ROI (return on investment).
• How to create a destination or landing page that works.
• How to write effective ads.
• How to manage your advertising budget.
• How to create eye catching headlines for your ads.
• How to use the internet effectively in any marketing campaign.

My Continuing Tips To Help You With Your website...

Over the past few weeks we have hammered away with dozens of valuable tips. This week we continue.

• Remember that with PPC campaigns, you are not sending search visitors to a site, you are sending them to a web page (called: a destination or landing page). You must discover keywords and set-up ONE page at a time.
• Remember that people search by typing in more than one word:
• The 7 most used word phrases in search engines according to OneStat.com:
• 2 word phrases 32.58%
• 3 word phrase 25.61%
• 1 word phrases 19.02%
• 4 word phrases 12.83%
• 5 word phrases 5.64%
• 6 word phrases 2.32%
• 7 word phrases 0.98%
• Start your "keyword discovery" process by visiting the destination page you intend to send your search engine visitors to. Put on the 'reading glasses' of a customer and look at your page through their eyes.
• Ask yourself this: "What keywords might a person type in a search box where when they arrived at this destination page, they'd say 'BINGO' this is what I was looking for?" Find these keywords and you've discovered your best keywords.

Last week I posted the another round of search engine marketing tips and yet more in the weeks before that. Check there for more ideas.


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Technorati:
Your website | PPC | pay per click | Google | FadSense | AdSense | Sneakers | Dan Hollings | internet marketing | Fashion | Contextual Ads | AdWords

Google Closed its doors today after pulling the plug on the last of 400 servers. Could it really be?

Google Closed its doors today after pulling the plug on the last of 400 servers. Could it really be?

www.flickr.com

What started as a collaboration between Larry and Sergey and initially lead to a search engine called BackRub (named for its unique ability to analyze the "back links" pointing to a given website) and grew to become the "five-and-dime" of pay-per-click search engines, pulled the plug on the last server on this date in Mountain View, California. It's a story of a future time that could be soon, or beyond our horizon.

If anyone back in the late 1800's or early 1900's had been thinking ahead to the future of Woolworth Corp., it's unlikely they would have ever predicted that the famous five-and-dime would be a line item on a "Today in History" script published to millions of readers across this thing we call the internet.

Yet today, has I opened my RSS News Reader, there it was. I can recall shopping at the five-and-dime as a kid. It was the "best" store in town. Just like Google; the best. Now, its history. Perhaps the best is not good enough?

"The perfect search engine, would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want," says Google co-founder Larry Page, "Never settle for the best."

On this date...

In 1997 - After 118 years, the Woolworth Corp. closed its last 400 five-and-dime stores. The Woolworth building (opened in 1919) in New York City was the world's tallest skyscraper until 1930.

Could this happen to Google? Well, yes. Simply put, Google has become a new kind of foe, and that has Bill Gates riled. Google has combined software innovation with a brand-new Internet business model and it wounds Gates' pride that he didn't get there first. It's an eye opening article from Fortune magazine: GATES VS. GOOGLE. For now however, it's all fantasy thinking as the titans of search (Google, Yahoo, & Microsoft) battle it out in cyberspace.

People searching for information on the Internet are driving some of the fastest-growing profits on the Web, whetting advertisers' appetites by signaling what they want. By typing in search terms, users are also sending advertisers a clear message about merchandise they might be interested in buying, and search providers like Google Inc. (Nasdaq:GOOG - news), Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and Microsoft Corp.'s (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) MSN are cashing in. (Source: Reuters 2005)

Good news for the Website owner

The Cost Per Lead using Pay-per-click is Cheap Compared To Other Ads

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know where to spend your advertising dollars... $8.50 for search, $20 for Yellow Pages, $50 for online display ads, $60 for e-mail and $70 for direct mail. Those are the average cost-per-customer numbers based on research by Piper Jaffray.

Jeffrey Herzog, chairman and chief executive of iCrossing says, "When someone conducts a search, only two things can happen. They'll either find your business or a competitor's business. Game over"

Are there dangers or flaws in search advertising?

• Some worry that new advertisers are rushing blindly into paid search and inflating key word prices -- a concern underscored by WebTrends data.
• According to WebTrends the data suggests that 60 percent of marketers do not measure sales, leads or key actions resulting from campaigns. [This is a dangerous number because that means you are competing with people who don't know what things are truly costing them. You need to be extra analytical when going head to head with this guy.]
• At times, advertisers and their online business affiliates find they are competing with each other in auction-style bidding for key words and pushing up their own costs.

Adding all this up, we come to two conclusions: 1) It pays to get good at pay-per-click advertising if you plan to do business online and 2) we may only have 118 years left with Google :-)

Search engine marketing tips:

• Forget stupid characters. We are talking search engine listings (not eBay) so cool the clever punctuation it L@@KS stupid!!!!!!!! Don't make SOME words CAPITALIZED; it looks like you're shouting desperately for business. Respect the people who read your search engine listings.
• People are by nature often interested in things like 'saving money', 'making money', 'curing something', 'striking a deal', and getting anything of value that is 'free'... but be careful. The addition of such self-interest phrases in your ad copy may skew your clicks upwards while leaving your sales flat. If you're tempted to try such phrases... test, test, test... while keeping an eye on your bottom-line.
• Bluntness works: 'Refinance 4.5%', 'Viagra $39', 'No Interest VISA', etc
• These are the type words that appeal to searchers: more information, complimentary, love, youthful, safe, new, benefit, gain, money, happy, glad, proven, guarantee, resource, fast, results, discover, how you, how to, your, yours, you'll, healthy, natural, magic, secret, comfortable, save, proud, secure, solution.

For additional tips that might improve your pay per click ad campaign review the tips in my previous posts.


Check back next week for the next in this series of PPC tips... Until next week, happy PPC campaigning...


Technorati:
Your website | PPC | pay per click | Google | marketing tips | search | Woolworth | Today in history | online advertising