A sign board says, “Caution: Heavy traffic ahead.” You do not have to travel anywhere to see this. It is right here on the internet. We are talking about “internet” traffic.

Look at the amount of data being processed online day-in and day-out. Researchers say there is increasing fear about the threat that video clips, games, movies and social networks pose to the internet. It is all very well to talk about the benefits of online communication and the immense entertainment internet provides millions of people worldwide but what about the damage being done.

The real problem lies with the bandwidth-sucking content, such as video images on the net. These high definition movies require a huge amount of bandwidth. One minute of video requires around 2MB of web hosting space, and this is with medium resolution. If this video is offered in different formats, the space needed will be around 20MB. For a 20 minute video provided in all formats, it could easily consume 400MB of space. The video monster is a hungry creature that hogs bandwidth. Read the rest of this entry »

In marketing there is no substitute for effective, targeted advertising. For example, if you want to sell beach towels, you need to go where there is a need and desire for those towels. You won’t find beach towel retailers lined up anywhere but along coastal communities and resorts. Likewise if you want to sell your beach towels online, you need to display your advertising where beach towel consumers can find it. And that is where Google AdWords comes in.

There are more than a few ways to find highly targeted advertising online. Continuing the example of beach towels, you can start your own beach towel website and perform enough SEO that you’re ranking highly in the search engines. This generates natural traffic from effective marketing, but can take time.

In your search for other customers, you can create banners and other advertisements for use on other websites. These banners might be used by affiliates marketing your products and bringing you their beach towel customers for a percentage of the final sale. You might also use the banners and advertisements on other beach product websites. You might find another website selling sand toys or swimsuits and buy some ad space for your beach towel website. Read the rest of this entry »

For a long time, there was great speculation about formal advertising on the mobile web, but now advertising over mobile phones and devices is not only common, but also has guidelines set in place by the Mobile Marketing Association. The initial guidelines were released by the MMA in 2005 and the latest release in December 2007 marks an increased interest in mobile advertising that will only continue to grow as the world of handhelds expands.

A Growing Trend
Mobile handheld technology is a growing trend all over the world, but especially in well industrialized countries. In North America, 10% of mobile users use the phones for gaming, browsing and sending messages. Most users are between the ages of 25 and 34 and have plenty of disposable income. In Europe, the number of users is considerably higher making mobile web advertising a very lucrative and growing field for marketers.

Buying Time Online
Buying ads on the mobile web is a bit different than buying ads online. You’ll still need to create a graphic banner ad, but the size of the mobile screen must be taken into consideration. The ads are sold through mobile ad networks or directly from the mobile internet websites. Rates for placing ads on the mobile web fluctuate greatly but will continue to rise steadily due to ever increasing numbers of users on the mobile web. Read the rest of this entry »

The value of content is virtually undisputed, and the trend of including a blog with your website is still going strong. The only problem is, with all the blogs out there, how do make yours stand out? And even if you have terrific content, does it matter if you don’t have traffic to read it. Make this the year that you focus energy on bringing yourself more blog traffic.

Find an Angle
If you’re writing the same kind of content that everyone else it, often using the same spammy keywords as everyone else, you’re not offering much to readers. Readers want something unusual and interesting from your blog. If you’re in the business of making money online, use the blog to get personal. Tell stories – both good and bad. Make lists of tips and include your own successes and failures from those tips. Leave generic articles and randomly pulled news releases for the competition. Besides, with your new edge, you won’t have to consider them competition for long.

Be a Blogger
If you’re writing on a blog (or paying someone to write a blog) you need to do more than throw up a post or two a week. If you’re going to blog – blog. Throw your heart into your content and then get out into the community to talk it up with other bloggers. Bloggers aren’t meant to live in isolation. Your blog is designed to be shared – it is written for a community, so you need to be in the community networking and getting to know others who also tool around in the industry. They may be your competition or they may become your partner in your next JV. You’ll never know who’s out there until you start socializing. Read the rest of this entry »

For many internet marketers, AdSense is king of revenues. From small webmasters bringing in a few bucks a day to industry giants earning six figures a month with Google AdSense, the targeted advertising program is a standard addition to almost any website. Of course, ads on your site aren’t the only way to make money with a program like AdSense – many webmasters make money through the referral program offered by Google. Or, at least they used to make money that way – now they make not make anything at all.

Changes in AdSense Referrals
In the past, the referral system was set up so that you earned money after a certain time period for anything made by your referrals. If they earned $2, you earned $2. If you referred someone and they made more than $100, you earned a lump sum of $250. If you really did your marketing and referred twenty-five people who make $100 in 180 days, you earned a bonus of $2000. There was some serious money to be made through referrals, but those days are over now. Read the rest of this entry »

The holidays may or may not be important to you, but they can certainly be important in internet marketing. Black Friday and Cyber Monday aside, are you taking advantage of the holiday shopping, while at the same time ensuring your websites and businesses are optimized for the New Year?

More Shopping
Based on estimates from the first few days of the season and the entire year, holiday shoppers are expected to spend 21% more between Thanksgiving and Christmas. There is an extra week of shopping due to the positioning of Thanksgiving this year, but that increase also reflects higher incomes, more enthusiasm, and better response to marketing. The money will be spent both off and online.

Online Shopping and Increased Traffic
11% of shoppers will be doing more than 75% of their shopping online this year. Many more will be doing up to half of their shopping online. 72 million Americans are taking to the internet in search of holiday gifts. This is an increase from 60.7 million surfers in 2007. This traffic may be searching out holiday gifts, but all facets of the internet can benefit.

This shopping traffic means something to everyone in internet marketing – not just those with ecommerce sites. The sheer numbers of people online will have an impact on the whole of the internet. Directories, advertisements, ezines, newsletters and more all have meaning and impact with shoppers, especially women who will search for better deals and try and find related items.

Take Advantage of the Season
If you run any sort of online business, this increased traffic and increased spending can make a difference. Want to take advantage of the season? Here are a few suggestions: Read the rest of this entry »

There is no doubt that global tension is on the rise. The wars fought in various parts of the globe are stirring up strong emotions for many, and sanctions seem to be discussed on a fairly regular basis. There is always a fight brewing and War on Terrorism has taken some unshaken turns – at least according to some.

The Cold War
The last round of global tensions resulted in a couple of World Wars followed by a cold war that stretched out for decades. The arms race between the United States and the USSR put the whole world on edge as everyone waited and watched to see who would be the first to attack and what the impact would be worldwide.

There is another cold war brewing, but this time the players aren’t just the richest counties in the world – everyone can play, and only the technological advancements in that country determines who the most powerful nations will be. Read the rest of this entry »

The emergence of Social Media Marketing is the ultimate outcome of a balanced combination of Internet Marketing and Social Media. This integration though brought a revolutionary change, the success of an SMM campaign still depends on the situational model. Integrating the two modes, i.e. Internet Marketing and Social Media cannot run the show until the common goals of both are identified and planned accordingly, and this is what needs a thorough understanding of Social Architecture and designing marketing strategies in accordance with the prevailing situation.

Social Architecture in its original essence is one of the determining force of functionality of social media, and the major components on which it bases, are: users, their identity and the relationship of users with each other and their interaction with the rest of physical and or virtual environment. On the other hand content and context are the ruling forces of Internet Marketing. When combined, Internet Marketing and Social Media, a new Media Marketing Circle originates sharing the bases of both and having a strong bond in between them. The shared bases of Internet Marketing and Social Media generating the SMM Circle can also be termed as the pillars of Social Media Marketing.

For a better understanding of these pillars of SMM, let’s start with Users; being the only target of marketing campaigns users are of utmost importance. In fact the whole SMM circle revolves round users in one way or other. Considering this pillar as of prime importance, let’s keep it at the top. Read the rest of this entry »

Okay, it’s official. If you paid for links, your site most likely was punished. Or rather, if Google determined that your site most likely paid for a certain link, your site was punished. Paid links have been big business for companies, individuals and even academic institutions. But now the very same PR that earned the link funds has suffered because of them.

Major websites such as washingontonpost.com and forbes.com fell from a PR 7 to a PR 5. Statcounter.com fell from a PR10 to a PR 6 (or 8 according to other counters.) Ouch. How the change affected your own site may still be up in the air, but most feel as though the latest Google update is complete or nearing completion, and the biggest victory for Google was taking a bit hit at its nemesis, paid links.

There was a great amount of concern over the PR fall on websites in regard to traffic. Would traffic still find its way to sites through Google? So far the answer is yes. Of course, many webmasters are throwing up their hands about PR and giving up trying to understand. If it can’t be used to set prices for links, and it’s not affecting traffic, what exactly is its purpose?

Philosophical questions aside, one-way links to your website still have value for SEO and traffic. It’s only obviously paid links that are causing problems (so far), so the solution is to simple find alternative to obvious paid links. Read the rest of this entry »

There are certain rules and guidelines to SEO. Black hat and white hat aside, much of SEO is done through keyword optimization on the site as well as generating links back to the site from other sources. But according to some, there can be too much of a good thing. If you are so focused on producing pages of keyword rich content that your site becomes repetitive or pattern based, you might be throwing up a flare to Google and other search engines that your site is essentially spam.

Spam Sites
Google penalizes spam sites when it finds them (and feels like it.) If Google feels like your site follows the pattern of spam sites, you will most likely find your site and all your hard work booted off results pages. Characteristics of spam sites include highly repetitive pages often created as duplicates of a template to increase the amount of content on the site. Content is keyword laden gibberish, and the overall offerings of the site contain little or no value to visitors. Why create a spam site? To have visitors click away from it, preferably onto your Adsense or other ads cluttering up the perimeter of the page. Or to sell paid links – many paid links. Read the rest of this entry »