www.tamomer.com

Creating a network — meaning a community of users — for your company is something that has always been valuable, but has become virtually indispensable to the success of any Internet company. The leaders of the Internet — such as Google and Yahoo! — all apply the idea of creating a network, and have profited substantially from it.

The best way to create a network is to provide your users with free services. This accomplishes two vital goals:

Attracts Users. Getting qualified traffic to your site is one of the most fundamental objectives of any online business. If you don’t get people to your site, you’re probably not going to make any money.

Giving away quality content and/or services free from your site is probably the best way to attract users. You increase the likelihood of other people linking to you — as your site will have quality content worth linking to — and thus will boost your rankings in search engines. By giving away something for nothing, you also encourage word of mouth; people enjoy informing others of free offerings, and virtually all of us love the idea of receiving something for nothing. As a result, giving away free content and/or services can be one of the most cost-effective ways of getting new users to your site.

Builds Trust. One of the biggest factors in determining how easy it will be for you to sell products/services online is how much the user trusts you. The more expensive your product/services are, and the less recognized your brand is, the more trust will be required of you for you to sell your product/service.

When you provide your users with a quality product or service that is free, they are going to like you. They are going to realize that unlike the vast majority of other companies out there, your firm actually offers something of value — and best of all, does so for free. As a result, you have earned the trust and credibility needed to sell other products/services to them.

So, what should you offer as a free service? That depends on what industry you’re in. One of the best free offerings a firm can deliver, though, is digital content. This can be as straightforward as text or as complex as video editing software. Digital content is a great free offering for two reasons:

1. Digital information is one of the few assets that one can give to another person without losing it oneself. This encourages the spread of your freely distributed product/service, which in turn increases its value to you as a promotional tool.

2. It has no variable costs. Once you’ve created it, the cost of distributing it is probably close to negligible. As a result, the marketing tactic of delivering a free product/service will not cut too deeply into your bottom line.

Once you have a free product that can attract a large user base, you should be in a great position to sell services to your user base. If your product/service is particularly good and is one that is conducive to repeat usage, you can easily sell services based around your free offering. This can be extremely effective and lucrative if done properly.

Generally speaking, there are three categories regarding ways you can develop revenue streams around your free offering:

Selling services

Selling add-ons/accessories
Selling network access

Let’s explore each method in greater detail.

Selling Services

Selling services essentially involves selling expert consultation or customization to the free product that was offered. The concept is best illustrated through a few examples:

Software companies: An increasingly common practice amongst software developers is to distribute a version of their software that is completely free. No functionality is withheld; the product is available free of charge in its fullest form. Many of the users, though, will require customization to the software — which the developers of the software are in a prime position to provide. As a result, some software companies are beginning to distribute their product entirely for free, knowing that they can sell custom services to a given percentage of the users. In this way, the free offering becomes a marketing tool that paves the way for closing sales. Such marketing tactics are increasingly replacing advertising as a more effective means of obtaining clients and establishing a brand name.

Consultation: At the turn of the millennium, Internet marketing guru Seth Godin published his book Unleashing the Idea Virus — and, instead of accepting the hefty advances and publishing deals he was offered, decided to distribute the book for free online. The decision, which was greeted with much skepticism at the time, seems to have been a wise one: the ebook has been downloaded over 1 million times, thus helping to establish Godin as the premiere Internet marketing consultant, and allowing him to command a premium price on consultation and public speaking services. The free distribution of content attracted users and allowed him to earn trust. He could then monetize this by offering service components such as consultation and guest lectures.

Selling Add-ons and Accessories

Another method of creating revenue streams around your free offering is to offer add-ons and accessories that supplement your free offering. One of the most prolific examples of this occurred when bookseller Barnes & Noble began to offer free online courses in a variety of topics. The courses are completely free, but students are encouraged to buy the books that serve to supplement the education provided in the classes. The strategy has proven to be immensely successful, as Barnes & Noble’s online courses are a prominent part of the company’s offering to this day.

Selling Network Access

With networks being the fundamental concept that drives everything about the Internet, creating a network around your free service - and then monetizing that network — is something that most certainly can be done. This is most typically done through advertising, premium interaction, or matching services.

Now that you understand the basics of creating a network the last and most important step is to start implementing a network building strategy and test out your ideas in real time.

This article was written by David Waring, CEO of The ActoNetwork. For more information on the power of networks and online marketing in general check out our free Internet Marketing eBook located at http://www.actonetwork.com.

Share This

A solid Internet marketing strategy will make or break your experience online. Many companies loose millions on bad advice from IT professionals and web design personnel that do not fully understand the complexity involved with an Internet marketing strategy. You should only deal with experts that know and understand the Internet for marketing purposes. Deal with company’s that are proven on how to successfully expose your website for maximum target traffic. Get them to show you high rankings of websites of their clients or their personal websites.

Many companies online businesses went under during the dot com fall because of a weak Internet marketing strategy. Simply put, they were not educated on this at all. There is a misconception that if you have a site live that you be found by search engines for your related terms. This is not accurate.

You website needs a solid foundation for an Internet marketing strategy to work effectively with search engines. This solid foundation is really proper coding in your website’s code, structure of pages, and how you build your website. Now engines are not the only way to market but one of the most effective ways to be found without spending ridiculous amounts of money on advertising your domain name. You can get Free traffic that is ongoing throughout the year because of your website being found on industry keywords relating to your website. All you need is a team of experts to build your website properly for maximum search engine exposure.

Internet Marketing Strategy for your website

Gregg Makarowski is a top search engine specialist helping hundreds of companies achieve high rankings around the globe.

Share This

Success is the Blue Bird everybody is chasing, struggling to catch, but only a few people have been able to grab it!

Most probably, you have been one of the hard chasers,
extremely busy writing ad copies, articles, press releases, sending them to media outlets and popular publications, striving night and day to promote your business using the most powerful Internet marketing strategies.
You have subscribed to hundreds of safe mailing lists, ezines, newsletters, sent your ads and articles to them regularly, spending your valuable hours and days. But the response was disappointing.

Then you tried to hire advertising agencies to make the
effective e-mail advertising for you. You paid them a lot
of money.

Finally you made a number of sales. But the results were
far from being satisfying. The money you made did not
even cover the expenses.

Then you wrote articles, you hired copywriters to write
more articles and press releases for you and you sent
them out to thousands of media outlets and thousands
of popular publications. To your surprise, the profits you
earned were not enough to pay the bills. You wonder why!

You have launched several weblogs (blogs), now you’re working hard to place fresh content in your blogs everyday or every other day, while submitting your blogs, comments, content to other blogs, which take a great deal of time, but you have not received one single visitor to your blogs yet. You don’t know why!

You have purchased an aggregator to read the RSS feeds
you were receiving, you also bought a software to turn
your articles and press releases into XML and RSS formats before sending them to RSS feed providers and distributors, e-zines, newsletters, news portals, blogs/journals, media outlets and relevant publications.

So, you’re spending a lot of money, time and efforts,
struggling like mad to market your business, website, blogs using the most powerful Internet marketing strategies, hoping to make your business a success to earn you a comfortable living.

After so much struggle, tears and sweat, are you happy and satisfied with the results you are getting now? No, most probably you are not!

How do I know? I know, because I had been there, too, until I discovered what was missing. Then I also discovered what the solution was. There is one thing you must do; there is one thing you and I and everybody must do to earn more money. Do it now, do it everyday until the end of your life:

READ !!

You are extremely busy submitting your ads, your articles,
your press releases night and day, but you do not read
other submissions.

You might say you do read some ads and articles when
you find time to read. But I’m sure you find time to read
only once in a while, because you’re too busy writing ads,
articles, press releases and submitting them to millions
of places every day. You are an extremely busy marketer.

All other marketers and business owners are too busy to
spare time to read. So, eventually you don’t read other
marketer’s articles and ads, and they don’t read yours. Or,
you all read only once in a while, which is obviously not
enough to produce the positive results to make you happy.

Then what’s the use to work so hard to write articles, press releases, ads, RSS feeds and more, and struggle so hard to post them to millions of portals, websites, media and publications, if nobody or only a few people would read them?

It’s a great waste of time, efforts and money! Of course, there are businesses and individuals who earn truck loads of money, but it’s only a small percentage in a crowd of millions of income seekers.

I am sure that the number of big money makers will grow fast when we learn how to play the game abiding by its rules.

We must admit that we need a great number of audience to read our ads, articles and other content in order to receive the great response we expect.

The great number of audience we need to earn more money is composed of you and I and other online business owners and opportunity seekers.

We can earn more money when our ads and content are read by more people who are our potential customers.

So, you and I and all others must read as much articles, ads, press releases, RSS feeds as we can. There is a simple solution for all income seekers to earn more money, which is a one small magic word.

READ !!

Don’t just write and submit, but read, too.

Read and encourage your friends, members, affiliates,
associates, customers, potential customers to read!

If you and all other millions of marketers and income seekers spare one our a day to promote their businesses, they must spare another hour to read. Reading must be considered as the important part of Internet marketing.

If we all build a reading habit, if we all include serious reading in our daily marketing program, if we all perceive reading as an important part of marketing, we all could be sure that our ads articles, RSS feeds and other promotions will be read by thousands of more potential customers daily, which will substantially increase the number of our sales, revenues, profits, and ROI (return on investment).

We learn the most powerful Internet marketing tactics and secrets by reading. We find out about new opportunities, new technology, new powerful ways in effective Internet marketing, The benefits we get from reading articles written by other entrepreneurs are unlimited.

Reading is the golden key to success which shouldn’t be
ignored. Never!

Keep reading !!

About the Author: Sevim OR, the owner and operator of several websites since 1997, providing clients with ultimate marketing programs to substantially increase sales, revenues & ROI, offering no cost affiliate programs to earn big profits, at:
http://www.aall-dreamlands.com
http://www.aaa-advertise.com
http://www.aaa-newswire.com

Share This