Over the years, Google Adwords has become known as the dominant platform when it comes to pay per click advertising. There are plenty of business owners, as well as various internet marketers and affiliates who have made use of it. However, just because a service is popular, it doesn’t mean that it is good. There have been numerous complaints in webmaster and online marketing forums of people getting banned from Adwords for reasons that are not that clear. Often, when the client contacted Google, they would simply get a generic response stating that they violated the terms of service.

However, when it comes to pay per click advertising, Adwords is not the only game in town. Now that Bing has combined their pay per click platform with Yahoo Search Marketing, many people have jumped to create an account and start advertising there. According to a recent survey done by an internet marketing company, over half of small business owners who are using pay per click marketing are already using or are considering using Bing for their online marketing campaigns.

One of the complaints that many advertisers on Bing (formerly Microsoft AdCenter) had is that they weren’t receiving enough traffic. Well, it is a known fact that the Bing search engine receives far less traffic than Google. However, now that they are working together with Yahoo, this should resolve the complaint that many advertisers have. For those who are already used to Google Adwords, using Bing should not be much of a challenge, as the basic way that both advertising platforms work is very similar.

But when it comes to pay per click ads, there is another site that some marketers and business owners sometimes overlook: Facebook. Let’s not forget that this social networking site is the second most popular website on the internet, right after Google. So the traffic is obviously already there, you just need to put your ad in front of people who will be interested in your products. Facebook has a pay per click advertising platform that works in similar ways to Bing and Google Adwords.

The main difference, however is the way the traffic is targeted. Obviously, Facebook is not a search engine, so you can’t really target people that are looking for specific keywords. However, there are some other demographic options that you can use instead to target you ad. All that you have to do to get optimal results would be to target your ad so that it will only be shown to the demographic that would more closely match your customers. You can select things such as age, gender, relationship status, location, etc.

So as you can see, there are other pay per click advertising solutions besides Google Adwords out there. If you are considering using one, all you simply need to do is a bit of research on how it works and whether it is a good platform to use for promoting your specific products online.

We all know that there are plenty of success stories to be found when it comes to the online marketing industry. Some people have built million dollar businesses right from their homes. But what about those who simply gave up. Let’s keep looking at some of the common reasons. But, maybe you are asking yourself: why does this guy want me to see what people who failed did? I want success!! Well the answer is simple: because you sometimes need to see where people messed up so that you don’t repeat their errors. There is a quote that I often like to use: “The wise man learns from his mistakes, but the genius learns from the mistakes of others.” Now let’s get back to seeing some of what causes people to give up:

• They Let Others Talk Them Out Of It

This happens, and it does quite often actually. Somebody could have a million dollar business plan, but then their friend/wife/mother/uncle/dog tells them that “that’s stupid, it will never work” or that “you can’t make money on the internet, it is all a big scam” and then they simply put their plans behind. To have success in any business, whether its online or not, you have to believe in yourself. Do you really think that nobody was laughing at Bill Gates when he quit college to start Microsoft? Well, considering the fact that he’s now the richest man in the world, I somehow have a feeling that these people are saying: “Damn! If only I was more friendly with that geeky guy in glasses!!”.

• They Wanted Someone To Hold Their Hand Every Step of the Way

Part of running any business is that you need to be able to make the right decisions by yourself. There will be nobody explaining to you what you have to do, how to do it and when to do it. YOU will need to look up the information necessary to build, operate and expand your business. While you may partner up with others who can give you advice, remember that these people also have their own businesses to run and therefore won’t want to constantly be looking out for you.

• They Had a Problem or Setback and Quickly Got Discouraged

Again, this is a common occurrence. If I said to you that everything will always be A-OK in the online business industry, I would be lying to you. Things can go wrong. Sometimes, your ads and sales pages will not convert as well as you want them to. A “super money maker method” could turn out to be completely worthless. An affiliate network could go bankrupt, leaving hundreds of affiliates high and dry. This happens. Deal with it. When a problem occurs, the best thing to do is to start thinking of logical solutions: what could I have done differently so that this doesn’t happen to me again in the future? That is the question that you need to be always asking yourself in case of an issue with your business.

WordPress is great. It really is, you have seen me write about it numerous times on this website, namely because it is the most popular, most accessible, easy to use CMS out there, in my opinion of course (but numbers do not lie). But there are some things that WordPress could do better. It could better integrate different code, or sometimes be easier to code for, but for the most part it is alright.

Sometimes however, there are other things you want your website to do, or you want more customization to your site. Or just maybe, you want to be a bit different and learn a new language and build a site out of something completely new to you. For whatever your reason, there are some great alternatives to WordPress, so check them out below.

Drupal

Drupal is one of the main competitors to WordPress in straight CMS terms. It is much more customizable and hacky, because of the open source nature of itself. Since Drupal is open source (much like WordPress, but in a much more geeky way [in a good way]), it begs a bit more putting together. A Drupal install and WordPress install are much different and Drupal’s takes just a bit more work.

Drupal is a great CMS, but the design and layout of it isn’t as pretty as WordPress. The designs are a bit more boxy out of the gate, and take some real work to get them to look like a typical blog.

With that being said, Drupal is a great CMS, especally for the web tinkerer. If you like putting code together and making something unique and cool, Drupal is definitely for you. With less plugins and themes available, Drupal drives creativity and some very cool projects to create their own way around a problem, or to write some code and fix it.

Drupal is free, so check it out today at http://www.drupal.org

Typepad

Typepad and WordPress have always been a pretty big rivalry, not quite like Apple vs Microsoft, but pretty close.

Typepad is owned by Six Apart, a company that has had some major ups and some major downs. But Typepad has remained and still remains a huge competitor for WordPress.

The difference is the opensource vs proprietary debate. Typepad is only available as a hosted service from Typepad.com.

For true customizers, this may be a huge deterant, but for average users that want an all in one package that isn’t http://www.wordpress.com then Typepad is a great alternative.

It’s extremely important for every business to have an internet presence in today’s economy, and that means having a website up and running. If you don’t have a big budget, that doesn’t mean you’re out of luck, it just means you have to know how to spend the money you do have.

There are a few expenses you’re going to have to drop money on regardless of your budget, and your skill set. You’re going to need a domain name for your new website. Registering a domain name is a quick and easy process, and it will only cost you around $10 per year. Once you have a domain name, you’re going to need to invest in a web hosting package. Web hosting can cost anywhere between five dollars a month, to several hundred a month. When you’re first starting out, even if you’re anticipating a lot of attention for your website, it’s best to go with one of the cheaper packages. Chances are you won’t need the features and benefits provided with the more expensive packages in the beginning, so don’t spend money on them.

Once you have a domain name, and a place to host your site, it’s time to worry about actually getting your site up and running. There are three routes you can go here. You can either build the site yourself, pay a freelancer to build it, or pay a firm to build it. There are a lot of great options for building your own site. Blogging platforms like WordPress can be installed directly to your hosting account for free, and they make set up a snap. There are also a lot of software options available to make designing a site easy. If you already have Microsoft Office, you probably already have Microsoft Publisher. Publisher makes it fairly simple to create a nice looking website in a fairly short amount of time.

If you really feel like you can’t handle setting up the website yourself, then you’re going to have to pay someone. If you’re on a budget, you’re going to want to avoid design firms. Their prices reflect all  of the costs involved in running a large company. Freelancers, on the other hand, will generally be able to product a high quality site for you for hundreds, rather than thousands of dollars. Just be careful about who you hire. Either use a site like Elance to find a designer, or get references from them before hiring them to do the job.

Don’t be fooled into paying exorbitant amounts of money for a website. By being careful with your money, you can get your site up and running quickly no mater what your budget is.

We’ve all gotten the e-mails, and seen the ads for services that claim to boost your traffic in some significant way. Usually they offer a free boost in traffic just for signing up with them, and giving them some information about yourself, which will likely then be sold to other companies for marketing purposes. Most of the claims these traffic providers make are completely false. Let’s take a look at a few of the common claims they make and the truth about them.

“We’ll submit your site to 5 thousand search engines, you’ll get so much search traffic, it will blow your mind!”

Claims like this are rarely a direct lie, but they are misleading. Sure, they will submit your site to all of the search engines they promise to submit it to, but the actual impact on your traffic won’t be anywhere near as amazing as they claim. Most of your search traffic is going to come from Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft’s Bing. The thousands of other search engines might collectively generate 100 hits per month… if you’re lucky.

“We’ll get you to the top of Google”

Again, not a direct and total lie, but extremely misleading. Services making this promise will get you to the top of Google, but it won’t be for keywords that anyone is actually searching. If you have a site about cars, and you choose to use a service like this, chances are you’ll wind up being the first search result for “how to properly eat cheese while driving your car”. Sure, you’re the first result, but who is actually searching for that? No one, that’s who.

“100% Guaranteed”

If a service is offering to boost your traffic, and they try to make lofty promises and guarantees, you should just walk away. SEO and internet marketing are extremely complicated. No one can make a blanket guarantee that your traffic will be effected in a fixed way without looking at your site, and what’s going on in your niche.

The best way to get more traffic to your site is to take the time, and effort to optimize your site for search, and post relevant and interesting content to it. If you absolutely can’t resist using a traffic boosting service, be sure to do some research before picking a service. Avoid free services that make promises like the ones above, and if you’re going to use a paid service, look up some reviews before sinking any money into it.

Blogging can take a whole lot longer than needed.  This is generally due to the time eating activities available to the blogger on the computer while they are trying or are at least supposed to be writing.  Effectively earning money from blogs requires the blogger to be focused on updating them.

A good way to keep yourself on task is to give yourself a lot of work.  This way, mentally, you will say I don’t have time for this because I have so many articles to write.  Whereas, when you only have one or two to write, you might think that you have time to take breaks, when realistically, you do not, because time is a precious resource, and it could be used elsewhere or on something else.  Writing a lot of posts at one time can save a lot of time as well as effort, because many writers can get on a roll, where they can pump out very articles very quickly, allowing them more extra time later to work on other things.

Using a white screen writing program, or a word processor in full screen mode can be very beneficial, because then, it will be the only thing you can look at, and nothing else on the screen can possibly distract.  This obviously doesn’t account for things outside of the computer, such as the TV or people, but those can be easily minimized as well.  Working with a full screen word processor in a closed off room without a TV is the best way to ensure you are writing what you need to be.

Social media sites are the biggest time sink for bloggers.  The sites themselves are designed to keep you on them, with so many different feature and things to do, you can’t even think of them and list them all in one hour.  They keep users coming back for more, which is what they are designed to do, and should be voided at all costs when trying to write.

During your down time, while you are just browsing the web, you should have a quick and easy way to jot down blog post ideas.  This may come in the form of a program, such as Microsoft OneNote, or EverNote, or even by just, old fashioned, pen and paper.  Whatever works for you, so long as it allows you to quickly and easily record what you want to write, and the source if you need to.

Photo credit: laffy4k