First off squidoo (Google squidoo) is a website with an easy interface designed for anyone to setup a free one topic webpage on a topic of their choice. An interesting thing here is that they share revenue with their content creators as well some is given to charity.

On this page information is displayed with user generated Lenses. These are single pages that highlight one person’s point of view, recommendations, or expertise.

The users who create these lenses are called lensmasters. Its the lensmasters job to fill in the wholes on the topic of choice. In exchange for this the lensmaster can receive up to 50% of the revenue for the advertisements views from their lenses. So you can already see that being popular on Squidoo can pay off.

Since Google likes Squidoo, its pages get indexed rather quickly. They often find their way to the first page if content is well written and the lenses gets enough hits.

If you are in an affiliate program a great idea is to write a review about your program or product and create a lens around it. In this review you would give valuable information that allows the reader to get much wanted information about your program or product. Within this review add links to where the product or program can be purchased. This of course would have your affiliate link in it so that you would get credit for the sale.

There are many ways to promote your lens. I’ll name a few here for you. The first and maybe most obvious would be to social bookmark your site. Social bookmarks allow you to share and save web pages publicly or privately with tags that make them accessible to readers looking for similar content.

You can also create more than one lens and link them together. This allows viewers to see more of you and will also provide good backlinks. Submitting a press release will also create the more buzz for your lens. Blogging about your lens can also bring those much needed backlinks as well.

These are only a few of the ways that you can promote your lens. Believe me the list goes on and on when it comes to promoting your lens. What is of greatest importance to consider when writing a lens to promote a program or product is not to sound like your pitching. The best way to keep from doing this is to offer objective comments that the reader can ultimately draw there own conclusion. This not only allows them to make up their own mind but it will keep them engaged in your article.

First of all what is twitter. Twitter is quite simply a social network based on one question, “What Are You Doing?” The goal is to keep people up to date with what you are doing at the time. You get just 140 characters to express what you are doing at the time, thus making the process very stream line and to the point.

These little updates can be posted in a number of ways from Instant Message to Email. When a message is sent its called a tweet. My research has revealed that over 2 million users are on twitter tweeting away. This means that there is a chance that some of these “Tweeters” may be looking for something that you have to offer.

So in pops the big question. How can I use Twitter to help me market and drive traffic to my website? First we want to warn you that this can be quite addictive. You may find yourself being very unproductive updating people on your days activities. So stay focused. Make sure your getting your message across and getting traffic to your moneymaking sites.

The goal is to get people to “follow” you. Having content that adds value to the community makes people want to follow you. This also causes people to click on your link to get more of what your talking about. Setting up your tweet with enticing information and adding a link to get more is how you can get traffic and also set yourself up as an authority.

Your first source of clicks with twitter is through your “Bio.” Here you can describe yourself and then add a link to your favorite moneymaking site.

Another source of clicks is through a tool that you setup to interface with Twitter. www.tweetlater.com allows you to send out a personal tweet message to anyone that follows you automatically. So if your away from your computer etc you can have this message sent to them thanking them for the follow also having your link in this message often induces a click through.

The final source of traffic is through the tweets themselves. Adding a link here may be the most effective. People that are following you will tend to click on these link more readily and over time as well. Don’t worry about long links twitter (at the time of this writing) uses tinyurl to truncate your longer urls.

So by adding value and knowing where to put your links to your site you can see that having twitter as addition to your online marketing campaign can give free traffic and make you money.

Some people may not know what tags are and whether they’re important or not. Well here is the long and short of it. Let’s start off with the definition. Tags are a non-hierarchical keyword or term assigned to a piece of information, such as a blog entry. This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags can be chosen by the creator or by its viewers, depending on the system of course.

Within a blog tags allow authors to add free-form tags to a post, along with (or instead of) placing the post into categories. For instance, a post may display that has been tagged with “concert and tickets”. Each of those tags is usually a web link leading to an index page listing all of the posts associated with that tag. The blog may have a sidebar listing all the tags in use on that blog, with each tag leading to an index page. To reclassify a post, an author edits its list of tags. All connections between posts are automatically tracked and updated by the blog software; there is no need to relocate the within a complex hierarchy of categories.

So in layman’s terms these tags can be used to find your article when the words you used to describe your article are typed in a search engine or within the blog search tool. Very simple concept but really needed when your looking to be notice. What’s important here is to use descriptive words that shed light on the subject of your blog entry.

For example for this article I chose, blog, tags, how to, meta, spiders, SEO, and keywords. Tip: no matter where you use your tags blog, website, youtube, if your not sure what one to use remember the internet is an open book, just look for an entry close to yours in subject to get some ideas.

When searching the other articles make sure that you read them. If they are for example using the keywords that you think will bring attention to your article then use them. If comments are a part of the post read the comments as well. This may give you an indication of what information is missing from your article and what information is not needed in the articles you are searching through.

So you can see that tags can make your entry very visible or invisible based on your keywords and tags that you use. Chose wisely and you’ll come on top.

Let’s start off by first defining the difference between a low ticket and high ticket program. This is pretty easy. When we say high ticket we are usually referring to programs that are above $500 dollars. These are the one that will make you think twice before you get involved because of the initial investment involved. Most of these programs will have some type of monthly fee but not all of them. When you see a high ticket program make sure you check to see what the monthly fee may be. If the monthly fee is going to be a problem for you then you may want to seek out a program that will not have this monthly fee attached.

So why the monthly fee you may ask. Most of these companies are going to charge this for one of two reasons. Reason number one would be to cover the cost of your website hosting. Which may or may not be a good reason. You have to determine whether this is a charge that you want to incur. Reason number two may be for residuals and hosting fee. Now this may suit those who are looking to make the upfront money from the sale and the back end or residual from the monthly fee. This definitely has its advantages. Some draw backs are not having that extra money to help advertise. Make sure that your high ticket program over delivers in the area of conversions. The web page should sell itself. If you going to spent big money on a high ticket item their page that tells all about the business should do most of the work. Your job should be mainly driving traffic.

Low ticket programs on the other hand are anything below the $500 level. These are considered as such because of the low entry price tag. They may sometimes have a monthly for the same reasons as above but the fee is normally much lower. With a lower ticket item your reasons for joining may be because you are just starting out and want to test the waters with something small before making the money commitment of the larger program. If this is the case your advertising budget can be a little more flexible. In addition if you don’t have a monthly fee then you can also add to your ad campaign.

So in the long run the amount of work that you have to do is about the same. To market a high ticket program whether you use free advertisement (cost you your time) or paid you will have to do the same amount of work. The only determining factors depend on how much money you want spend, how much experience you have, and what type of support your going to get.

The Internet today is a lot different place than it was years ago. In years past you could put up a landing page and drive traffic and make sales. But today’s Internet is different. This is why self-branding is essential. Let’s look at the ways that people are branding themselves online today.

Self-Branding Through Blogs.

One of the latest ways that people are branding themselves online is through blogs. What is a blog? Well a blog, short for web log, is a website maintained by an individual, with regular entries or commentary about a specific topic. These entries are normally displayed in reverse chronological order. When a blog is properly maintained and constantly updated with up to date valuable information, the owner of the blog can become an authority on a subject and create a loyal following, which can help to build relationships and may lead to sales.

Self-Branding Through Video.

YouTube has totally changed the world of online sales and branding in general. YouTube is a video sharing website where users can upload view and share video clips. This is a great way to present your business opportunity to others and it also give you a great way
to brand yourself through video. Creating a channel around your subject matter is a another great way to create a loyal following. Some stats for videos reveals that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day (as of July 2006).

Self-Branding Through Social Networking Sites.

MySpace, since its inception has taken networking online to a whole new level. Before MySpace and social sites like this there was very little ways outside of chat rooms to meet and great others online. MySpace has made it possible to communicate and share ideas at the speed of the Internet. This is where you tell viewers about yourself, your likes and dislikes and what types of business your in. You can then share and network with other people that share like interest.

Self-Branding Through Product or Services.

Creating products or services that help others increase their online potential is another way to branding yourself. These include e-books, websites, application packages, and software. Adding you name to an e-book or a some other product can create a viral type of marketing that is unstoppable with the right content. The same goes for the products and services. With the right product or service that carters to your industry you can find plenty of people that are willing not only to use your product but they will also see you as an authority and check your business at the same time.

Staying Focused.

There are many ways to brand yourself online, these are only a few. What ever you decided to do make sure that you choose one avenue before adding another. Here’s to your self-branding.