Which part of the day is most profitable? (Photo: alancleaver_2000)

Success in every walk of life is all about time management. The more you manage time efficiently, mold, and turn your activities according to the prevalent time, the more successful you become. This management of activities according to time applies to all the tasks you undertake, whether it is your personal life, your work, or your PPC campaign.

If you own a business and avail the services of a web marketing company for online promotion, you will see that the service provider pays special attention to the time factor. A good service provider will know, when to start a campaign, when does it gain more success, what are the days in which the campaign experiences change, or even what is the time of day when the campaign gets more attention.

Dayparting:

Dayparting is a phenomenon in which you analyze the progress of your campaign, with respect to the periods of the day. Meaning, at what time of day the campaign is more profitable compared to other hours of the day.

Dayparting and AdWords:

The phenomenon of Dayparting can also be applied to your PPC campaign. In your AdWords account, you can see which hours of the day profit compared to hours, which don’t yield any benefit to the campaign. By doing so, you get to see the hours which are affecting your ROI negatively in a discrete manner.

Applying Dayparting on AdWords:

To see the progress of your campaign with respect to hours of the day, you need to follow the steps given below:

• Sign in to your AdWords account and select the campaign
• Go to the ‘dimension’ tab of the campaign
• In the dimension tab, click on the ‘view’ button
• Click on the ‘time’ button in the view tab, and from there select the hours of the day.

Analyzing the data and Applying Dayparting:

Once you select the hours of the day option in the ‘time’ button, you will see a chart, which shows the progress of your campaign during the whole day, broken down into hours. The thing you need to analyze is:

• There will be some hours of the day, that may show high clicks, but in the revenue column they will show nothing.
• This implies that, you can shut of these hours of the day to avoid a cost that does not generate revenue.

To shut your campaign in those hours of the day, you must follow the below given steps:

• Go to the ‘advanced settings’ of the campaign, and click on the ‘Schedule’ button.
• In the schedule button, click on ‘start date, end date, ad scheduling’ link
• The links will show you the three options, in the options in front of ‘ad scheduling’, there will be ‘edit’ option, click on it.
• It will give you a basic mode, where you can turn your campaign on or off during the day for a 15minute time period.
• By clicking on the ‘bid adjustment’ link, you get the option to raise or lower your bids in any time of the day. Here you can turn off your campaign for the hours you don’t want it to run.
• Then select any day of the week (e.g. Monday), this will show you a dialogue box, and in the time box, add the time when you don’t want the campaign to run.
• Copy this setting of one day, and apply it to as many days of the rest of the week as you want to.
• Exit by saving the changes.

Optimizing Time of Day:

A good PPC management services provider knows that dayparting is not just about shutting of the campaign and saving cost. Instead, it is much more than that; it is about knowing the surfing trends of your customers during the day. The more you understand their trends, the more effectively you can apply dayparting to your campaign.

AdWords gives you the tool of applying multiple time zones. With this tool, you can apply dayparting with regards to the time zone of your customers. By utilizing time zone tool, you optimize your dayparting application, divide groups of your customers with respect to their regions, and then run a campaign accordingly.

Conclusion:

PPC management is all about understanding the behavior and trends of internet users, the more you know about their daily surfing routine, the more effectively you can manage your campaign.

How To Apply the Dayparting Technique to Your Ads Campaign is a post from: Technshare

Select affiliate products for your site (Photo: epSos.de)

What precisely is internet affiliate marketing? Affiliate marketing is considered the single speediest growing markets on the net. It’s also true that internet affiliate marketing is among the most quickest and most creative new ways to make money and also have a line of business on the web.

Basically put, online marketing is advertising products on a commission basis. You hold profitable business that will market and advertise products of different businesses. You might have a product of your own to start with. Things that a profitable internet marketer needs to have are:

1. Your website could be the jumping off position of all your advertising and marketing efforts. Hence the initial step in any successful affiliate marketing business is creating a good, trustworthy as well as professional looking internet site. You have to design a user-friendly website, which will attract your prospects and also motivate these people to go through the links towards the goods and services you are marketing making a purchase. Right now there are companies whose business is building websites that you can employ in order to develop one for you.

2. You need to find items to market, an individual should have the ability to determine whether there is a demand for those products and if people will actually invest in these. You may possibly possess your very own unique product or perhaps solutions which tend to be built by other people. No matter which approach a person goes, he should do a thorough research on the particular approach.

3. It will be necessary with regard to an individual to be able to turn into a great marketer and be capable to tell whether the marketing and advertising you happen to be paying for will be generating extra income for you compared to advertising is costing you.

4. Great numerical expertise. You will need to be able to track the sales in addition to figure out earnings, besides seeing to it that your suppliers are paid entirely and on a particular time frame.

5. You require the complete and unwavering support of your family so that you can devote the time and energy needed to be able to kick start a successful internet affiliate marketing company.

Online Affiliate Marketing in a NutShell is a post from: Technshare

What do people say about your brand? (Photo: Urban Woodswalker)

Who doesn’t want to create more sales leads to their business? In this current economic climate, as small business owners we could all do with finding new ways to generate more traffic, create more leads and generate more sales into our businesses. Whilst this is more easily said than done in practice there are a few instant practices that we can all do more of to help get our businesses making us more money.

Today I’d like to share with you 3 very simple, yet powerful strategies which you can use to help your business create more leads and thus generating more sales.

Branding & Recognition

These days branding is absolutely everything to a business. Two of the things that company image do so well is provide both instant recognition and also installs trust into consumers, so ensure you incorporate your brand image in everything that you do.

People put faith and trust into something they recognize, look at Apple, it’s a brand that practically sells itself. If your business is somewhat renowned for a certain quality then ensure that you focus on this area the best you can to uphold that merit. Highlight it, advertise it, broadcast it and make it unique to your brand image.

In some cases corporate image is enough to make your consumers take action, as we used Apple as a prime example of this, as well as this your business marketing exploits can be greatly rewarded for your recognition.

Communication

Communication is the key, communication is vital; it is in fact the lifeline between your business and your target audience. Ensuring that your business contact information is kept up to date and plenty visible and also more importantly easily accessible is one crucial points of importance, the other is being able to communicate directly with your consumers without having to wait for them to come to you.

There are several things that you can do to make the latter more robust. For instance, make it easier for your consumers to subscribe to your updates, and ensuring your business is making good use of the social media platforms and marketing tools.

Promotions

Promotions are an important marketing tool in all online businesses and contribute to generating roughly over 60% of total annual sales for many small online companies.

When consumers see a promotion they often don’t hesitate, they take instant action there and then, because in many cases as consumers we often buy on impulse when there is an offer simply too good to resist or to wait for later. Just take a look at Amazon’s recent Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, not just Amazon but lot’s of other small internet sales based businesses also.

Asides encouraging leads and promoting sales, the news of promotions can spread quite rapidly whether it’s from an email marketing campaign, from a message on social networking sites, which is why we come back to communication and corporate image and recognition being vital ingredients of the sales generating success.

There are of course many other strategies that can help attract more sales leads to your online business, but essentially these 3 are probably amongst the most robust and important ones of them all in my experience.

Let me know your reactions on the three elements above and whether you have any other suggestions and practices for increasing your online sales, I’d love to hear them.

3 Simple yet Powerful Ways to Promote More Leads and Generate More Sales to your Online Business is a post from: Technshare

Facebook fan page is no longer a luxury these days. Almost every company has their Facebook profile which they use to communicate with fans, share news and attract new customers. However, most Facebook page owners reduce their experience to simple status updates, video, photo or link sharing. Still Facebook is much more than this – it is number one social media platform which give access to hundreds of useful web applications from which everyone can benefit a lot. Here is the list of the most essentials ones which can really help engage Facebook fans and turn them into a loyal community.

Welcome Page

First impression is very important, therefore a landing page is a must for Facebook business accounts. It’s not only a place to say “Hi” to new fans or encourage people to click  “Like”, here you can tell about your company in the way you wish. With the Welcome Tab from Word of Social, you can easily create a custom landing page with your images, links, code or iFrame.

Facebook Notes

You may use this app to share tips and tricks related to your product or service, publish interesting facts about your company or any other information you find worth mentioning. Your fans are free leave comments and share your notes. The setup is quick and easy.

Top Fans

This app helps figure out the best contributors to your Facebook fan page. Each fan earns points for his/her posts, comments, likes and shares. Booshaka app identifies your “top fans” and ranks them in a nice leaderboard. You can motivate and reward your fans participation by small presents or special offers on your products.

GooglePlus Tab

This app allows Facebook users to stream their GooglePlus updates on a special tab. The app works for both personal and business Google+ profiles.

Tweets To Pages

If you run a Twitter account as well, you can automatically bring your tweets onto Facebook with Tweets To Pages app. This is a great way to create a crossover that expands your reach in both networks.

With this app, you can broadcast your YouTube videos in Facebook. The tab shows both uploaded videos and Favorites, plus you can specify which videos you’d like to show as featured.

Contact Me

Poll is a good way of gaining user information. If you have a large community on Facebook, this app is a great way to bring in some honest feedback from your visitors. Find a hot topic around your product and ask your fans to vote for one of the possible options.

UserVoice

Facebook fans often provide valuable ideas for your service/product. With UserVoice Facebook app, you can easily monitor and prioritize suggestions and have others to comment and vote for them. The app goes together with Feedback service, pricing plans with Facebook intergation feature start with $45/month.

Contests

This app enables companies to easily create and launch branded contests:  photo or video contests, design, logo, or review contests. Fees start with $5 per promotion.

10 Essential Facebook Apps to Engage your Fans is a post from: Technshare

Measure your goals. (Photo: Claudio Matsuoka)

Blogging has emerged as a competitive ad innovative process of mass communication. The information required to set up a successful blog is all over the internet. Yet, the success rate of most blogs is quite low and there are more failures every day.

Of the many causes that can be attributed for this occurrence, setting unrealistic goals or in some cases not setting up any real blogging goals at all, takes a major share of the credit here. It is vital to have realistic blogging goals; they are your guiding lines to keep your blog on track even when you are confused with the numerous details related to your blog. It is just as mandatory to monitor the psychological aspect of blogging as the creative or technical aspect.

Realistic and reasonable blogging goals are the measures of an efficient psychology to support your blogging process.

You are the one to decide the specific boundaries that you consider realistic when you measure your goals. Here is a rundown of points based on which you will evaluate this decision.

Be specific with your blog goals

Vague goals do not set up a finishing line, which means it is difficult to gauge when you have satisfactorily achieved the intended results and you need to stop. Specific goals are necessary because the process of creating a successful professional blog resembles the working of a charged machine. You have to be specific to keep the time management, technical details, and creative outflow in the perfect working balance.

Quantify your blog goals

The vitals of your blog goals need to be quantifiable. Simply deciding you need to increase your subscribers‘ growth might not be enough to motivate your endeavors to make that happen. However, if you mention a precise quantity of intended subscribers’ rate for a precise period, you are more likely to get results.

The important part is these results will be comparable with the next period target or evaluated against the previous batch of results. This sort of comparison helps gather information that can create a comprehensive analysis of your blogging efforts. It will definitely help you pick up the slack in areas that need immediate attention.

Goals should specify target action

Orienting your goals to match the related action just simplifies your task in the schedule. Non-targeted goals require on the spot research where you will be frantically cramming up information to understand what you have to do to meet the target requirements.

Instead, complete your research and go through the information to understand the specific action required. Mention the relative action with the desired goal when you plan your blogging goal schedule.

Measure of realism

Always weigh in your desired output against the estimate of possibility. It is vital to set blog goals, but in the wake of a list of impossible goals, your only sure outcome will be disappointment. Setting achievable goals will ensure you are motivated throughout the process with each rolling success and lesser chances of the entire thing tanking down due to failures.

However, you should have a realistic approach; this does not mean you set over easy targets for your blogging process. Maintain the difficulty level but balance it out with target-oriented efforts.

Allot a definite time frame to each goal

This is probably the most important assessing feature of a blogging goal schedule. You need to allot a clear period for each goal. This will help you manage the complete schedule without the process overwhelming (or taking over) other aspects of your life. Try to stick to each allocated timeline.

In case there is a deficit you can always schedule in separate time for covering them. This will stop you from over compensating for the schedule and effectively keep your blogging process on track.

Motivate yourself with positive rewards and reaffirmation

When you make substantial efforts towards creating a successful professional blog, the reward waiting for you at the end of the line is the blog and the revenue that you generate with it. However, down the line, the track can get a little tiring and stark without regular motivations.

Creating positive reinforcement for the small but significant achievements can encourage you to want the bigger outcome more fervently. Set aside some time to analyze the day’s output and reward yourself for every point of success.

The journey of creating your pro blog is majorly self-motivated, so you have to step up and take charge of your blog goals and keep track of your achievements and failures. However, the journey is also a great experience so remember to savor it every step of the way.

Jane also writes about useful discount coupon deals for bloggers as that of photos.com promo code and istockphoto promo code. Apart from writing at Problogging Success, she also writes for a discount coupon blog that features photos.com and istockphoto discount deals.

The Art Of Setting Realistic Blogging Goals is a post from: Technshare

Source Flickr

As a web based freelancer there are certain resources that allow us to make our jobs easier, faster and or more manageable. Everyone has a set of tools they rely on daily and recommend to others, below is a list of my top four tools and why I use them along with how you can use them too.

The tools below are all free, accessible to anyone and relatively easy to use. A simple download, registration and or sign up is all that is required to use and or access them along with a strong desire to succeed. If you use any of these and something tells me (since you’re most likely a freelancer or aspire to be one) that you might be a regular user of at least one of the tools on my list, do leave your feedback below in the comment area.

1. Google Docs – this is one of my most widely used tools and it encompasses a variety of tools under the one umbrella. Google Docs is a comprehensive web based resource for word processing and creating spreadsheets among other types of documents. It’s feature rich and just about any type of word processing can be created using this neat and 100% free resource. I use it for writing my blog posts then transferring them to my sites, writing guest articles for my clients and also to create various spreadsheets where I keep track of certain freelance activities. If my laptop should fry, freeze or otherwise not become operational I am not dependent on it for my articles. I just go to Google Docs on ANY computer or laptop and there my docs await. This can be very refreshing since I depend on my articles and my word processor to put food on the table. Amen. I switched over from a traditional computer-based word processing format to web-based about a year or so ago and haven’t looked back since.

2. WordPress – in my humble opinion, the best CMS of all the CMS systems on the block. With WordPress, I can create any type of blog or website including an e-commerce shop, a company website, a blog, a portfolio and anything else I could wish for. The software is 100% free to download, use and upgrade. There’s a slight learning curve to get started as it’s a robust and powerful system, however once you get the initial set up out of the way, it’s smooth sailing and really all CMS systems are – learn as you go. Best thing to do should you want to learn WordPress and use it to create your blog or website, is to find a blog you like, see if they use WordPress and send them an email. If the blogger has been around for close to year or longer, odds are he or she will know the system well and would be happy to guide you along. That really is your best bet for training and or help with WordPress, another blogger.

3. PayPal – how would freelancers get paid without PayPal is a mystery to me. PayPal opened up a can of awesome, when it landed across freelance desks everywhere. About 60% of my income is processed through PayPal as I am a freelance writer and the companies and or clients I work for pay me via this method. Yes there’s a fee and this stinks however PayPal makes up for it in convenience, accessibility and ease of use. Is it right for you? One way to find out is to visit the PayPal site and see how they stack up against the other options available to web based freelancers.

4. Twitter – social media is also a great tool for web based freelancers as it connects peeps from all walks of life and every corner of the globe. Twitter is great for networking, chatting, socializing, content sharing, research, jobs, leads, information, press and so much more. There are many articles on the web discussing the many ways to best take advantage of this tool and how best to get benefit from it. I would start by looking up how to get Twitter followers, how to tweet, best tools for Twitter, etc. Twitter is also great for following those you genuinely have an interest in and want to know better.

Share with us below in the comment area what are some of your must have tools as a web based freelancer? I await your responses below and see what other goodies we can discover together.

Four Cool Tools For Web Based Freelancers is a post from: Technshare

Source: Flickr

M-commerce (Mobile commerce) is rapidly becoming as heated a battle as any in the wireless world. In this case, a battle between the banks and the wireless providers is developing over which will control the new system and collect the potentially huge fees. Several major wireless carriers teamed up to form ISIS, a coalition supporting NFC-based mobile payment systems, which would be a chip in your phone allowing you to wave a phone close to a payment terminal and have payments go through automatically, much like swiping a credit card. The issue that banks have with this is that the carriers would collect the payment fees, cutting the banks out of the picture.

It is Not Nice To Fool With the Bankers

Banks are understandably not happy with that arrangement and are instead in support of a system using MicroSD cards to provide the same function, but the banks would provide and collect fees for, naturally. Banks claim the system would be more available their way because every phone and mobile computing device-except Apple devices-have SD card slots. The ISIS gang claims their system is the future of mobile commerce, saying that people will, in the near future, be using smartphones as wallets, and that they will naturally want to be able to pay with the smartphone itself. This would end the need to carry a wallet full of cards, and they would not need to occupy a valuable slot on their phones with the payment card.

Under the Isis banner, T-Mobile USA, “AT&T-Mobility,” and Verizon Wireless joined forces late last year to work with Discover Financial Services and Barclays PLC to force adoption of their NFC standards and take control of the customer. On the other side of the battle, Bank of America, Chase, Wells Fargo, and US Bank are testing out one type of mobile payment based on MicroSD card functionality. The premise being that with NFC, the customer will need to by a new phone and using MicroSD functionality eliminates that need. Hooray for consumers; their assertion is that the customers are already theirs. Carriers, under the ISIS banner are simply trying to commandeer the market and take ownership of the customers and make the big loot.

Apples vs. Apples

There actually is very little difference between the two technologies since the two work with NFC and use the same frequency, the 13.56 MHz band. This is purely a barroom brawl to see which will win. What they are fighting for is control of the world’s wallets. The small fees collected for ATM cash withdrawals and Point of Sale transactions are indeed huge.

As mobile technology spreads, the smartphone could indeed become the de-facto wallet of the future replacing all but Identification cards such as Drivers Licenses. In time, even that could change; do you remember the Federal ID card? If a future government act allows such identification to become virtual, then you have to be chipped.

The real battle is which power bloc will win and own, well, you. For those who are believers in the Biblical end time’s prophecies, this is living fulfillment of the part about “none shall be able to neither buy nor sell without the mark of the beast.” The difference is that the beast is the system and the demons are battling to control the beast. There is no scenario under which the consumer will really win.

Other Players

PayPal has its own ideas as to which will rule them all. At the CTIA International, PayPal revealed its strategy for mobile payments, called “Wallet in the Cloud.” It would not depend on smartphones, but instead it would embed it into payment terminals, even electronic signs. Purchases could be executed by simply entering your PayPal ID and authentication right there. PayPal could distribute RFID cards to allow the system to work with existing terminals either as an NFC or swipe system.

The 21st century is barreling down upon us with terrifying speed and the major players are gutter fighting to take control of the world of tomorrow. Shouldn’t we be in control?

M-Commerce is Taking Over is a post from: Technshare

Why are you creating a blog? Is it to share your personal thoughts and daily occurrences with the world? Is it to promote yourself or your company? Or is to make money? Of course, it’s very possible to make money with a personal or corporate blog, but if making fast money is the express purpose of your site, you’re possibly setting yourself up for failure. Too many blogs have failed because the owners were doing whatever it took to cash in on what’s popular at the moment. The way to truly make money from your blog is to set it up so that it will survive in the long run. It may take longer to start seeing any revenue in the beginning, but planning to have a long-lasting blog will ultimately lead to more profit overall.

Why Long-Term Planning is Important

If you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with the “quick way” to start making money with a blog – research a niche market, whip up some content, do plenty of SEO to build up traffic, start hosting ads as soon as possible, and get some affiliate relationships. The problem here is that the focus is not on the quality of your content. It’s possible to get a profitable niche site up and running with only a few pages of keyword-rich content, but this is not the type of blog that Google will rank highly. In 2010, Matt Cutts explained how the quality of content is even more important than posting frequency. As Google develops and algorithms change, an authority site that has been producing quality content will be far more profitable than a niche blog that’s been buried in the SERPs because of its posts that have only been designed to help the blog make money.

Also, if you plan your blog out with the long term in mind, you’ll have several advantages down the road. If you keep the site’s focus somewhat broad, you’ll be able to incorporate new niches as they come along, allowing you to avoid becoming obsolete or only making money during certain times of the year. For example, instead of focusing your blog on something as seasonal as Halloween costumes (which is obviously going to be profitable right around now), you could create a blog that deals with many different holiday accessories in order to generate revenue year-round. Of course, this will take more work, but again, you’ll make more money in the long run.

Some other reasons to think about the long-term include:

• Respect in your niche – Taking your time and developing a thoroughly high-quality site will allow you to get noticed more easily by other people in your field. This will make it easier to get affiliates and organic backlinks, among other advantages.
• Burnout rate – A 2008 Technorati survey found that an astounding 95 percent of blogs are abandoned. Be sure that you choose a niche you’re passionate about, as concentrating on a topic simply because of its profitability can lead to burnout.
• Possible sale – If you don’t take the time to create a quality site, you won’t be able to eventually sell it for a profit. This might not be your endgame anyway, but keep in mind that blogs have been sold for incredible amounts.

How to Do It

So how can you actually plan for the long term profitability of your blog? Keep this simple rule in mind: don’t limit yourself in the beginning. Sometimes bloggers will be blinded by dollar signs and make poor decisions right from the start. For example, so many bloggers are looking to rank highly by getting an exact-match domain name. This is an excellent SEO strategy, but it can hurt your business in the long run. Sticking with our holiday blog example, let’s say you’re doing some AdWords research and you find that you can get an exact match domain for the keyword phrase “renaissance costumes.” However, after Halloween is over, the popularity of that keyword phrase plummets. You can begin to add Thanksgiving or Christmas-themed aspects to your site, but it’s going to be much harder to sell Christmas items, get Christmas-related affiliates, or any Christmas traffic at all if your domain is renaissancecostumes.com. So, really brainstorm your niche and don’t pigeonhole yourself in the beginning.

Don’t limit yourself in content either. Choosing a niche that’s profitable but incredibly limited in scope (or becoming obsolete) will doom your site to failure. Remember when the iPhone 3.0 came out and included a voice recording feature? All of those previous recording apps became unnecessary. If you were doing reviews of those apps on your blog, you hopefully had some other content ideas to fall back on.

Whether you’re deciding on a URL or your content strategy, it can be helpful to do some mind mapping before you set anything in stone. Focus on your main ideas and expand from there – concentrating too much on making money can actually cause you to make less. Focus instead on creating a well-developed, genuinely interesting blog.

How to Create Blogs (or Websites) with the Long Term in Mind is a post from: Technshare