Health Site For Sale: Meds Available

Meds Available, a 2-year-old site, is up for sale on Sitepoint. The website is filled with useful health articles uploaded by registered users and  #4 on Google for the search phrase “Health Articles” and earns an average of $500 per month in revenues from AdSense and private ad sales. It’s basically a health-themed Hubpage or Squidoo, where user sign up, upload their articles and the owner gets to share in the ad revenues from AdSense. It boasts 55,000 page views per month and 12,000 unique views and according to the owner, he is selling the site for financial reasons – so get this one while it’s hot!

Description:

URL: http://medsavailable.com
Earnings – $500+ per Month
Maintainence – approving user registration and articles
Established – Tue Oct 31 2006

Internet Marketing University: Must-Read Articles for Internet Marketers

Whether you’re new to Internet marketing or a seasoned veteran, it’s always a good idea to brush up on your skills. With the dynamic nature of the world wide web, things change at lightning speeds, so it’s always a good idea to keep yourself up-to-date with the latest trends and news on SEO and SEM fields.

1) Every website should at least do some simple keyword research and it’s always easier to start from scratch. But what about when established sites approach you to do SEO for their websites. While certainly more difficult to work on such sites, it’s not impossible. Ann Smarty of Search Engine Journal gives tips on How to Do Keyword Research for an Established Site. Ann describes some difficulties with taking on such a task (such as sorting through the history of search engine referral terms) and some great advice on getting started.

2) Backlinks are crucial to any website wanting to rank high on search engines – they establish your site’s credibility to web crawlers and bots. Court’s Internet Marketing School gives useful advice in the article “102 Ways To Make Your Site A Back-Link Superstar.”

3) Adding a blog to your site gives people a reason to come back to your site and engages them in an informal manner. Because of this informal nature, most bloggers think they can just write anything. People are getting more sophisticated and the web continues to become saturated with new blogs everyday. How do you make you blog posts stand out? One of the leading email Internet marketing agencies on the web, PMA Media Group, imparts some useful pointers in an article entitled “Suggested Guide for Writing Effective Blog Posts.”

4) Twitter’s all the rage these days, but how can your business benefit from Twitter? The Ultimate Guide for Evertything Twitter by the Web Designer’s Depot has all the things you need to know about Twitter, from the basics (like uploading a background) to more advanced functions (what exactly are those # symbols next to people’s tweets) and even features and ettiquette guide (”Avoid banal food updates”).

5) Tons of experts out there tell you what to do when doing search engine optimization for a website. In the post entitled, “30 Techniques To Avoid – Best Practice SEO by Google”, Shaun Anderson, co-founder of  Hobo (a Scotland-based marketing agency) shares what NOT to do when optimizing a website.

Review: Template Monster

For most start-ups and small businesses, having a custom designed website is not practical. With designers and coders charging $50 or more per hour, a basic website can easily cost $1,000 and up. An alternative for these companies would be to purchase a a pre-designed website template. Many companies on the net provide these templates, with prices ranging from dirt cheap to pricey (depending on your needs).

Template Monster is the leading website template provider on the web. They have the largest selection of templates on the market, with over 20,000 designs in their library and they claim to add about 500 new templates per month. Because of its popularity, the sit has expanded into offering music and corporate identity packages as well.

The templates offered come in many formats, including html, xml, flash, css and php. The websites can be customized to your needs and installed on any compatible server.

Navigating the site itself can be unwieldy, because of the wide range of designs to choose from. A wide range of categories on the right side of the page can guide you depending on what kind of website you have. You can also do a search (easily found near the top of the page) by entering  categories, styles, authors and even a price range. When you get the results, mousing over the choices gives you a larger preview of the available templates.  Clicking on a template brings up further information on the design (such as requirements, formats available). They also tell you how many times a certain template has been, so you can determine how popular a design is. If you have e-commerce needs, there are also templates available with built-in shopping carts and payments systems.

Aside from templates, other useful products such as turnkey websites and corporate design packages are available. The turnkey websites offer more than just eh templates – they also have domains, hosting, emails and even website support (up to 3 hours per months). This package is for people who would like some extra help, and do not want to worry about finding their own host and domain. Their latest offering is corporate design products, such as logo templates, powerpoint templates, as well as complete identity packages that include logo, letterhead, business cards and envelopes.

Over-all the site delivers some great design at a good price. The prices range from $50 to $150, although exclusive rights to any website template can cost up to $3000. Even at the most basic level, they offer some good extras like access to a stock image and clipart library, fonts and even a merchant account from PayQuake. With all these, plus great customer support and a 100% guarantee, it’s easy to see why Template Monster is one of the most popular template sites on the Internet.

Site Review: Crowdsource your company logo with 99designs.com

In the age of Web 2.0, crowdsourcing is the new outsourcing, and 99designs.com is an excellent example of how to profit from this phenomena. The Australian-based firm leverages the power of the masses to help SMEs (Small to Medium Sized Enterprises) who may not have in-house artists with design projects. The website is a spin-off from online media company Sitepoint.com, where users were holding design contests and awarding prizes to winners. The site’s founders realized that this could be an good business model and launched 99designs. In a sort of reverse-auction, a “seller” will put up a design brief detailing what he needs and how much he is willing to pay for it. Next, all registered designers submit their “bid” design and in seven days, the winner will be chosen and awarded the prize.

So, is this service right for you? For many small businesses who needs a logos, identity, stationary, business card or even website done, the 99designs can be a good source and a good investment. For a fee of $39 (plus the cash “prize”), you’ll get to choose from many designs submitted by designers from all over the world. The site currently has 37,000 registered designers and each contest has an average of 50 entries. Within the 7 day period, you are allowed to contact the designers and make suggestions and changes before deciding on the final design. Of course, there are some disadvantages with this model. First, to attract the best designers, you should offer a big enough prize to tempt the best of the best to join you. Next, if you end up not liking any of the designs, you’ll still have to pick a winner and hand out the prize.

Over-all, the pros outweigh the cons. While there’s not substitute to having an in-house designer whom you can work side-by-side with, 99designs can be  great way to get design project done at a fraction on the costs.

SEO Keyword Tips of the Week

So now you’ve built your website, you’ll have to make sure that your audience (and customers) find you? With the advent of SEO, websites need to be fitted with the proper features to make sure they are search engine-friendly. Here are some quick tips that will help you create traffic for your site.

1. Unique and Quality Content – search engines base their rankings on the content of a website. Unique and quality content tells the search engine that your site is worth visiting and will rank your higher on their searches.

2. Quality Backlinks – the next thing search engines look for is how many other sites link back to you. It also looks at the quality of the site that links back – if there’s no logical reason they link back (such as spammers who leave links on non-related message boards or blogs), the less likely you will be ranked. Also, a few links from good, high-traffic sites is better than a dozen poor links.

3. Fresh Content – search engines love dynamic content, so make sure there’s always something new on your site. If your website is fairly static, it might be worth it to add a blog, news page or forum/messageboard.

4. Keyword volume – make sure your keyword pops up in the right places within your content. There is also such a thing as overpopulating your content with keywords. Search engine spiders are more sophisticated these days – they can tell if a keyword is popping up too many times and if the appearances don’t seem natural. Using bold once or twice on your keywords is also recommended.

5. Use Flash sparingly – spiders can only crawl and read text, so although a flash-intensive website looks awesome, it may not necessarily be search engine-friendly. Same goes with using images as links – at the very least,include a text link to go with the image.

6. Site maps – aside from helping customers navigate your site, this also helps search engine spiders find all the links on your website.

7. Tite tags – These are the most important words on a webpage and spiders rank them highly. Use good, quality keywords when selecting your title.

8. Meta-tags – there’s some controversy whether these are helpful at all, but a good way to use meta tags would be to put in misspellings of your desired keywords.

Check back next week for more SEO tips!

Building a Website? Top 5 Questions You Need to Answer

When you start a business these days, a website is one of the key items you’ll have to build. Almost every business has some sort of web presence these days. Whether you’re selling organic coffee at farmer’s markets or run a small bed & breakfast,  most of your (potential) customers will be asking for your URL (or at the very least, an email address).

Before you start building your website, make sure you answer these questions to help you build your presence online:

1) What’s the purpose of your website?

Depending on the type of business you have, your website can be a store, informational brochure or the website itself could generate business. This is a basic question that needs to be answered, as this will have implications on the design and costs of building your site.

2) Who’s your audience?

Your graphics and content should be tailored to the majority of your clients, allowing your site to meet their needs. Your “look and feel” should appeal to your audience, as well as the capabilities (and limitations) of their computers. For example, while a graphics-heavy, multimedia website maybe look cool, not everyone’s computers may be set-up to optimize these kinds of sites or even have the necessary internet speed to download such sites (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, for example, reports that broadband penetration in the US is only 27%).

3) How will people find your website?

With over 4 billion (and growing) website on the Internet, getting in front of people will be a difficult task. Aside from using traditional offline methods, your website strategy must include key elements of internet marketing such as SEO, link-building and online advertising.

4) Why will people stay?

The average person stays on one website for approximately 1:10. Ideally, you’ll want them to stay longer (or long enough), to achieve the goal of your website. The key is great content – give your audience what they want, what they can’t find elsewhere.

5) Why should people come back?

Aside from having great content, your website must also have dynamic content. Why should people com back over and over again, if you offer the same material? Make sure you add new things to your website – whether it’s through a blog post, news updates or other informational items. This provides your customers a reason to keep visiting your site and learning more about you and your business.

There are many other things to consider, but when you have these basics questions answered, you’ll have laid down a good foundation for your website.

To Twit or Not to Twit? Using Twitter for Business

These days, everyone’s all a-twitter about Twitter. Everyone’s twittering these days, from Oprah to Deepak, is telling us what they’re doing (in 140 characters or less). Businesses are getting in on the action as well. For example, companies like Comcast and Carnival Cruise Lines use the microblogging service to communicate directly with customers and solve service issues. But twittering is not for everyone and it does have its limitations. For those who know how to use it and use it properly though, Twitter can grow your business exponentially.

So how should you use Twitter? We’ve rounded up some of the best ways to twit your way to a successful business.

1) Follow people relevant to your business
Sure, it’s fun to see what people like Ashton Kutcher or Demi Moore are having for dinner right now, but you should also follow those people who are relevant to your business or may have already succeeded in your area. It’s often a great way to get ideas and find out how they tick, and build relationships with your peers.

2) Be conversational
The idea of Twitter is that you can contact a person directly, as opposed to being an anonymous entity. Use “I” or “we”, when tweeting and be chatty and informal. If there is more than 1 person tweeting for the company, take advantage of services like CoTweet which allows multiple members of one organization to tweet using one account.

3) Interact with customers
Twitter is a two way street – make sure you answer “@” direct messages or questions sent out by people you follow.  You can also ask your followers questions like what they think of your product or any improvements they’d like to see.

4) Don’t forget to update
That’s the reason why you should twitter! Update your followers on any new developments, new blog posts or events. However, don’t be overpromotional. The twitter masses are fickle and can turn against you in an instant.

5) Provide useful information
Sending out links and information that is useful is a great way to build a great reputation (increase the possibbility of retweets!). For example, if you sell hand-made toys on your website, sending out breaking news about toy trends (or recalls!). Constantly tweeting about your products can make you seem like a spammer.

Twitter is still relatively new and no single technique is appropriate for every business. You may find that applying a variety of methods and experimenting on what works (and what doesn’t) is the best way to take the plunge after getting your feet wet.

4 Search Engine Directories Worth Submitting to

These are the 4 directories I would recommend submitting your site to if you are looking to get indexed in Google or gain some page rank.

1. Yahoo Directory
2. Business.com
3. BOTW.org
4. DMOZ.org

Try to pick categories that make sense and also look at the page rank of these category pages and try submitting to the one with the higher page rank. You won’t always be placed in that category, but it is worth a shot. It is also important to make sure your Logos and Title Tags are consistent with the Title you request when submitting your listing for review.