Podcasting slowly crept into the vocabulary and the internet marketplace in 2004 as the birth of the home radio show, where people can play music and talk about any subject they want with no rules and no regulations.

Later in 2005, Jeff Mills, author of the popular e-book, “Podcast Secrets Revealed” predicted “Podcasting” would be the most popular trend of 2005, just like “blogging” was in 2004.

As he was sitting in a Burger King restaurant, in late 2004, he first saw the word “podcast” in print in a USA Today newspaper.

It was an article about the GodCast Podcast, and how people were taking the messages of the Scriptures and sending an audio mp3 through the internet in an RSS feed that could be downloaded with enclosures and automatically put into your PC or favorite mp3 listening device, ALL AT ONCE.

For the non geeks, what that means is that audio files were automatically able to be downloaded and listened almost as easily as downloading mp3 files from any popular mp3 music site. Cool stuff!

What happened next was that in 2005 EVERY major news program, talk show, or superstar musician got into podcasting, or sending their audio content through their own home grown RSS feeds right into people pc’s and mp3 players.

Then iTunes and Yahoo got into the podcast business over the summer of 2005 and podcasting went main stream.

User’s mp3 players were suddenly filled with Rush Limbaugh, ESPN, Tech TV, talk shows, new music shows, even porn/sex shows, and many other mainstream media programs were sending out audio mp3’s to their loyal fans for free and people were filling up their iPod gigabytes faster than you could say “podcasting revolution.”

It has been a wild year for the word “podcast” and when you type it currently, at the time of this writing, into Google.com, “podcast” now has over 81,300,000 sites linked to that word.

Because of this the popularity of Podcasting in 2005, Erin McKean, editor in chief of the New Oxford American Dictionary, said: “The word has finally caught up with the rest of the iPod phenomenon.”

According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, “Podcast” is now the word of the year!

Right on the heels of Podcast making the word of the year, Yahoo quietly launched a new search function to try to corner the AUDIO search market.

As people were doing their last minute shopping and frantically getting ready for the holidays, Yahoo added a new search tab on their popular search menu called, “Audio.”

A Yahoo spokesperson said, “I wanted to spread the word that we’re turning up the volume a bit on audio search by adding a new “Audio” tab to the Yahoo! Front Page. Since launching Audio Search in August, user response has been great; proving yet again that the Web wants its audio. So, it is time that a larger audience gets to enjoy the sound”

Whatever Yahoo isn’t indexing with its Audio Search can be submitted by the creators of audio files, so podcaster, you may want to quickly get your shows listed in there, and gain top spots, while the gettin’s good.

The company wrote a Media RSS specification that accompanied the debut of Audio Search. This spec better supports multimedia content; Yahoo also uses it for Video Search.

What is already on the radar for 2006?

Self produced video shows, like TV stations, will crop up all over the internet, as people begin to broadcast their own video/tv shows and play them on media players like the iPod Video Player and other devices. Google is paving the way for video, by allowing people to do searches for videos right from their search box.

iTunes is coming along quickly too, with Video Podcasts which might be a misnomer, but the arrival of the video podcast show is now here too.

Video Blogging or Vlogging is my prediction for the most popular word in 2006.

Jeff Mills is a former Youth Pastor of 9 years, who is now a full time internet information entrepreneur, book author, speaker, sales coach, and also an avid traveler.

Jeff has passionately pursued seeking the best aways to create podcast shows and is the respected author of the popular e-book, http://www.podcastsecretsrevealed.com.

At http://www.podcastsecretsrevealed.com, one will learn step by step what a podcast is, how to listen to one, how to make one and even how to make money from one’s podcast show.

[tags]Podcast ebook, podcast book, podcast e-book, how to podcast, podcast, podcasting, pod cast,podcaster[/tags]

Most web sites are considered as dead. They are buried among the millions of other unvisited web sites. Website promotion is a specialist service that many companies are failing to address, with the end result that no matter how good their websites are, visitors are still slow and that makes them fail to generate a worthwhile income. With a good website promotion, It is certain to boost your sales and achieve excellent return on investment by getting multiple top rankings in the major search engines and directories for your website.

You should start your website promotion efforts by listing the site at the most popular internet directories. Because they can send your substantial amounts of traffic and can affect the ranking in various search engines. It is better to make sure that your site is present in all of the major directories before doing anything else.

Web site promotion should be the most important part of your web site marketing plan. It’s not sufficient just to design a beautiful web site and put in on the Net. Promoting your web site has to be done frequently if you want to get a nonstop stream of traffic to it. If you don’t make traffic go to your web site, your online business scheme will soon be unsuccessful.

Here are 7 Fundamental Steps to a Better Web Site Promotion:

1. CREATING A WEB SITE MARKETING PLAN.

When making your web sites create a plan on how to promote it as well. Try to pretend you’re a consumer when you’re developing it. It’s too effortless just to view your web site from your own point of view. You need to have a clear visualization for your business, goals (short and long term) you wish to attain and the strategies of how you will carry them out.

2. DEFINING YOUR GOAL.

A lot of online marketers promote their web site without purpose in a field which is too large, for instance they may use bulk mailing as one of their endorsement strategies. You may get some consumers but the chances are you will not make any sales because of the wrong consumers you acquire. Getting targeted consumers to your web site, will increase sales, because they will have more interest in your merchandise or service than advertising to a general audience.

3. USING SEVERAL ADVERTISING SRATEGIES.

Sticking to one form of promotion is not advisable because you may never know which one will work for you the best. Using more channels like search engines, email, marketing, forums, writing articles etc, you will have a greater chance of having traffic on your web site.

4. PROMOTING CONTINUOUSLY.

Driving constant traffic to your web site, you must promote it endlessly. The life blood of your online business is the web traffic. For instance, you could always optimize your web pages for the search engines; resubmit them if needed, visiting discussion forums daily and writing an article for online publications for not less than two weeks.

5. CALCULATING YOUR RETURN ON INVESTMENT.

Keeping track of how much money you invested in your promotion plan and what earnings you received in return. This will keep you away from wasting large amount of money thrown aimlessly into advertising.

6. ANALYZING YOUR WEB SITE TRAFFIC.

You can identify what marketing strategies are doing well. You can then modify them as necessary, to improve the sales or services from your location. Your analysis may consist of what keywords your visitors are using to find your web site, which web pages are the most admired and where your visitors are coming from. These are necessary information you should know, instead of blindly promoting your web site and hoping for the best.

7. TEST, MONITOR AND TRACK YOUR RESULTS.

When running an effective online marketing operation, you need to always test what works and what doesn’t. Tracking an answer to an ad may cause you to refine it until it generates a great return on the money you invested. Once your results are all right, you can then roll out your ads on a bigger scale and spend large amount of money.

Jay Peterson writer, web designer, marketer. http://www.TicTacWebsites.com is the easiest do-it-yourself website builder on the web. No programming or design skill required. Get your small business online in just 5 minutes with http://www.tictacwebsites.com loaded with 30+ business features.

[tags]Website Promotion,WEB SITE MARKETING,optimize your web pages,WEB SITE TRAFFIC,web traffic[/tags]

Record keeping measurements for Internet marketing

Record keeping tracks money — where it goes, when it comes in. Internet record keeping is also required for success. Yet the statistics show that only one out of a hundred people who own web sites do any type of record keeping on how much it cost them to be there A system that works hard for you when you don’t still requires monitoring and periodic reviews. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it, then it manages you.

The top keys to making money on the Internet are working smart, planning, testing, immediately stopping when something isn’t working, reinvest in new techniques and approaches that improve and then keep testing. For every success there are usually 10 to 15 try, sometimes more, that weren’t successful. Even prolific writers create a number of drafts to get to the end result that works.

Here are nine terms you want to become very familiar with and that you want to use to measure your success. As a past CPA, these terms aren’t just for an Internet site, they too are usable in other services or brick and mortar operations.

1. Cost per action, sometimes also called, cost per acquisition. How much does it cost you to get a visitor to take a specific action beyond just clicking around in your web site? How many click-throughs does it take for visitors to make a purchase? Another way to apply this to ezines subscribers — how many clicks were made before the subscriber registered for your eNewsletter? You take the total expenses for running your web site and divide by the number of clicks measured.

Example: If the cost per click is $0.50 and it takes 30 click-throughs to get one person to register for your eNewsletter, the cost per action is $15. If you write articles, how many registrations do you get for each article? If your measurement is 10 for each article and it takes you about two hours to produce and deliver the article over the Internet. If your estimated hour rate is $100 per hour, then each registration is costing you $10 plus your web expenses.

2. Cost per sale. To measure, divide the marketing expenses by the total number of transactions to come up with the cost per sale in a dollar amount.

3. Return on Investment, also known as your ROI. Divide your gross sales, this is all your sales coming from your web site, whether it is from affiliate, commission, advertising, or items sold, by all your marketing costs. All that you have invested in its production. You come up with a percentage amount which is the bottom line on how successful your marketing was in terms of sales. Refunds or credits are also taken into account. If you gave away a number of products you need to count these as part of the items sold even though they didn’t land any money in the bank account. Giveaways are a frequent overview in this calculation and can be a huge eye opener.

Example for service professionals. If you provide a service where you give away the first session as complimentary, give a presentation for a sale, or prepare a proposal, these costs also need to be included in your ROI calculations. If you provide this service in person you need to also add in your travel time and an average cost for car expenses (not just gas). This is why it is so important to prequalify. For coaches, this is why I recommend only performing complimentary session over the phone or in your office unless you’re fee is built in and high enough.

4. Pay per sale, also called a referral fee for closed transaction . This is typically a percentage of the sales generated by the advertisement. A commission is paid when a sales is made by the advertiser and not by the number of click-throughs. Advantageous to the advertiser not to the publisher.

Example: Someone places an ad in your eNewsletter with an agreement to pay a higher percentage fee for each sale but zero for any nonsales. The responsibility of success for the sale falls mainly on the advertiser. If you enter into this type of agreement, make sure the advertiser delivers on their promises, and has a structurally sound sales processing system in place. Not to mention a means for reporting to you what was sold, when and where too.

5. Customer lifetime value. Stated in dollars, this is the average length your customer remains with you divided by net profit of that value. If you are new in business or don’t have the actual figures you will need to estimate.

Example: If you are a coach and average of 22 steady clients per month for an average agreement of six months. Your net profit for six months would be $46,200. You then divide the $46,200/22 = $2,100. What this means is that every client that you acquire for six months is worth $2,100 to your business.

6. Cost per click, also known as cost per click-through (CPC). How much you have to pay for every time someone clicks on your ad — clicks from that point to the next point, usually your web site.

Example: You purchase a banner space on someone else’s web site for your product or service. That space costs you $400 for the month. There were 225 click-throughs from that banner to your site during that month. $400 divided by 225 = $1.77. You paid $1.77 for each click-through.

7. Cost per lead, also known as pay per lead. This usually occurs when you purchase prospect lists. These are specific lists from people who have already given permission to someone else that they are interested in this type of product or service. In other words, they have opt-in to a similar request, and they are the target market you are looking for. The leads can be limited to just providing the e-mail address or in great details.

Catherine Franz is a Marketing & Writing Coach, niches, product development, Internet marketing, nonfiction writing and training. Additional Articles: http://www.abundancecenter.com blog: http://abundance.blogs.com

[tags]Web site terms, marketing, techniques, Internet, tracking,results, Catherine Franz.[/tags]

RSS - or what is now known as “Really Simple Syndication” - is a file format that is incorporated by Internet users in their websites to allow for ‘web syndication’, making their web content available in a format that can be universally understood by other people.

In essence, RSS is a ‘mini database’ that contains headlines and descriptions (a summary or a line or two of the full article) of your web content, including hyperlinks that enable users to link back to the full article of their choice.

RSS websites - that is, websites that contain RSS ‘feeds’ (articles or postings) - typically have colorful graphics to indicate to users that the specific web content is available through RSS feeds. These graphics are usually depicted by orange rectangles that are usually marked with ‘RSS’ or ‘XML’.

With its increased popularity, RSS is now being adopted and used by more website owners or publishers. Today, numerous resources are now available that aid Internet surfers (and even beginners as well) on how to set up and use RSS.

Setting up RSS feeds and adding them to your website can be a simple process that does not involve a lot of time or any money. Listed below are some simple and basic steps that you might want to follow:

1. Have your web content and/or news in an RSS feed format, such as XML (appropriate and ‘ready-made’ feeds are also available from other sources).

2. Click the orange graphic - this is the RSS feed icon. Take note of the URL of the RSS feed; this will be displayed in the address bar (for Internet Explorer).

3. Input the feed URL on your RSS feed creation program.

4. Click on the “Generate Feed” button. This will generate the RSS code for your web content.

5. Enter the RSS code in the appropriate place on your own website.

Having created an RSS feed for your website, next comes the task of publishing your web content and news and having them displayed on other sites and headline viewers. This is made possible with the use of RSS readers or aggregators.

RSS readers or news aggregators are used to view particular web contents. RSS readers contain the collection of ‘feeds’ or RSS files from content providers, and they are generally classified into 3 types:

·Desktop RSS readers - also known as standalone desktop application, they generally ‘run’ in the background and are similar to an e-mail client, collecting the feeds and refreshing items automatically as they are updated.

·Web-based aggregators - these are online services that enable users to personalize web pages, refreshing them each time the page is accessed or each time a person logs in to the service.

·Plug-in aggregators/readers - these make use of either web browsers or e-mail clients, which allow users to view RSS feeds while inside an existing program.

Having an RSS-enabled website provides Internet users (especially those who are website owners) with the following benefits:

·Allows users to generate up-to-date news and postings, as information and content in the RSS readers or aggregators are automatically updated each time the RSS feed is ‘refreshed’.

·Allows users to have control over the information that they wish to view or receive, as they can remove a feed of their choosing any time they want to.

Aside from these benefits, RSS websites are also useful for people who conduct their business in the Internet, particularly in Internet or Online Marketing. RSS can be an effective marketing tool for your website, especially in the following fields:

·E-mail marketing and publishing
·Search engine marketing and optimization
·Business blogging
·Internet advertising
·Digital public relations
·Branding and e-commerce

In addition, RSS can ‘power’ your website, providing you with the following:

·Valuable, updated, and relevant resources for site visitors and potential clients - RSS is ideal for websites that contain (and syndicate) a lot of information that has to be changed or updated regularly.

·Search engine optimization for the website.

·Increased traffic for the website - your website can ‘harvest’ and display information from other sites, driving more traffic to your own website.

·A wide selection of ‘channels’ for content distribution, such as PDA’s, cellular phones, voice mails, and email ticklers.

·A reliable way to have your web content delivered to Internet users and potential clients - RSS ensures that your site is viewed by the people who are interested in them, without having them blocked and ‘cleaned’ by ISPs or Spam filters.

These are just some of the advantages that RSS can give your website (and your business). The possibilities are endless, as more and more comes up almost everyday. Do not be left behind - take the advantage of the marketing and publishing power of RSS.

Jeremiah Patton is a current user of rss. Jeremiah Patton uses rss for his legitimate work from home business opportunities website at http://www.2ndincome4u.com to keep visitors updated on current events and news.

[tags]rss reader, rss feed, rss website, rss tool, rss news[/tags]

The Importance of Page Content

The content of a page is probably the most important consideration when building traffic to your web site. Other techniques do gain more traffic but page content and content of your web site in general is most important when producing a good quality site that will naturally build traffic.

1.1 General guidelines for a page
For a page to rank well with the search engines, the page should be optimized and have sufficient text that is of relevance to your visitor. Ideally the page will be written and presented to be easy to read. It will have a good use of white space and placing of text blocks and pictures (graphics).

The text you write should be warm and compelling. It should flow well so it is easy to read and be in short paragraphs so interest is easy to maintain.

The content you place on the page should be reflected by the page name, title, the H1 heading, description and meta tag keywords.
1.2 Page Content
As the number of pages on the web increases, it is becoming more difficult to achieve a high page ranking. There is much you can do and the most important consideration is the content on the page. Search engines are becoming more specialized at looking at the page as a whole and ranking the page on the basis if its content rather than just the title, meta tag keywords and the description. The text or copy on the page is now becoming the most important feature with the all the properties of the page being used to judge its ranking.

This is good from our point of view. Let me explain. If we are interested in creating a page that is relevant to our site visitor then the copy of the page will contain accurate and compelling information about its topic. The page will naturally rank higher than other less well constructed pages. If our pages are the best we can make them, when compared with much poorer pages, our pages will rapidly rise in ranking.

When a search engines refers a visitor to your page, they will record the time that they spend at your site (as long as the visitor clicks back to the search engine). This information is used to rank pages. If your visitor stays longer on your site compared with other sites, your page ranking will naturally improve.

So creating pages that are “sticky” will help ranking and in turn increase traffic to your site.

This is a short piece taken from my eBook on Web Site Traffic Building techniques. My eBook summarises the best techniques I have used over the last three years in creating successful commercial sites.

The full eBook is available from http://www.web-site-traffic-building.com

Nigel Stephens is a Microsoft MCP and has extensive experience in creating database driven web sites such as http://www.usb-products.com that are commercially successful. His eBook of the best techniques for developing targeted traffic is available from http://www.web-site-traffic-building.com

[tags]Web site traffic building content[/tags]

According to Technorati, there are over 15 million blogs as of July 2005. And during July, an average of 80,000 new blogs were created each day. If you own a blog, how are you going to promote it in order to stay ahead of the competition?

Fortunately, there is a simple, yet very effective method: RSS directory submission.
Submitting your RSS newsfeed to specialized news directories benefits your site in
several ways.

RSS directory submission increases your readership. When a person is looking for
newsfeeds to add to their RSS reader, it is highly likely they will visit an RSS directory
to find newsfeeds on their subject of interest. I recently visited a directory looking
for personal business blogs. I subscribed to several, and now read them via RSS on
a regular basis. Someone else may have an excellent business blog, but since they
weren’t listed in the directory, I was unable to discover their site.

RSS directory submission enables your content to be duplicated and linked to from
other sites. One of the key benefits of syndicating content through RSS is that it
increases your reach. You can publish an article, then have excerpts of that article
placed on hundreds of other websites - with links back to the original on your site.
Many webmasters want to have fresh content for their visitors, and embedding an
RSS newsfeed is the easiest way to do that. You’ll want to make sure that you are
listed in RSS directories when a webmaster visits looking for website content - or
your competitors may get the free promotion!

RSS directory submission provides immediate link popularity. RSS directories are
similar to other web directories - you get a free, one-way link back to your site
when you are listed. Think about this. Most RSS directories carry a pagerank (PR) of
5 or higher. When you multiply that over 50 RSS directories, that is a lot of links
back to your site - meaning increased search engine rank and more visitors.

There are several ways you can submit your RSS newsfeed to directories. The first,
obviously, is by hand. You can get a list of the directories (http://www.rss-
software.net/rss-directories.php), then go to each website and add your feed
manually. Since there are many RSS directories, this can take quite a while. To save
the webmaster time, two ways of automated directory submission exist.

The first one is RSS Submit (http://www.dummysoftware.com/rsssubmit.html), a
program that automates the directory submission process. All you have to do is
open the software, enter the URL for your feed, and RSS Submit will instantly send
the feed information to approximately 40 directories. You can also manually submit
your site to another 25 directories using RSS Submit’s auto-fill function.

The second method is appropriately named: RSS Directory Submission Service (http:
//www.rssdirectorysubmission.com). This service is similar to RSS Submit - you
give them your feed URL, and they submit it to over 50 directories. The difference
between the two is price: while RSS Submit costs $44.95 for a personal, non-
commercial license. RSS Directory Submission Service charges $8.95 per feed
submission. And since sites usually only have one feed, the RSS Directory
Submission Service is more economical for most RSS publishers.

Regardless of the RSS directory submission method you choose, make sure to do it!
You will find the effort small compared to the benefits you receive.

Josiah Mackenzie is a entrepreneur who shares business tips and advice through his
website: http://www.josiahmackenzie.com.

His latest project is an RSS/Blog Directory: http://www.rss-blog-directory.com

[tags]rss, blog, promotion, marketing, directory[/tags]

The recent announcement that AOL and Yahoo! will start charging e-mail marketers postage per thousand e-mail messages delivered, via the pay-me-to-deliver-email Goodmail program, is rocking e-mail marketers all around the world and at the same time making die-hard RSS fans proclaim the death of e-mail marketing.

It’s certainly a fact that AOL and Yahoo! announced they’ll start implementing the above mentioned pay-me-to-deliver Goodmail program and charge $2.5-$10 per thousand emails sent to guarantee delivery.

But what does this really mean for e-mail marketers? Is it the end of the world as we know it? And is RSS really poised to take the throne for direct content delivery and direct marketing?

A] IT’S NOT THE END OF THE WORLD AND CERTAINLY NOT THE END OF E-MAIL MARKETING

While e-mail postage will certainly increase e-mail delivery costs, it’s still too early to say whether it’s actually going to drive ROI down.

Depending on your own e-mail metrics, the increase in delivery might actually help you increase your ROI, even considering the increased e-mail campaign costs. This is by all means certainly a time to start carefully analyzing your e-mail metrics and calculating what these changes might mean specifically for you, before you actually start getting worried.

It’s now also finally a fact that website optimization, to ensure increased visitor-to-customer conversion rates, will become paramount to reaching online profitability.

The important point right now is that you start measuring and analyzing, finding ways to adapt to the coming changes in the world of e-mail marketing. It’s not the end of the world, but simply another issue to adapt your marketing to.

B] GET STARTED WITH YOUR RSS MARKETING PROGRAM

But adapting to the new rules of internet marketing is not only about optimizing your e-mail programs and your website conversion rates, but also finally getting started with RSS marketing, if you haven’t done so yet.

For those new to RSS, the simple explanation is that RSS is a tool that gives you the benefit of 100% content delivery, without any problems associated with spam and other filters, such as the one that AOL and Yahoo! announced they’ll start using. And the best thing about RSS is that it can even be free to implement and certainly free to deliver.

But if you haven’t started with your RSS marketing program yet, now is most certainly the time.

First, consider these tactics for integrating RSS marketing with your existing e-mail marketing programs:

1. Use RSS to announce each new issue of your e-mail e-zine, which you make available in full on your website.

2. Provide a separate RSS feed for the articles you publish in your e-mail e-zine and get them to your subscribers as soon as the articles become available, without them having to wait to receive them in your e-mail newsletter. The same goes for your news section, if you have one.

3. If you publish much content in different topic categories in your e-zine, provide a separate RSS feed for each of those topics. Take another look at the elements we listed above that a typical e-zine might include. Each of those elements could in fact become a stand alone RSS feed.

4. If you’re doing e-mail autoresponder marketing, provide those very same autoresponders as RSS feeds, allowing your visitors to subscribe either to the e-mail or RSS delivery channels to receive the very same content.

5. If you have your own affiliate program, make sure that your affiliates can also subscribe to your affiliate notices via an RSS feed, not just e-mail. Basically, all you will be doing is duplicating the same content you’re sending out via e-mail in an RSS feed.

6. If you’re sending out special notices or updates to your existing customers via e-mail, create a special limited-access RSS feed to deliver those same updates via RSS as well.

More information on integrating RSS and e-mail is available here: http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/rss_and_email_1_how_they_can_work_together.php

These are of course only some of the options for using RSS in your marketing. To get the most from this channel you will in fact need to implement the entire 7-step RSS marketing plan:

1. Start Using RSS as an End-User

2. Plan Your RSS Feeds

3. Create a List of RSS Marketing/Publishing Requirements

4. Use this List to Choose an RSS Publishing Tool and Create Your First Feed

5. Correctly Promote Your RSS Feeds through Your Own Channels

6. Promote Your RSS Feeds Through External Channels

7. Implement RSS Metrics and Your Own Content Syndication Program

You will get more free information on the 7-step RSS marketing plan with all the specifics here: http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/content/the_7step_rss_marketing_plan.php

C] BECOME A MULTI-CHANNEL MARKETER

And in the end, don’t forget that multi-channel strategies work best. This simply means that you shouldn’t use ONLY e-mail or ONLY RSS, but rather use them, and all the other channels, together.

Copyright 2006 Rok Hrastnik

Are you wondering how to best use RSS marketing, especially considering the new problems facing e-mail marketing? Find out immediately and for FREE how you can power your online business with RSS and use it in all of your marketing. Request the FREE 28-page Business Case for RSS report, with easy-to-follow instructions, examples and advice on how to get the most out of RSS in the shortest possible time. Get the free download here: http://rssdiary.marketingstudies.net/case/index.html?src=sa20

[tags]rss marketing, syndication, email, e-mail, rss and email, aol, yahoo[/tags]

“Interactive Podcasting” is a term that is yet be uttered by the podcast masses. However, in its infant stages it poses a direct threat to the special features market of DVD’s, and as it grows, it will certainly revolutionize the way we view television forever.

What is “Interactive Podcasting” you may be asking.

In an article I wrote a few months back I made this statement,

“Podcasting in my opinion is the genesis of Video Internet Technology. That is, the merging of what we know as the “internet” and current broadcast, cable or satellite programming. It has long been discussed that the internet and television would one day be one in the same. But there has not been much talk into how this transition, into a new future of “Informative Entertainment” or “Intelligent Programming” will develop.

Video podcasting has opened the floodgates for internet television to directly compete with traditional broadcast television. Over the next few years, companies like Microsoft and others who have already introduced home T.V. set-top boxes, which will stream internet feeds directly to televisions in your home. This is the birth of home internet television in its purest form.

Everyone owns a DVD or two, right? If not, you have at least watched one, I hope. Now, when you put a DVD into the machine and turn it on, it takes you to a menu screen. This menu screen gives you options to choose from, such as scenes, extras, director’s cut and so on. These extras are huge draws for DVD sales, like Shrek, Star Wars, etc. The reason they are a big success, is because they put the power of choice in the hand of the user. Whatever your choice may be, the DVD will follow, and execute.

So what if podcasting had the ability to implement “user options”? What if you were watching a Video Podcast, and have the ability to choose different features of that podcast by simply placing your cursor over the screen and choosing your option. What if you had the ability to alter and control video, with the same user applicability that you can on a webpage or search engine.

Podcasting has just ventured into the video phase, where everyone from amateur producers to billion dollar media companies are scrambling to figure out how to make this medium useful, and of course, profitable. So as the medium evolves, the user will demand more from the industry, and a response will be absolutely necessary, in order to make digital media as viable and powerful as a DVD and VHS tapes once were.

The response society will need, is to make digital content as interactive as a physical product would be and then some.

Because what good is the new “Pirates of The Carribean Movie” being delivered to your home set-top media device, if you can’t choose to watch how they produced the new spectacular sword-fighting scene you heard about?

Right now podcasting is the first step in the direction of internet television, it has opened the door for subscription based technology to thrive on the internet. And that is the birth of internet cable television in its purest form. So as the podcast masses start to grow into the hundreds of thousands and millions of viewers per podcast show, the industry will start to add user options to its shows, and these options will be interactive in their nature.

For example, let’s say you are watching a popular video podcast like What I Want Fitness ( http://www.WhatIWantFitness.com ). This show features personal training advice from an instructor, and during the session you are watching, you see a particular exercise that you really liked, and would like to see more variations of. So what if you could take your mouse and click on the trainer’s bicep, and as you did that, the screen would open a list of bicep exercise shows that are available, as well as text on the bicep muscle structure. You could then instantly transition to a new bicep exercise, or maybe click on the text to learn a little more about the muscle you are training.

Now this is a very simple example, but very true to the power of interactive podcasting, and eventually interactive iTV. Podcast shows that start implementing these features will attract a huge viewer response ratio, where a show will then be able to alter its programming in direct relation to the data and feedback it is receiving from its viewers. This will only make programming better in the future. If 75% of the viewers are choosing to look at resistance related exercises, then the show will be able to get that data from web statistical information, and implement the changes to serve their audience better on the next show.

As this power is implemented by the major media conglomerates of the world, internet television will take off, and the merge of the television and the internet, will have occurred.

You see, until practical applicability of interactive programming is made prominent, internet television will not see its true potential. But once it does catch on, Interactive Podcasting will be seen as the birth of this revolution in media delivery.

Now, if we could just get the browsers to keep up and give us the support we need in the xhtml level.

Ryan M. Hoback, is Founder of Motivated Entrepreneur, Inc. and What I Want Podcasting, LLC.

Motivated Entrepreneur Inc. is a business incubation firm that helps entrepreneurs grow their business’s.

What I Want Podcasting specializes in developing podcasts for commercial application in society.

http://www.MotivatedEntrepreneur.com http://www.WhatIWantPodcasting.com

[tags]Interactive Podcasting, Internet television, podcast, internet tv, interactive programming[/tags]

As early as 1996, a proposal was written to create a META tag to be used within the HTML of a page. Adding “metadata” tags to the HTML structure of the day for the purpose of better describing web pages. By then, hundreds of thousands of web pages had already been written, and the concern was that while pages could be indexed, there needed to be something that would allow to better automate their indexing.

That was known as the Proposal. Back in early 1999, papers were finally submitted to the World Wide Web Consortium - http://www.w3.org/ - a Resource Description Framework, but the tag had been in use for years.

Just as a library has a card index to catalog the millions of books, metadata was created to assist in creating the same thing for web pages. If you don’t know what a Meta Tag looks like, try looking at the description at the W3 site. It is the purest form of information on HTML data.

For years webmasters were diligent including the necessary data into their pages. In fact, when you “View Source” on most web pages today you can see the meta data included within the HEAD tag.

If some of this is way over your head, hang in there; we’re almost to the point.

Search engines have been around since 1993. The dream was to enable their “bots” to spider the web more effectively by indexing using something (metadata) within web pages. As early as 1994, search engine bots were already indexing entire pages. Because of the popularity of whole page indexing, sites such as “Webcrawler”, later purchased by AOL, could only be used at night. During the day the number of searches simply crashed the servers.

Infoseek and AltaVista were the first to use the keywords meta tag in 1996. HotBot and Lycos soon followed. But what soon became apparent in 1997 was that some web site owners would insert misleading words about their pages, and some would use excessive repetition of words in hopes of tricking the search engines into thinking their pages were more relevant (read: Spamming).

Lycos stopped supporting the tag in 1998, and newer search engines such as Google and FAST never added support at all. When Infoseek ended in 2000, only AltaVista and Inktomi remained. AltaVista then joined the crowd and stopped supporting the keyword meta tag.

“In the past we have indexed the meta keywords tag but have found that the high incidence of keyword repetition and spam made it an unreliable indication of site content and quality. We do continue to look at this issue, and may re-include them if the perceived quality improves over time,” said Jon Glick, AltaVista’s director of internet search.

Not sure why Inktomi hangs in there. Their explanation is:

“The meta keywords value is just one of many factors in our ranking equation, and we’ve never given too much weight to it. That said, we will continue to use it as long as our relevance modeling shows that it adds value,” Ken Norton, director of product marketing for Inktomi’s web search division.

So if by 1994 we already had contextual based search engines, why in 1999 did we need metadata?

Well, that’s just the point. We didn’t really need them for search engine inclusion. As a matter of fact, the W3 explains the main reason would be to notify search engines that your site contains pages in another language, and where those pages are located. But as far as using metadata to get included in search engines, W3 simply touches on the Keyword and Description meta tags. Their focus is on better structure of the web page, content, and improved use of the robots.txt file.

Okay, so we learned that we don’t need Meta Tags for the search engines to find us. And that since the early ’90’s the “bots” have been spidering the web, including pages into various collections. But we do know that a higher ranking in the search engines will improve our AdSense performance. In other words, more people visiting your site, the greater the probability they will click your AdSense ads and make you some money.

The fallacy is that souping your pages up with (stuffing) keywords will increase your search engine rank. Guess what? Nobody uses Inktomi.

Founder of one of the first web hosting companies on the Internet, World Wide Mart, Dave Jackson has been teaching others how to monetize their web sites for over ten years. Currently he teaches others to create a solid residual income by creating quality web sites of great benefit to visitors and monetizing them using contextual ads. His blog is Making Money with Contextual Ads.

[tags]Meta tags,SEO,AdSense[/tags]

Even experienced marketers need web promotion advice when they
transition from traditional business practices to internet
marketing. Getting web promotion advice prior to writing sales
copy for the web is pretty important since the web copy is
actually a huge aspect of effectively promoting a website. Sure,
some of the same marketing principles apply to both worlds - any
type of sales copy should grab the readers’ interest, hold their
attention, create desire, and have a strong call to action.
Anyone who engages in marketing knows those basic principles.
However, when it comes to internet marketing, the sales copy
plays more than one role. The multiple roles are the reason that
web promotion advice is needed before the web copy is written.

Anyone who gives web promotion advice should give adequate
attention to the web copy. The purposes it serves are:

1. Advertising

2. Sales

3. Search engine attraction

Now, in the “real” business world sales copy is generally just
advertising. The intent of traditional sales letters and
marketing materials is simply to get those who read it into a
store or on the telephone where a salesperson takes over and
closes sales. In the “virtual” business world; however, the sales
copy must make more of an impact than that.

Sometimes a website will have a phone number where website
visitors can call, chat with a salesperson and place an order,
but for the most part, the sales copy on a website replaces the
salesperson altogether. Thus, it must not only provoke interest
so that the website visitor reads the sales copy, it must also
hold the reader’s attention, provoke desire for the product or
service it is offering, present a call to action, and literally
close the sale.

Web promotion advice that aims to assist you in creating powerful
web copy that fulfills all of these roles will likely give
consideration to two types of web copy that are used for website
promotion - long copy and short copy. The best web promotion
advice leans toward long copy for websites because short little
blurbs about a product or service simply don’t complete the full
sales process. The only time that short copy is really
recommended is if you are using an online catalog.

Short copy can be used in product or service descriptions in the
catalog to promote the products or services. Long copy; however,
has some pretty unique points that need to be considered. In
addition to web promotion advice that deals with the copy as a
sales tool, web promotion advice also gives consideration to the
use of keywords and keyword phrases that make the website
attractive to the search engines.

Web promotion advice for long sales copy

Long sales copy is ideal for web promotion because it walks the
reader through everything that a salesperson would do in a face-
to-face (or telephone) sales situation. Before you write your
sales copy, you should determine your competitive advantage and
unique selling proposition, translate the features of your
products or services into benefits for the consumer, and craft a
pricing strategy that will set the image you wish to portray as
well as provoking the consumer to buy - perceived value is key.

Using these important aspects of the web promotion advice, create
a headline and a subheading that will grab the readers’ attention
as soon as the web page loads. Initially, the sales copy should
make it clear to the reader what you are offering to them in
terms of benefits. Long copy should also build your credibility
with the reader through testimonials or the discussion of
credentials. Generally a guaranty is used to instill confidence.
Bonuses or freebies can be included to add value to the offering,
and then the long sales copy needs to have a strong call to
action that creates urgency.

Sometimes a reduced price for a limited time or a bonus that is
available for a limited time provides the urgent prompting for
the call to action. Last but not least, the sales copy has to ask
for the order and make it easy for the reader to place an order
or to contact you for more information.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope,
fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing
advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing,
or a website owner who wants to make more money from your
website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your
internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

[tags]web promotion advice, internet marketing, business marketing, business tips, internet business[/tags]