Scribd currently funnels almost 60 million viewers through its eGates every single month – dwarfing almost every other document sharing site on the net. Several factors undoubtedly have a bearing on this impressive number.

When Business Week called Scribd “The YouTube of Documents”, they couldn’t have dreamed up a better branded tag line if they’d hired a top ad agency. People have accepted that definition – and it’s given the relatively new ePublishing company, which has been in business only since 2007, credibility and prestige by association.

But there are more solid reasons Scribd has caught on so wildly. For one thing, of all the document-sharing companies around, it alone seems to be encouraging everyone from Aunt Joan with her biscuit recipe to Cousin Joey with his Thesis to upload and share their documents in its archives.

While this makes for very uneven quality, it also makes for a stunning historical “snapshot” of where we are as a global society. It makes Scribd as much as social network as a publisher, and that’s undoubtedly what they intended.

And it doesn’t hurt that you can automatically update Twitter and Facebook with your Scribd activity, if you so prefer.

Or keep your documents strictly private, if you’ve no great desire to share them with the world.

But how does Scribd get past the inevitable problem of helping its users find what they need, with such a gigantic maelstrom of miscellaneous documents?

They’ve thought of that too, with multi-layered categories and sub-categories, and different pages featuring specific types of content – “Most Read”, “Rising”, “Featured”, et cetera – but they haven’t stopped there. Recently, they imitated Google and SEOmoz by adding search operators to their search function, so that one can used advanced sorting data to refine one’s searches.

is where my documents live!

You have decided to start your own business on the internet. The first question is what do I do? What kind of service do I offer or what product do I sell.

What field are you knowledgeable in? What do you have to offer others? Am I qualified to help others?

Most everyone has the knowledge and ability to help others. The problem is that most do not have the confidence to share that knowledge. We question ourselves and the abilities that we possess.

Recently, I’ve learned some valuable lessons about people. The majority of people are content to follow. There is nothing wrong with this and the world needs followers as well as leaders.

The world also needs leaders and the confidence that goes with that role. To be a successful leader, you must have the confidence in your own abilities. And to be successful in the marketing world, you must be a leader.

You must have the confidence that you can help others and have the ability to convey that confidence to them. You must possess the knowledge to allow you to portray this confidence to your clients as well.

If you cannot convey this confidence to your potential customers, you will have a very difficult time being successful in any type business. People come to you for help, you must project a sense of confidence or you have little chance of attaining that success.

A while ago, a client said that I seemed so confident that the marketing campaign I had just put together would be a success. He asked me how I could be so confident?

My answer to him applies to almost any task or any field. I told him that I was confident because I had spent many hours studying the market that we were targeting. I had also spent many hours looking at other marketing campaigns, both successful and unsuccessful. I had then spent a lot of time putting together the campaign and when I finished, I went back and spent even more time ensuring that everything was just right.

The key here was preparation. I was totally prepared and felt like I had exhausted every possible means to ensure that the marketing campaign was the best that it could possibly be. How could I not be confident?

It reminds me of school. When I spent the time studying, I always felt confident when test day arrived. The times that I did not spend the time studying, the confidence was just not there, no matter how hard I tried to convince myself.

You have the ability to start your own business and turn it into a successful venture. What does it take? You are going to have to have the confidence to pass along to others. How do you acquire this confidence? Well, it does not come because you are good looking, popular or inherited a million dollars. It comes from studying, work and preparation.

Do you have the ability to make it happen? Of course you do. The question is, are you willing to put forth the time and effort that it takes. Success and Confidence take work and preparation.

Check This Out!

30 Day Challenge First Lesson:

http://www.thirtydaychallenge.com/

Check it out!

By Michael A McCord

OK, you’ve done the “forum thing”, you’ve done the “downloading” thing and you’ve done the “throwing away the rubbish I don’t need thing”. So what next. Well this depends on what it is you want to do online.

If you want to sell other people’s products for a commission, you can do that. Sites like Clickbank can help you out there. You browse through the site looking under different headings until you find the products you would be interested in promoting. Following the on screen instructions, you sign up for an account and using your account name, you create what is known as a Hoplink. This link is used in your promotions and when someone buys the product from the vendor, the commission is sent to the account in the Hoplink, i.e. your account.

It all sounds so simple and you will see literally thousands of ads telling you that Mr X made $25000 in a month, Mrs Y made $10000 in her first week and someone else made so much money, they can’t find numbers high enough to tell you and will have to invent a brand new type of mathematics just so it all makes sense. So everything looks rosy in the garden. What you never, or at least, rarely see, is the fact that to promote the products, you have to have someone to promote them to. Without a list of prospects, looking to buy, at your disposal, you can promote products until the cows amble past on their way home, but if no-one sees the item on your own site, or a site you have been given as part of an affiliate deal, then there simply is no market. After about a week of logging on to see who has bought and how much you are making, you may notice a few tumbleweeds slowly making their way across the site, a very depressing state of affairs.

List building is a specialist area all of its own and I will cover that in a future article.

Another route to take is getting your own web presence and promoting your own product, or a product that you have the rights to sell, or give away. (What! I hear you say, Give Away! I’m here to make a living fool, not compete with Charities!) Be calm. Chill. As you will see in an upcoming article, giving leads to receiving, again and again.

Getting your own website used to be an area only ever ventured into by the internet version of Indiana Jones or James Bond. It was a place full of completely alien practices and languages, and all out of reach to the man in the street, or indeed, the man in the spare bedroom , banging away at the keyboard.

I can remember starting out with computers that had to be hand coded using endless pages of gibberish to achieve the moving of a small square from one side of the screen to the other where…gasp!, it changed colour before your very eyes, (your very tired eyes). These days, you can get free software that will guide you through each step and give decent results, and if you have made the right connections in your forum activities, you will have people to help you when it goes adrift, (and it will). The biggest secret to building a website is this.

Don’t Give Up.

You may feel like giving up, in fact you will definitely feel it, but the satisfaction you will get from seeing your own site, live on the web, is almost as good as the birth of your firstborn.

You did this.
You are The Webmaster.
You have only just started, my friend.
Don’t like the colour? Change it.
Want a flashing doo-dad? Put one in.
Want moving pictures? No problem.
Want a life sized 3D hand coming out of the monitor to pat you on the back? In your dreams.

But seriously, you are now coming to the stage where you are in control, and can do these things, (except the hand), and you can take pride in the fact that you are already way ahead of most of the people in the world.

That is worth repeating-you are already way ahead of most of the people in the world. Because you are taking action.

In Newbie article 4, we’ll talk about list building and what to sell on your website.

Bye for now.

Michael McCord:
For a FREE eBook for newbies on building your first website, go to http://www.sucsessful.com
No sales page, no fluff, just a download.

Helping newbies any way I can, because we have ALL been there and it can be LONELY.

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were.
David Rockefeller (1915 – )

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_A_McCord

Take a moment to think about how you would really answer this question. If given  enough thought just about any business owner who utilizes the Internet for any purpose will likely find that whether or not they intentionally organized an Internet marketing campaign, they may already be marketing their products and services on the Internet. This article will examine some subtle ways business owners may already be marketing their business on the Internet.

Do you have a website for your business? Business owners who answer yes to this question are already marketing their products or services online just by virtue of the fact that they have a website. Having a live website means there is the potential for curious Internet users to access your website. You may not be actively promoting your website but you may still find that your website generates interest in your products despite the lack of promotional endeavors; this is a form of passive marketing.

Do you participate in message boards and include a link to your website in your signature? Again business owners who answer yes to this question are already marketing their website online. Savvy business owners realize the importance of participation in industry related message boards to create an interest in their products and services, establish themselves as knowledgeable about the industry and offer a link to their own website even if it is in the signature line of their posts. However, even business owners who do not realize this may already be inadvertently enjoying the benefits of Internet marketing which result from message board participation just by doing something they enjoy and may be doing as a form of leisure activity.

Do you include keywords which are relevant to your business in the content of your website? Business owners who answer yes to this question are also already marketing on the Internet by optimizing their website for these keywords. These search engine optimization (SEO) affects the websites whether or not they were even aware of the concept of keyword density and how it can help to SEO a website. Business owners will likely use certain words often depending on the type of products and services they offer just because it is natural and logical to do so. This tendency, however, can result in search engines boosting your website rankings for these particular keywords. The concept of SEO is much more involved and complex than simply using keywords frequently but business owners can gain some benefit just by naturally applying relevant keywords to their website.

Do you solicit feedback from your customers online? This is yet another example of how business owners may be accidentally marketing their business on the Internet. Most business owners realize the importance of soliciting feedback from customers for business purposes and business owners who offer products online might solicit feedback in the form of online surveys. Although the business owners may be doing this simply for a business purpose the fact that it is done online makes it fall into the category of Internet marketing.

We have already discussed several ways in which business owners may already be marketing online but what about business owners who want to have an increased online presence? Business owners who may already be marketing online accidentally may wish to launch a full scale Internet marketing campaign. The best way to do this is to hire a consultant with experience in Internet marketing to assist you in creating a campaign which is effective for your target audience.

Internet marketing is quickly becoming one of the most popular marketing options available. The Internet reaches a worldwide audience and is available 24 hours a day. For this reason more and more potential customers are turning to the Internet for a variety of reasons including researching products and services and making purchases. As more and more consumers turn to the Internet for these reasons, it is important for businesses to establish an online presence. This is so important because failure to do so may result in their competitors gaining an edge over them in competing for sales. While it is important for business to begin Internet marketing campaigns it is also important for these same businesses to realize basic marketing principles still exist and they cannot neglect these principles. Most importantly those who market online have to be aware of who their target audience is and how to reach this audience.

As with any marketing campaign, business owners should do some market research before they launch their Internet marketing campaign. Ideally this will involve hiring a research consultant with a great deal of experience in conducting and evaluating this type of market research. The results of this research should determine the basic demographical information for the target audience. The results should also include information on how to reach this target audience. A business that cannot afford to hire a consultant to conduct this market research should still make an effort to obtain this information on their own. This can be done through informal polls of current clients. This information may not be as comprehensive as the information obtained in a more formal study but it can still provide a great deal of insight into the best way to reach the target audience.

Once this information is obtained, it is important to tailor the Internet marketing campaign to appeal to the target audience. There are a number of different variables which can be modified to ensure the right message is reaching the right people in a manner they can understand and in which they can relate. Some of the ways in which your Internet marketing campaign can be tailored in this way include:

• the aesthetics of your website
• the advertisements
• marketing tools
• the wording of your copy
• and the use of more advanced design features such as audio and visual or interactive tools

The aesthetic appeal of a website can greatly contribute to how the website is viewed by the members of the target audience. A website which is designed to attract the attention of an older generation with more conservative tastes should include muted colors, clean design and conservative graphics. This will help to ensure the target audience enjoys the website. Conversely if you are looking to appeal to a younger audience with more liberal viewpoints you might chose to design the website with bold colors, eye catching graphics and creative design features.

The copy you include on your website should also take your target audience into consideration. Consider the examples of a conservative and a liberal audience listed above to create a better understanding of how the copy on your website can appeal to the target audience. When marketing to a more conservative audience, the copy should be tailored to use formal language and use facts to back up viewpoints. However, when you are marketing to a more liberal audience or a younger audience you can consider using less formal language which is likely to appeal to the target audience. You can also focus more on emotion to express viewpoints.

Finally, when a website is created for the purposes of Internet marketing it is important for the design of the website to appeal to the target audience. You may wish to include audio and video clips on your website but these clips should appeal to the target audience. For example if your website sells skateboards you might consider incorporating audio clips from punk rock bands as opposed to country music bands. There may be some skateboarders who enjoy country music but in general punk rock music more closely represents the skating culture. Keeping these details in mind is very important for Internet marketing.

If you are not already marketing your business online, it is time to start. Although there are a few exceptions, just about every business can benefit from online marketing. There are just so many advantages to this type of marketing. First of all, it is extremely affordable to market your business online. Other advantages to marketing your business online include the ability to reach a large target audience, the ability to reach potential customers all over the world and the ability to customize the marketing for different sectors of the target audience.

The affordability of Internet marketing is one of many reasons why many business owners are turning to the Internet for advertising. Advertising online is incredibly affordable especially when you consider how many potential customers a business owner can reach with an online marketing campaign. For example, you may choose to market your business online by participating in industry forums and posting links to your website whenever it is appropriate to do so. In this case the cost of creating and maintaining the website is insignificant in comparison to the number of potential clients you could reach through online marketing. Additionally, the costs associated with posting links to your website are incidental. You could consider the cost of having access to the Internet as part of the cost but you most likely require Internet access for other reasons as well so it is completely worthwhile.

Reaching a large target audience is another very worthwhile reason for marketing your business online. You may have spent a great deal of time and energy doing market research and determine who your target audience is. You may have also spent a great deal of time trying to figure out the best way to reach this audience. This is a very sound marketing principle but as it applies to marketing on local television, radio and print media it only allows you to reach a limited audience. However, when you take your marketing to the Internet you automatically drastically increase your potential target audience because you now have the ability to reach members of your target audience around the world.

This ability to reach customers around the world is another major advantage to marketing your business online. Regardless of where you live and operate your business, you have the ability to reach those who have an interest in the products you sell or the services you provide no matter where they live. This makes it possible for you to do business with customers around the world.

Likewise the fact that the Internet is available 24 hours a day is also very beneficial to those who choose to market their products or services online. Shopping for products and services in person can be very difficult especially for individuals who work long hours or those who work unusual hours. These working conditions make it difficult for these individuals to do business and make purchases of products and services they need during regular business hours. However, business owners who have an online presence are much more convenient because unlike stores and calling centers, the website never closes. This convenience gives potential customers the ability to view products and services, compare these products and service to the ones offered by competitors and make a purchase at any hour of any day.

If you are a business owner who is reading this article and you do not already have a strong online presence, you need to immediately start learning more about the world of Internet marketing. This is so important because if your competitors are marketing online, you may find they are gaining a steady advantage and are becoming more appealing to potential customers. Before too many of your potential customers become loyal customers of the competition it is time to start figuring out how you can market your business online and keep up with the competition.