Internet Marketing In 2010 at The CaymanHost

Starting 2010 is an exciting time for me and is going to see a number of changes here and on some of my other sites.

First off, we are going to be moving to a new home on the web as we have outgrown our present hosting plan – more of that in a separate post. We have suffered a lot of downtime in recent months and it as done a fair bit of damage to our rankings which is another reason why we are making the move.

I have been considering the future of this blog for sometime and although the new hosting arrangements will allow it to remain without eating up too many resources, the fact that it is a non WordPress blog is one of the reasons its future is uncertain. Moving it to WordPress is so convoluted that I doubt I will try it for this site so I’m considering all options carefully before making a final decision.

If you haven’t visited our main site recently, please drop by and see what we have been up to – a new series of video tutorials on things like WordPress, cpanel and other blogging and web hosting related subjects are to become a regular feature and are proving very popular. My blogging focus will probably shift to this site far more as the year progresses – if you are reading this post here, you can see that I am slowly moving selected content over already.

I have been busy elsewhere this past few months both online and off and my wife and I are about to open a physical offline business having launched a new website last year and the move into a retail premises is the focus of our efforts at present. We used WordPress for the site and you can visit Arteccentrix for another example of what can be done with the software and associated plugins, it really is a versatile platform – it’s not internet marketing related.

So, 2010 is going to be an exciting and busy year! I hope that all my loyal readers will stick around and enjoy it with me.

To kick off this new year I’m starting with a few tips that will help your marketing efforts online this year.

URL Redirection and Affiliate Marketing – if you are still using the TinyURL service to shorten your links you may want to rethink the idea. Why? Well, it has been a much abused service and as a result you could be losing a lot of traffic and visitors if you continue to use it. Browsers like Google Chrome now include a feature for users to preview every TinyURL as so many links led to undesirable or spammy sites. This means that instead of redirecting to your page, users will see something like the image below. This is plainly not a good thing!

So, if you’re looking for a better alternative there are plenty out there nowadays – ViralURL is one option and can help you with more than just redirection, as can the excellent and new service from Skadoogle.

However, I recently discovered that ViralURL also has problems associated with it – having been unfairly flagged (imo) by the Spybot Search and Destroy software, anyone running Spybot and Internet Explorer is unlikely to see any of your links at all. I’m not sure how many users Spybot S&D has, but it’s a pretty well known tool and it’s free. CNET alone cites the number of downloads from its sitealone at 111,925,794 so it has to be borne in mind. ViralURL id certainly going to be crippled on a lot of machines out there. Rightly or wrongly SpybotS&D have decided to “protect” their users from ViralURL links and have refused to remove the flag, despite the best efforts of ViralURL to state their case. I think the people at Spybot are morons judging by the comments they made on their forum and simply do not understand viral marketing or any form of affiliate marketing at all. Needless to say I choose to use alternative software for parasite detection.

If you want a professional link cloaking script for your own domain we still say that Samurai Stealth Cloaker is the best out there. You can visit my hub on link cloaking and redirection for more tips too.

When it comes to marketing online, your list is going to be one of the most important aspects of those efforts and if you are still baulking at the thought of getting started with your own list, make 2010 the year you get to grips with building your own list of subscribers. You can choose from countless list building programs but the bottom line is that most of them are a waste of time – sorry to say that but it’s true.

For some great listbuilding tips try Josh Spaulding’s report on email marketing, it’s a steal and contains some great information.

I’m often asked what programs and services I would recommend for beginners to the world of internet or affiliate marketing but it is such a huge subject that without a clear idea of exactly what model you are intending to use it’s very difficult to answer.

If you are just starting out, there is a very good 120 video course available called IM For Newbies that covers all kinds of topics and explains how to do a whole range of things – it’s not the most advanced stuff but if you’re wanting to accelerate your learning curve it’s very worthwhile and good value for money at only $7. For anyone wanting to learn how to set up affiliate marketing sites or niche sites, the free training videos at the Clone Cash System are well worth a look too.

If you are planning to use WordPress in your online marketing there are a huge number of free and paid resources available – take a look at my main site’s WordPress tools section and check out some of the WordPress Training videos too. You can even get a free membership site software for WordPress at Memberfire, so if you are looking to set up your first membership site for free or paying members, it’s a great place to start.

As far as free services go there are a million and one that claim to be the answers to your prayers, but they can’t all possibly be telling the truth. That’s not to say that some will work better than others for different people and their online ventures. There are literally thousands of options, tools and sites out there, so many that it can be difficult to know what to do and where to begin but my advice would be to try as much as you can cope with – test and discard anything that does not bring results. Do not just take someone else’s word all the time – if you like the look of a free service try it – there can often be some nice surprises when you do so.

You will have noticed  several buttons in the sidebar for free advertising sites – if you have no advertising budget to speak of these can be quite effective – I know because I’ve seen some good results with them in recent months so give some a try and see if they can help you too. In my experience if you have the right product/service they can be good for list building and even sales. I’m also currently trying some banner advertising with an exchange that seems to be performing reasonably well although I’ve never been a fan of such things before – it all depends on what you’re advertising but it’s a no cost way of getting your sites seen in more places and there is a WordPress plugin available too.

If you stick with me on this blog or subscribe to my list, I will post results and ideas of my own to help you further your online goals at the start of this new decade!

I’ll report back on the hosting move once it’s underway – if the new service is as good as people claim, you can be sure I’ll be giving a full and detailed review of my experiences and the services provided so look out for that in the weeks ahead.

TCH