There have been hundreds of articles written on the subject of good email creative, however just in case you didn’t actually read any of those articles, I’ve decided to share a few of the basic ones with you.

1. Keep it simple! People generally do not read full sentences so why force them to do so within your emails.  Create your copy based on the premise that half of your readers will spend less than 5 seconds reading your email and the other will want to spend a bit more time reading in order to really understand your message. This means using clear and concise bullet points, having clear call to actions and only including information that is truly useful to your reader.
2. Use an eye catching layout! Both color choices and layout design need to focus on guiding the customers eyes to your “call to action”. You don’t need to be blatant about it (like using arrows), just put a bit of thought into your use of colors and images. You can use contrasting colors but make sure that they aren’t so bright that your text is lost. Don’t use colors and images where none are needed as this will detract from your main message. Also, keep in mind how your color scheme will look within the uers’s email interface. Most email programs already have an abundance of color (not to mention the other 3 or 4 ads flashing on the screen).
3. Reinforce your “call to action.” Don’t just tell them that they can save X%, show them how! Use buttons, larger fonts and colors to highlight what it is you really want your customer to do and make sure you put that call to action at the top. Forcing them to read a full page email before you tell them what they need to do to “save” will not result in many conversions.

These are just a few of the basic principles I’ve learned over the years. If you have any others you feel are essential, I would love to hear them!

Article Courtesy : http://emarketingmaven.wordpress.com/

1. Offer your professional expertise in an online marketplace.These days, you can do more than just sell your old books via Amazon and your old Coach handbags via eBay—now you can sell your professional capabilities in a marketplace. No longer are you limited to looking for a permanent or contract job on Web 1.0 style job sites like Monster or CareerBuilder. The new breed of freelancing and project-oriented sites let companies needing help describe their projects. Then freelancers and small businesses offer bids or ideas or proposals from which those buyers can choose.Elance covers everything from programming and writing to consulting and design, while RentACoder focuses on software, natch. If you’re a graphic designer, check out options like Design Outpost or LogoWorks–you don’t have to find the customers, they’ll come to you. Wannabe industry analysts might sign up for TechDirt’s Insight Community, a marketplace for ideas about technology marketing.

2. Sell photos on stock photography sites. If people regularly oooo and aaaaah over your Flickr pics, maybe you’re destined for photographic greatness or maybe just for a few extra dollars. It’s easier than ever to get your photos out in front of the public, which of course means a tremendous amount of competition, but also means it might be an convenient way for you to build up a secondary income stream. Where can you upload and market your photos? Try Fotolia, Dreamstime, Shutterstock, and Big Stock Photo.

3. Blog for pay. Despite the explosion of blogs, it’s hard to find good writers who can turn around a solidly-written post on an interesting topic quickly. GigaOM is always looking for bloggers with great content ideas and solid writing skills. How do you get noticed? Comment and link to blogging network sites. Write blog posts that are polished and not overly personal (although showing some personality is a plus).

4. Or start your own blog network. If you like the business side of things–selling advertising, hiring and managing employees, attracting investors–and have the stomach to go up against the likes of Weblogs, Inc., GigaOmniMedia, b5media, maybe you should make an entire business out of blogs. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you’ll get a lot of time to write yourself though.

5. Provide service and support for open source software. Just because the software is free doesn’t mean you can’t make money on it–just ask Red Hat, a well-known distributor of Linux that sports a market cap of more than four billion dollars. As a solo web worker, you might not want to jump in and compete with big companies offering Linux support, but how about offering support for web content management systems like WordPress or Drupal? After getting comfortable with your own installation, you can pretty easily jump into helping other people set them up and configure them.

6. Online life coaching. Who has time to go meet a personal coach at an office? And don’t the new generation of web workers need to be met by their coaches in the same way that they work: via email, IM, and VoIP? You could, of course, go through some life coaching certification program, but on the web, reputation is more important than credentials. I bet Tony Robbins isn’t certified as a life coach–and no one can argue with his success. For an example of someone building up their profile and business online as a coach, check out Pamela Slim of Ganas Consulting and the Escape from Cubicle Nation blog.

7. Virtually assist other web workers. Freelancers and small businesses desperately need help running their businesses, but they’re not about to hire a secretary to come sit in the family room and answer phone calls. As a virtual assistant, you might do anything from making travel reservations to handling expense reimbursements to paying bills to arranging for a dog sitter. And you do it all from your own home office, interacting with your clients online and by phone. You can make $20 and up an hour doing this sort of work, depending on your expertise.

8. Build services atop Amazon Web Services. Elastic computing on AWS is so cool… and so incredibly primitive right now. Did you know that you can’t even count on your virtual hard drive on EC2 to store your data permanently? That’s why people are making money right now by offering services on top of AWS. Make it easier for people to use Amazon’s scalability web infrastructure like Enomaly has with elasticlive, a scalable web hosting platform built on AWS.

9. Write reviews for pay or perks. If you blog for any length of time on a particular topic–parenting, mobile phones, or PCs, for example–you will likely be approached to do book or product reviews. You can get free stuff this way, but are you selling your soul? Is there any such thing as a free laptop? These are decisions you’ll have to make for yourself, because no one agrees upon what ethical rules apply to bloggers. Even less do people agree on services like PayPerPost that pay you to write reviews on your blog. Check out disclosure rules closely and see whether such a gig would meet your own personal standards or not.

10. Become a virtual gold farmer. A half million Chinese now earn income by acquiring and selling World of Warcraft gold to gamers in other countries. If you’re not a young person living in China, this probably isn’t a viable option for you. But what’s intriguing about it is the opportunity to make real money working in a virtual economy. People are making real-world money in Second Life too.

Article Courtesy : Anne Zelenka at http://webworkerdaily.com/

Promoting your site can seem overwhelming. It’s not. Everyday there’s a new offer in your mail box that promises you a magic fix. Keep your focus.

Focus on these four points:

1. Content

Have a good content. Make sure your site have a focus and its obvious to users. Most users don’t want to stumble around guessing what you’re about. Make sure you site has something new to say or organizes information in a new or useful way to web site visitors? Visitors will recognize this, bookmark the site, tell friends and other websites will link to you increasing your “popularity”.

2. Home Page

- Don’t make it all pictures and graphics – load it up with words – good words. And it’s best not to ever use frames.Make sure you describe the site, its purpose and use the words that the visitors use when they’re looking for your site. Use the same words and alternative words in your metatags.

3. Page <title> Element and Page Title

Make up a great title for your page and be descriptive. When visitors see your site in the search result listing – those first 5 words better grab their attention and say it all.Compare your best title idea to real titles that come up when someone searches for your site.

Use lights.ca Search Page and quick tips for finding headings now.

Search engines look at your site and count how often you use words and where you placed the words on the page. The more often (up to a point) and more prominent the use, (ie. those header tags) then the more the page is about your “word”.

Search engines like Alta Vista, Infoseek, Excite, HotBot, Lycos, Canada.com, Webcrawler, Google, Northern Light – don’t just use keywords – popularity counts too and other factors.

Wnat to learn more about search engines? ….
Check out Danny Sullivan’s Search Engine Watch for an outstanding site jam packed with information.

4. Usable

- Everyday we see 100’s of sites that are just plain hard to use and hard to navigate. Make sure your site labels are

1. clear
2. consistent
3. legible.

It’s hard enough getting visitors to your site ONCE, but if your site is difficult to use then it’s death by mouse click and they’ll never return.

Writing Good Copy and Search Engine Optimization (SE0)

It’s imperative that you write excellent copy on your site that is effective at communicating your message online. Follow the advice above and learn more about writing online.

How do you know if your blog writing/content works? Figure out what content leads to clicks now.

Bloggers produce reams of content but do they know what gets clicked? In less than a minute anyone can sign up for an account, paste one line of code and start to have real time stats. Try it yourself:

Sign up for MyBlogLog.com

If you sign up and post their links on your own site and someone clicks and signs up and chooses the Pro account, you will earn an affiliate revenue of $0.30 for each monthly signup and $2.50 for annual subscriptions. Subscriptions are priced low to be affordable and easy to purchase.

Content Tips

Use RSS Feeds to Add Free Daily Content to Your Site Keeping your site fresh is hard work. This site really helps. Fresh excellent headlines (no ads, no programming needed, free) each day. We love it and highly recommend it.

With over 300 categories there’s bound to be one that fits your site. Try Moreover’s headline service on your site to get FREE Daily News Headlines. There are several other headline services but read their copyright notices to determine if you can republish their feeds on your web site.

• It’s fast – just click, cut, & paste it into your page
• Easy to change the colors/look
• Lots of topics(250) to choose – health, sports, politics, books, fitness …. etc.

Set up Moreover’s headline service NOW for your site

Writing and Your Web Site

Do’s and Don’ts:

• Write in pyramid style
• Use the words that your visitors “know”
• Keep it short
• Use lists so folks can skim
• The words that you use count literally and figuratively. If you CAN’T WRITE, get someone who CAN to write your main page
• Make your links have “scent” – 3-7 works best
• Figure out the best keywords/phrases to use and make sure you use them on your page, in your title, and on your page
• Remember: Keywords are NOT enough. You need to make your site attractive, and have great content so it becomes “popular”.

Good Advice – Bad Advice

The web is full of “helpful” but just plain WRONG advice and these bad ideas just keep floating around like viruses. Heck they sound so great – must be true, right? Ideas like creating 100’s of site doorway pages, or putting text on your page the same as your background color. Think about it – it’s been done and search engines are onto the “tricks” that folks use to spam them. In some cases your site will be blacklisted.

Usability

Take time every week or so to read columns like Jakob Neilson’s Alertbox column each week. It’ll only take you an few minutes, to pick up the best approaches to making your site usable.

Pay-Per-Click Search Listings

This is a simple yet effective way to get your product or service in front of the people that are looking for it.

Learn about How To Make Money on Your Web Site

Check out our guide on How to Make Money with Your Web Site. Get targeted ads on your site with Google AdSense

Other Resources

• Web Site Promotion – 50 Tips
• SearchEngineWatch.com – a reliable source of information about search engines and how they work

Article Courtesy : http://www.lights.ca