If running a small business selling anything such as pictures, paintings, wood toys and other art products through the internet, sellers have to opt for several steps to increase their online visibility. Accordingly sellers have to opt for a few things that go well in promoting a website beside having a catalog and online shopping cart in their website.

Opinion 1 Read the rest of this entry »

The micro-blogging site Twitter.com has become a rage practically with people from all walks of life using it to convey their feelings in few words in what are called as Tweets, which are short updates of a maximum of 140 characters that tell people what they are up to. The website where its’ all about following and being followed, Twitter has emerged as a tool for people to enhance their online presence. Although Twitter was meant to authentically answer the question, “What are you doing?” it has moved far beyond that with people using it to share stories, link to photos, promote content, break news, and a whole lot more. As such Twitter has now become an important tool for marketing tool for professionals to promote themselves or business through internet using the social media domain. However there are few things that people need to take care of or keep in mind before trying to make maximum utilization of Twitter.com. This will evidently help them expand there following and ultimately help them to market themselves. These are

Sharing Links Read the rest of this entry »

Begonia Infosys had been writing about the various privacy violations by Facebook. that has caused people lot of headache. Looks like the shouting by BIS and numerous others websites, bloggers and eminent tech honchos on the internet about the need to rectify the privacy violations on Facebook have finally borne fruit.  BIS had even published some time back a blog titled  Social Networking, Facebook and Infringement of Privacy on this very issue. As such after enduring weeks of criticism over his company's latest privacy changes, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg today offered a mea culpa in an op-ed column in the Washington Post. But some industry observers doubt that the tweaks he outlined will be enough to satisfy users' concerns. Social networking giant Facebook admitted Monday that it had made mistakes in its privacy policies and promised to roll out new tools that would make it easier for its 400 million users to control their personal data.

Mark Zuckerberg, the 26-year-old billionaire founder of the second most popular site on the internet, made the admission in a column that appeared in the Washington Post on Monday amid growing user anger sparked by a string of privacy glitches. "The biggest message we have heard recently is that people want easier control over their information," Mark Zuckerberg further wrote "Simply put, many of you thought our controls were too complex. Our intention was to give you lots of granular controls; but that may not have been what many of you wanted." Mark Zuckerberg also said that the company would introduce simpler privacy settings within weeks, as well as a way to block all third-party services. Facebook has often come in for criticism of its privacy policy, whose default setting is to allow large amounts of personal data to be viewed and searched by the public. Criticism grew following the introduction of new features recently that extended Facebook buttons across numerous internet sites and could have exposed users' browsing habits to others. Read the rest of this entry »

It used to be that the only reliable way to find information online was to use a search engine. However, with the advent of Web 2.0 (interactive, dynamic websites that promote or operate as social networks), people can now easily find information and websites that other human beings recommend. The most recent instance of this is social bookmarking, where in websites like Del.icio.us, Digg, and Furl allow users to share their personal favorites (bookmarks) with others. Users tag each bookmarked website with the keywords they feel are most applicable. Now, instead of using a search engine to find information, people can search tags that will display all websites bookmarked with specific tag.This is human referral or vote for the site and its relevance to the subject being searched.

Other versions of social networking include blogging social networks - primarily Technorati.com. Technorati indexes blogs based on the amount of incoming links those blogs have, as well as the tags associated with their posts. The most popular social network is MySpace. The website enjoys over 20 million unique visitors every month, however few businesses or website owners have thought to penetrate this incredible resource.Also YouTube and BlogTalkRadio, two powerful new social media networks have emerged that are revolutionizing audio and video. These mega networks allow citizen filmmakers and broadcasters to share their visions with the world and spread the word about what matters to them. Few businesses realize it yet, but these media networks are potential goldmines stock full of future Speilbergs, Bloombergs, and Oprahs - all potential broadcasters of your marketing message. Read the rest of this entry »

Affiliate marketing refers to an electronic commerce version of traditional concept of agent/referral fee sales channel. But affiliate marketing is different from multi link marketing. Affiliate marketing is a revenue sharing venture between a website owner and an online merchant.Affiliate Marketing (AM) as a network helps in driving up the sales on a cost per acquisition basis. Affiliate marketing sometimes overlaps with other internet marketing methods, because affiliates use methods such as organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, email marketing and display advertising. Affiliates also use less orthodox techniques such as publishing reviews of products or services.An e-commerce affiliate is a website that links back to an e-commerce site such as Amazon.com. Though affiliate marketing helps to cut out the middleman, still affiliates need to trust the software and people behind the e-commerce website they are joining. Read the rest of this entry »