The Godfather of Network Marketing Amway is clearly the most recognizable MLM on the planet. The 5 billion dollar a year company operates in 80 countries and has a gigantic number of distributors totaling over 3.5 million. Amway is privately owned and was founded by Rich DeVos and Jay Van Andel. The company that was started in 1959 is headquartered in Ada, MI.

This direct sales giant offers a line of products that contain 450+ Amway products and over 6,500 brand name products. There are not too many people on the planet that have not heard of Amway. They are without a doubt one of the largest and oldest network marketing companies in the world.

The Amway product line consists mainly of home care, nutritional, and commercial products. They have so many that they carry just about everything!

They offer generous commissions as you work your way up the ladder. Amway has a proven track record and has shown its ability to weather the storms over the years. It is a company that rewards those that are willing to work hard and utilize the system that the company has proven to work.

My only concern with Amway is the shear size of the company a problem with being able to move up in the system to share the real money making opportunities. It is hard to start with them and get into a full time equivalent income early. So you need to approach it as a part time job in the beginning.

When you take into account the companies longevity, its ability to be profitable year in and year out, and its reputation then Amway is one of the best.

On a marketing review scale of 1 to 10 Amway is an 8.

I have tried and researched hundreds of online business opportunities. Most of them have been scams and schemes but recently I have found a system that earns me a consistent monthly income with no selling at all. When I find these diamonds in the ruff I like to share them with my readers and this one is a must see. Click here to see!

Wasting Your Time with Web Analytics by Manoj Jasra Web Analytics is not easy and can take up much of you time so it's important to concentrate on the things which have the most benefit to your business. Below I have outlined the types of things you shouldn't measure as well as some areas where you could potentially end up wasting time rather than focusing on tactics and metrics which will actually help your strategy to succeed. Trying to Achieve 100% Accuracy In a JavaScript and Cookie model, web analytics will never be 100% accurate. In a web analytics test performed last year by Stone Temple consulting where they implemented numerous analytics scripts on the same website, the results indicated up to a 10% fluctuation between analytics packages. I feel it's important to test for accuracy but a waste of your time to try to balance your books using analytics. Measuring only the Quantity of Leads You launch a PPC campaign for your hot new service at 8 AM and by noon you have 1000 new leads, mission complete, pack it up and go home - I don't think so. Yeah 1000 leads are wonderful until you find out that 50% of them are from a person who has the email test@test.com Not Segmenting Your Data Not segmenting your data is similar to closing your eyes and randomly throwing money at various advertising mediums. I can't stress the importance of taking your leads, downloads, revenue and information requests and segmenting by Medium, Search Engines and keywords. Keeping the Data to Yourself Good or bad it's important to share the data with Stakeholders in the company who need to make decisions with it. Long hours of Crunching number after number in order make the results appear in a certain way will only prolong the ability for the appropriate decision maker to take action. Measuring Without Purpose Before jumping head first into the data, Before creating a Dashboard make sure you sit down with your marketing team to figure out the goals of the appropriate project as well as what metrics they need to report on in order to do their job properly. Original Post: Web Analytics World Want more from your web site? Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford. Publ.Date : Tue, 06 May 2008 10:07:35 -0600 My Relationship with Facebook: Can We Talk? by Karri Flatla I'm probably going to lose a lot of Friends with this post, but I need to get some stuff off my chest about Facebook. If you're a real Friend, you'll listen without judgment. If not, it was nice Facebooking with you. I hope there are no hard feelings left in my wake. Like most of us, my love affair with Facebook started out hot 'n heavy. Almost daily (sometimes even hourly), I watched my Friend meter go up like an investor watches a stock ticker. And the sheer voyeurism of it all was just so hard to resist. (Admit it, you've looked up at least one ex just to see their profile picture or better yet, get access to their photo album. And you couldn't help but smile to yourself when you noticed their Freshman 15 had turned into the Desk Jockey 30.) Now, the relationship is starting to bore me and I don't know what to do about it. In addition to the boredom (I'm running out of people to spy on, er, I mean beFriend), I find myself feeling rather annoyed. Often. Yet I don't want to break up with Facebook either. I just want to keep Funny Face around for those Friday nights when I want to be amused. While I'm at it, know what annoys me the most about FF? The constant nattering when I don't feel like talking. Only a few of my Friends do it, but they're kind of ruining it for my BFFs. Specifically, it's the constant influx of emails that is making me want to start deFriending like a highschool cheerleader with PMS. I'm not talking about FunWall notifications either. I turned those off when I became afraid my hard drive was going to crash from Fun overload. But seriously, where does it say in the Facebook Terms of Use that it may be used as a list management tool? Where and when did I give permission to my Friends to use me this way? In fact, Facebook's Terms of Use say this: "... you agree not to use the Service or the Site to: harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications ..." So, you can't harvest emails from your Friends' profiles to market to them, but what about the Invite Your Friends feature? And how come it allows you to "Import Email Addresses" from various sources? Seems that Funny Face has developed a split personality. Or an inflated ego. This relationship is getting complicated. So many rules--written and unwritten--have been broken. I don't want to sound like an ingrate. Funny Face has been good to me. We go back at least a few months. The tapestry of our affair is richly decorated. Decorated with smileys. And hugs. And dirty video clips. And spam. I just wanted to hook up with some old friends. Do a little B2B networking. And exchange some niceties now and then. Facebook, you let me down. And I don't know what to do about it. Want more from your web site? Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford. Publ.Date : Wed, 07 May 2008 14:53:07 -0600 Site Navigation and Usability: Easy Tips for Happy Users by Scott Allen Yesterday, I stumbled across a large ad agency website that promised to be interesting. As soon as I clicked on the link in Google, my senses were assaulted by a splash page, followed by a Flash intro, all before I could enter the site. Yes, it took two clicks before I was even at the homepage...that is appalling! Why on earth is anyone in this day and age still creating websites with splash pages and Flash intros, let alone both on the same site! That borders on visitor abuse. This particular agency claimed to have won lots of awards, create ground-breaking campaigns, along with all kinds of other lofty promises, and yet they couldn't even get their own usability issues under control! Wow, talk about missing the point. If I was a potential client, I would have been out the door as soon as I saw the splash page. Ditch the lofty ideas and focus on the users. Big ideas are great when executed with usability in mind, but when the they become a hindrance to users, it's time to go back to basics. Why? Because unhappy users don't convert. You won't sell product, you won't get contracts, and you won't achieve your other conversion metrics if you make people want to run away. Navigation is the Foundation of Usability The first and foremost element of good usability is navigation. Almost all other usability issues are built on, or in some way related to navigation. This article will focus on some key tips you can use to improve your site's navigation. Navigation 101: 3 Clicks or Bust When someone visits your site for the first time, it's often their first point of contact with your company, so the relationship with them is quite fragile. On average, people are willing to give you 3 clicks to find what they are looking for, and if they can't reach their target destination within those 3 little clicks, you've lost them. It's extremely important to structure your navigation so that any page of your site can be reached within 3 clicks of any other page, because users don't always enter at the homepage, especially when they come from a search engine. This point is really what sparked this post. The ad agency mentioned above wasted two of these valuable clicks before a user was ever at the homepage. Take a look at your site: When you have a new visitor, can they get to their target destination in 3 clicks or less? If not, you need to overhaul your navigation. Users tend to get lost without clear navigational paths, so make it easy for them. Take time at the beginning of site development to create a good site map, and sketch out navigational paths. Redundancy is a good thing. Provide multiple paths to the same destination. Take x product (or service) and make sure that users can get there through the primary navigation, the contextual links in the text of the site, and through any other paths that make sense, for example through site search results. The key is to think like a user. Get outside feedback. When developing a site, especially navigation, it often is necessary to get some people to visit your site who are completely unfamiliar with your site and products/services, and get their feedback. You might be surprised. Often outside feedback can you step back and see some weaknesses you weren't aware of. Make sure it's easy to read. Keep in mind that eye-tracking studies have shown the users' eye tend to gravitate toward the top and left sides of the screen, starting with the top left corner, so those are prime locations for navigation. Users should never have to scroll to find navigation buttons/links. There a many more things that can improve and fine-tune navigation, but these are some easy tips, that if implemented, will improve the user experience at your site. Want more from your web site? Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford. Publ.Date : Thu, 08 May 2008 12:23:13 -0600 SEM Boot Camp - Paid Search Advertising Roadmap by Diana Adams I recently had the opportunity to participate in some speed networking at Small Business Marketing: Unleashed. When I told the second person I networked with that I am a PPC manager, she gave me a blank stare and said "I have no idea what PPC is." She's not alone. Many people do know what PPC advertising is, and where paid advertising is displayed, but my experience at SBMU reminds me that this isn't always the case. So I decided a great first entry for me at Search Engine Guide would be a Boot Camp Style article explaining exactly what paid search advertising looks like. I tend to talk with my hands, demonstrating what my minds eye is seeing - on the internet, I rely on pictures. So we're all starting from the same place, I'll throw out some screen shots of where paid advertising are displayed on the three major search networks and explain some of the not so obvious details. Then, just to keep things interesting, I'll show you where paid advertising displays in a couple of other search engines. Google As Google receives the lion's share of searches we'll start with them. There isn't quite a "hard rule" that is always followed, so I'll give a brief description of where paid ads, or "sponsored links" typically appear. As a general rule, they always appear to the right of the natural results, and quite often (but not always) as the top three results on the page, above the natural listings. When they do display above the natural results, Google shades the background to make it obvious that they are different results than those below. (even though that shading may mean nothing to someone not knowing what paid advertising looks like.) Occasionally, if your search term is very, very obscure, you'll see only a very few ads, but the most ads that Google will display on any results page is ten. Sometimes there are only one or two ads at the top of the page, and never more than three. But sponsored links always display on the right hand side of the natural results. Google will only 'serve' ten ads per page; if there are more than ten advertisers, Google pushes them to the next page. If all you want to view are sponsored links, then you can click the "more" displayed just below the sponsored links. But you'll still see only ten at a time. Yahoo Yahoo seems to get the second number of search volume, so they're second in this discussion. The same general rules that applied to Google, apply to Yahoo as well, but instead of labeling their paid ads as "sponsored links" they're labeled as "sponsored results." Above the top sponsored results, Yahoo will display a list of related searches, labeled as "Also try:.." To further muck things up, you might find Google ads displaying amongst the Yahoo ads because they're currently running a beta test. MSN MSN gets the lowest search volume of the three major engines, and again, the rules are very much the same as with Google. Paid ads appear to the right of the natural search results, where they're identified as "sponsored sites." As with Google, depending on the search phrase, you may or may not see sponsored sites displayed above the natural results. MSN displays Related Searches above the sponsored sites on the right; be aware that those results are not advertisements. So those are the major three players, yet there are dozens of other search engines that people use. Solely for demonstrative purposes, let's take a look at Ask.com and Dogpile.com. Ask Ask has their own search engine and their own paid advertising. In years past they used to display search results from their own database along with results from others, including Google. Now they stick to their own database for natural results. They do however participate as part of Goggle's search network, and you will find Google ads displayed along with the Ask ads. Ask highlights their ads above the natural results, never along the right side of the page and they label them as "sponsored results". Along the left side of their search results, they display options that allow you to narrow your search results. Dogpile Dogpile is a meta search engine, displaying results from multiple search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. The way they display their ads though, is somewhat deceiving. Their "sponsored ads" are a collection from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask, but the secret is that they are mixed up with the natural results. Unless you read the tag that labels listings as , you may never recognize that you're looking at a paid ad. So there you have it, your first introduction to what Paid Advertising looks like. Now you'll never look at a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) the same, and you'll recognize those hidden advertisements at DogPile. In future posts I'll cover more of the basics, including the limitations of ad text, the importance of relevance and landing pages, discuss CPC, CTR, and you'll get familiar with all the alphabet soup of PPC (Pay Per Click) industry. Don't worry if you don't know what CPC is, or CTR, you will! If at anytime you have specific questions, by all means, post them as a comment and I'll try to answer as best I can! Want more from your web site? Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford. Publ.Date : Wed, 07 May 2008 10:27:41 -0600 Twitter Dee Twitter Dumb: DirectTV Done Wrong and Right by Sage Lewis Twitter and DirectTV go head to head this week by creating and solving customer service issues at the same time. Mack Collier's article "Worst Example of a Company Twittering?" exposes DirectTV's bumbled use of Twitter, explains the frustration that can cause, and encourages companies to use social media tools "as the rest of us do." The DirectTV/Twitter saga actually begins with Stoney deGeyter's tweet about the company's presence, is filled in with his article "Why DirectTV is Losing My Heart (and Quite Possible My Business)," and then ends with another tweet about the company's immediate response to his customer service issue. Want more from your web site? Search Influence can help! Targeted Traffic. Increased Revenue. Results Guaranteed. Customized Internet Marketing you can afford. Publ.Date : Thu, 08 May 2008 15:38:02 -0600

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