The Rich Affiliate

Like many internet marketers, I read many predictions at the beginning of the year regarding what to expect for 2008 and what may be the hot trends in the internet marketing industry.

You have probably noticed, as I have, that the internet appears to be changing. Let’s look at these changes and how they point to 3 trends that may offer excellent opportunities for online marketers in the months ahead.

First of all, the internet market is still relatively new. Recent statistics show that only 18% of the world’s population has internet access. However, this is rapidly growing, especially in Asia.

As with all new markets, especially those that involve technology, the first ones to enter are the innovators and early adopters: so-called “internet geeks” and the entrepreneurs.

Then the market gradually enters the mainstream, where the vast majority of the population, and opportunities, exist. There is evidence to suggest that this is going on right now on the internet.

Many regular presenters at internet marketing seminars have commented on how the attendance at these events started to change in 2007. The usual group of “geeks” and “gurus” began to be replaced by people totally new to the concept of internet marketing.

So new that Michael Fortin, one of the top copywriters on the web, remarked that after speaking on stage he was very surprised to be asked questions such as, “How do you create a text file?”, or, “What is an auto responder?” More and more people are starting an online business for the first time, for more details visit to www.tube-pros-espects.com people who have limited internet marketing skills.

The veterans of the industry, the top marketers, have either moved on, retired, or are well aware of the trend towards the “newbie” market and are actively pursuing it.

Here’s the interesting part: the way these “gurus” are approaching the “newbie” market is increasing offline. Yes, you read that right. Offline advertising is now becoming very effective for marketing online opportunities. As a matter of fact, the initial results from an offline marketing campaign being conducted by the markers of the system I use for my network marketing opportunity has shown impressive results.

In addition to this offline trend, as mentioned above, people in Asia are beginning to come online in huge numbers. This is going to be a vast and lucrative market.

In summary, here are the 3 hot internet marketing trends to look for in 2008 and beyond:

1. the market in Asia.
2. The opportunities in offline marketing.
3. The many new people looking to start an online business.

Many internet marketers have already begun to serve these markets and are seeing surprising results.

Personally, I see the “newbie” market as having tremendous potential. Even if you have only been marketing online for one year, for more details visit to www.sell-using-the-web.com you probably have already gained a tremendous amount of knowledge that would be very useful to share with others.

The key here is to serve the market niche by offering solutions.

Internet marketers that choose to offer internet marketing strategies and solutions to these markets may be rewarded generously.

One of the most important pages in a search experience, the search result page, can deeply impact conversion rates. Here I’ll go through different search engine tactics with the help from Smashing Magazine’s article on search engine trends. By going through a wide variety of websites we can conclude some of the best practices from examples other sites have set.

• Google
  • Search box, with searched words, remains prominent at top
  • Option to view an “advanced” search page
  • Total number of results shown at top
  • Ajax-driven auto-complete for typed follow-up searches
  • Sponsored links at top and right
  • Paginated results
  • Results titles are large, bold, and hyperlinked
  • Searched words are shown in bold in a page snippet, in context
  • URLs shown in a different color under each result
  • Each result allows options to view “similar” and “cached”
  • Visited links are in a different color
  • Related search phrases listed at bottom
  • Search box with search terms repeated at the bottom
  • “Show options” link opens a sidebar for further filtering of the results
• Bing
  • Very similar to google but has some differences
  • Lists the user’s “search history” in the sidebar
  • The history to be cleared or turned off
  • The search history remains intact
  • Pagination unit at the bottom of the results page is more user-friendly
  • Pagination rolls over when moused
• Yahoo
  • Yahoo’s search results page includes a couple of JavaScript-driven enhancements
  • Ajax-driven slide-down unit that appears below the search box when a search query is being typed
  • “Search Pad” which allows the user to record notes on searches
  • “SearchScan” to help protect from harmful websites
• Youtube
  • easily-accessible filtering options near the top of the search results
  • YouTube search result page lists detailed information
    • Including a thumbnail preview
    • Running time of the clip
    • User rating
    • And age
    • Also if a particular item is part of a series
• Twitter
  • Offers a very clean, intuitive JavaScript-driven interface that includes “Realtime” results
  • Their page also offers a list of “Trending topics” and a “Search tip”
  • Additionally, Twitter gives the user the option to refresh the page after it detects additional results in real time
• Digg
  • Each result on the Digg search results page includes the number of comments that have been posted for that particular story
  • In addition to other features that are unique to Digg, including “share” and “bury”
• Delicious
  • Lists search results in a very simple, list format that includes tags associated with each result
  • Plus the number of times the result has been bookmarked
• Amazon
  • allows for the results to be sorted based on a variety of methods, including “Bestselling” and “Avg. Customer Review”
  • Amazon’s results page indicates if a book has the “Look Inside” feature
• Ebay
  • eBay’s search results page  allows for easy filtering via tabs at the top
  • eBay also has the option to view the thumbnail preview images in a different size:
  • Other features unique search results page are the options to change the amount of items displayed per page and the ability to go directly to a specific page by entering a number into a text box
• Flickr
  • Flickr  displays results by default in a simple grid-based format
  • Flickr also allows the images to be displayed either in a detail-heavy list-style view or inside of a Flash-based slideshow gallery
• Photobucket
  • Photobucket allows filtering of search results by “Most viewed” and “Most commented”. It also includes a link strangely titled “Follow”, which allows the user to enter their email address to receive notifications when the results for a particular search term are updated. A more appropriate title for this feature would be “Subscribe”, or similar.

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