StumbleUpon is a social networking site that connects you directly to others who share the same interests, and can be a fantastic tool to drive traffic and grow your business. However, in order to gain the most benefit there are a few key strategies you can utilize.

#1 Identify Your Goals

Goals help you stay on track. They also help you know when a strategy is successful and when it needs to be fine-tuned or eliminated. So what do you want to accomplish with your StumbleUpon tactics? For example, “I want to increase website traffic by ten percent.”

#2 Create a Strong Brand

It’s important to make sure you are representing a cohesive brand personality or image whenever you communicate on StumbleUpon. Your profile is also a significant brand builder. Here are a few tips to strengthen your brand through your profile:

* Post a picture – Just like other social networking websites and even your website and blog, it is important to demonstrate that you are a real, live human being. It’s also a good way to share who you are.

* Choose topics strategically – Choose topics that are relevant to your business.

* Connect with like-minded Friends and Followers – Connect with your industry gurus and experts. You can also connect with your competition this way and upload other social networking contacts.

#3 Schedule Your Interactions

Most often when people join StumbleUpon and other social networking websites, they create a few key posts and then they forget about it. If you want to reach your goals, you’ll want to participate on a regular basis for it to be effective.

It is important to know that this is a task that you can outsource. You don’t have to spend your valuable time networking. If you are managing the task on your own, set aside a few minutes every day submitting sites to StumbleUpon, interacting and reviewing. Submit regular content that offers value and helps build your brand and awareness. You can make this step significantly easier by installing a StumbleUpon toolbar on your browser.

#4 Strategic Content

Of course you will want to submit some of your own content. However, you want to make sure the pages you submit are strategic. Don’t submit everything, but rather only content that you believe will help you reach your goals. Create content specifically for your StumbleUpon audience.

#5 Testing and Tracking

When you are creating your StumbleUpon goals, make sure you also create a way to test and track your results so that you will know if your efforts are successful.

#6 Integrate

Include StumbleUpon into your other marketing efforts. For example, add StumbleUpon buttons on your website content pages to motivate Stumbles and reviews.

#7 Advertise

Once you have a solid StumbleUpon system and are achieving the results you desire, take a look at StumbleUpon advertising. Like Facebook and other social networking advertising programs, it is highly targeted and may be more effective than other advertising programs.

StumbleUpon offers businesses the ability to build traffic, awareness, SEO and much more. Create your goals and a strategy to achieve them. Implement systems and tactics and then test for success.

If you are making a bit of money from AdSense but know you could be getting even higher CPMs (cost per thousand), then read this post carefully. You are about to learn a handful of powerful, proven tips and tactics for improving your AdSense CPMs.

Try Saying Sponsored Links

AdSense doesn’t allow you to tell users to click on advertising or to disguise advertising as non-advertising. However, AdSense does specifically allow you to place the text “Advertising” or “Sponsored Links” above an AdSense box. As counter-intuitive as it may seem, a normal-sized sentence, bolded that says “Our Sponsors:” can often increase conversions. Test it out in your market.

Match or Contrast

There are two ways main ways to get high conversions in AdSense. The first and most common is to make your AdSense format match as closely to your website as possible. The text color, font, font size, link color and AdSense borders should all match the layout of your site. When you do this, it is much more likely that someone will think the ads are part of your website or endorsed by your site and click on a link.

On the other hand, one less used but also successful tactic is to do just the opposite. Use contrasting colors or designs to deliberately make the ads stand out. Design the ad boxes in such a way that they literally pop out of the screen, drawing attention and possibly clicks.

Experiment with both methods to see how they work for you.

Always Split Test

Learn to use channels. Channels are somewhat confusing at first, but once you get the hang of them they are extremely powerful tracking tools. When combined with Google Website Optimizer, you can test a wide range of variables at the same time to figure out the best way to make the most money from your traffic. Test everything you can think of. Colors, placements, ad sizes, number of ad units – everything. You never know what will work until you try.

Placement Tips

In general, you will get a higher click-through rate by having your ads above the fold than below the fold. A classical location is the large square ad in the upper left corner of a post. Navigation bar ads are also another popular and successful option. Be sure to customize the settings so the navigation bar units look as similar to your actual navigation as possible. Finally, placement near images or other eye-catching elements on your website tends to work very well. Make sure not to misrepresent the ad as being related to the image, or you will violate the terms of service.

These are a handful of proven strategies, distilled from the experience of many marketers. You will rarely have a very high CPM when you are just getting started; however, over time, with consistent testing, you will find your CPMs rising higher and higher.

Google AdSense is a simple, no-nonsense way of turning web traffic into money. Instead of going through the hassle of selling advertising or creating your own product, with Google AdSense all you need to do is go through a ten minute set-up process and you will be earning money right away.

How Google AdSense Works

Google AdSense is what’s called a “contextual advertising” program. Basically, AdSense will read all the text around the ad, figure out what the website and webpage is about, and then serve up ads that are related to the category of your website. For example, let’s say you’re running a website that teaches people how to cook better. You don’t have a cooking store or product to sell, but you want to make some money from your website.

All you need to do is put up Google AdSense. Once AdSense is live, it will read the text on your website and figure out that it is about cooking. It will then serve up ads by advertisers targeting people who enjoy cooking. For example, you might have ads selling baking pans, utensils and cookbooks.

Every time someone clicks on your ad, you will get paid. The amount you are paid depends on how valuable the click is to the advertisers. For example, if you are running a candle-related website, you might make only $0.10 a click. On the other hand, if you are running a legal website, you might get paid as much as $3 a click.

How to Set Up Google AdSense

To get started, go to http://www.google.com/adsense/

You will need to register an account. In order to do so, you must first have a website up and running already so Google will know where you plan to put the ads. Then walk through the AdSense set-up process. At the end of the process, Google will generate a small snippet of code. Copy and paste this code into your HTML editor. Upload the file, and then wait about five minutes for it to process. Once AdSense has had a chance to read your website, it will generate the ads and you will soon be up and running. If you don’t edit your own website, just copy and paste the code and email it to your webmaster.

What Type of Websites Work Well with Google AdSense?

The best kinds of websites for AdSense tend to be content websites that get traffic primarily from search engines. It’s very rare that you will be able to make more money from AdSense than you are spending from another advertising source. For example, it doesn’t really make sense to try to advertise in a magazine for your website and try to make the money back with AdSense.

Because search engine traffic is free, you will almost always be profitable if you are driving traffic from search engines to AdSense. Content websites work best because you have increased trust already and people will tend to click on your recommendations and links. Also, AdSense tends to earn less than selling your own or other people’s products, so it doesn’t really make sense to use AdSense in conjunction with an ecommerce site. In short, AdSense works best with content sites that are ranked in search engines.

These are the basics of how to use Google’s innovative AdSense program. Setting it up takes less than ten minutes. If you’re already getting traffic, you can very soon be expecting a check from Google.

Co-registration leads are leads generated from people signing up for email lists and clicking an “I’d also like to learn about …” box. Co-registration leads are an often underutilized, yet highly profitable source of traffic. They often get a bad rap from people who don’t understand the business, but that can work to your advantage.

Here are the benefits of using co-registration leads:

They are Inexpensive

You can buy a lead for 20 cents to 40 cents on the low end or about 80 cents on the high end. Contrast this with AdWords traffic. Say you are paying 25 cents a click and you have a 10 percent opt-in rate. That’s $2.50 per email. It’s true that the quality of co-registration leads is lower than people who opt in specifically to your list. Even so, you can very often get high quality co-registration leads at a fraction of what it will cost from other advertising sources.

Few People Understand Co-Registration

A lot of people think co-registration is spam. Others think they never convert. In fact, a lot of people have tried co-registration and lost money. The reality is that they don’t understand how co-registration works. They don’t understand the difference between positive opt-in and negative opt-in (when they check the box to get on your list versus uncheck it), or how crucial the mailing system is to maintaining a relationship with the lead.

When done properly, co-registration can be incredibly lucrative. When done incorrectly, co-registration is often a money losing proposition. The downside to this is that you will have to spend some time learning the ins and outs before beginning. The upside is that there is far less competition on co-registration than other advertising sources.

They Are Scalable

A lot of high-converting, low-competition advertising sources just don’t scale. For example, MySpace ads might have less competition than Facebook’s, but you just can’t get much traffic with MySpace. Co-registration on the other hand is nearly infinitely scalable. If you find a profitable broad market, you can literally buy hundreds of thousands of leads per month. Getting the first $1,000 with co-registration is often harder than going from $1,000 to $10,000.

They Convert

Finally and most importantly, co-registration leads convert. It doesn’t work quite the way most people think, though. Co-registration leads will generally covert after a few well-written emails; not necessarily right away. The people who try co-registration and can’t get it to work usually aren’t approaching it correctly. They are trying to recoup their money too quickly, aren’t mailing new leads quickly enough, or just have bad copy.

The bottom line is that co-registration leads convert, they are scalable, they are inexpensive, and not a lot of people understand them. There’s a lot of room for mistakes, but there’s also a lot of room for profit. If you take the time to understand how co-registration works, you can make a small fortune from it.

A sizzle reel is a powerful, emotionally gripping video that drives home the core of your brand in four minutes or less. It is also known as a presentation reel or a demo reel and is used by branding agencies, by media professionals, by corporations seeking to build their brand or raise funding, or by entrepreneurs who want to make a powerful impression on potential clients.

In this article, we will discuss what makes a great video reel, along with information on how to get a great reel produced.

Determining What Goes in the Reel

The first step is to determine exactly what you want the reel to accomplish. Is it to impress potential high-ticket clients or to raise funding? Determine both the reason and the target audience. Then determine what kind of emotional vibe and impact you want your reel to have. The kind of reel you would want for a potential client, which might be high impact, fast and gripping, is likely totally different than one you would show a potential investor, which might be more informational and trust building.

Once you’ve decided how you want your reel to look, then you will come to the question of whether you should produce it yourself or hire a specialized firm.

Do It Yourself or Hire It Out?

Unless you are a professional videographer and editor, you probably won’t be able to produce a sizzle reel at the same level of quality as a professional firm, which can be very costly. Hiring just a moderately experienced professional would cost between $5,000 and $15,000 just for the editing, and hiring a professional firm could cost even more.

That is not including the cost of filming any footage necessary. All footage should be shot in high definition, almost definitely with a professional cameraman to get the best angles, lighting and shots. Again, it will cost you a fair amount of money to hire someone and either rent or buy the cameras.

Therefore, you should expect to spend between $10,000 for a low-end sizzle reel, up to as much as $100,000 for a very high end, professional-quality sizzle reel.

What Should Go in a Sizzle Reel

Your sizzle reel needs to highlight your top accomplishments, your brand’s primary elements and include a call to action. For example, let’s say you are creating a sizzle reel for a hedge (money management fund) that had a great previous year. You might include snapshots of all the articles your company has been featured in, cut together at a fast pace with exciting music in the background. You might highlight one or two achievements, such as your rate of return, displayed in bold font.

Then, you will want to highlight your brand’s primary elements. Make sure your brand’s colors are dominant in the video and make sure to point out what your brand stands for and why people should trust you and come to you. Finally, the call to action. What do you want people to do now? In this case, it might be to invest in the hedge fund, or to call a fund manager.

To sum it up, a sizzle reel is a reel that highlights the best things about your company. It is an emotionally compelling piece that sums up the best of the best.