Befuddled by Internet Lingo?
I have written a very simple guide to some common terms and phrases you will come across on the internet especially if you are buying or selling. I hope they are helpful!
What does Royalty-Free Mean?
Royalty-Free can refer to music, images, articles, videos or clip art products. This means that the product is owned by someone who has copyright, but has sold the use of the product. If you buy the royalty-free rights, you can use the product but the owner keeps the copyrights.
Most times, the owner will say how often, where and when you can use the product, so do make sure you are clear about the terms and conditions. The owner keeps the right to sell the product to other people unless you have bought exclusive rights, so it will not necessarily be exclusive to you. If you buy a royalty-free product, you do not automatically have re-distribution rights, be careful and check in with the owner or seller.
What are Public Domain Rights?
This means a product is free to use, there is no owner as such so anyone can use these products. Just be careful that the product has not been modified with copyright on the modifications.
What are Re-sell Rights?
If you have re-sell rights, this means you can re-sell a product and keep the profits. However, you do not have the right to change the product or claim it as your own. Read the small print carefully!
What are Master Re-Sell Rights?
If you buy master re-sell rights, you can re-sell the product, keep the profits and also let others re-sell it too. This does not mean that the people who you sell it to can re-sell the master re-sell rights, check the details and be very clear.
PLR
PLR stands for Private Label Rights. If you buy a product you have the right to create your own private label and sometimes the copyright to the product. However, sometimes the owner will want their copyright on as well, so again check the finer details and do get in touch with the owner if you are unsure.
What are Distribution Rights?
These are the rights to distribute, sell, lease, hire or give away a product. Sometimes they are connected to a ‘geographical patch’. For instance, you might buy or agree the distribution rights of a product for a state or a country. If you live in an area where a particular product is not sold and think you could sell it, get in touch with the owners and agree a deal!
What are Open Rates in an email campaign?
This refers to the rate that your email gets opened. So if you sent out 100 emails and only 10 were opened, this means that you have an open rate of 10%. There are a few tricks to improve your open rate:
send emails only to people who have permission to email (otherwise it is spam),
don’t bombard your list with loads and loads of emails,
don’t send out lots of offers or keep promoting different products for other people (once in a while is ok with an established list),
use an attractive template (Mail Chimp offers great ones for free).
What is a Click Through Rate?
This is the rate at which people open your emails and then click on the links found in that email.
So if you sent out an email to 10 people who all opened your mail and then clicked through to your site your click through rate would be 100%. If 5 opened your mail and all clicked on your link, your click through rate would be 50% of the original mail, but 100% of the people who opened it. Some people say that you can improve your click through rate by making the links ‘picture links’.
What is HTML?
This stands for hypertext markup language which sounds much more complicated than it really is. You probably use html even if you don’t even realise it. It is a computer language which is universal and it tells the browser how to display text, paragraphs, images, headings and links. In recent years, it has become easier to use html as we are often presented with a ‘WySIWYG’ pronounced ‘Wizzywig’.That is the little bar at the top of a page where you choose your font, size, colour, alignment and so on without having to write all the coding. You can usually view the coding on the bar by clicking on ‘view’ and then ‘source’.
In html, everything has a html tag associated with it so that the browser knows how to display it. You don’t have to know how to use the tags or even have to know they exist to use html.
You can also create hyperlinks between places on the page, or even between different websites.
What is opt-in email?
This was devised by internet marketers in an attempt to reduce spamming (sending emails to people who haven’t agreed to them). Opt in boxes are the boxes on webpages that ask you to enter your email address. Sometimes they will then say ‘please confirm your email address by clicking on the link in your in box’. This is called a double opt in and is ‘best practice’ in internet marketing. This way you can be doubly sure that you are not spamming anyone. Also, you know that anyone who opts in twice is serious about working with you which is great.
What is CAN SPAM?
CAN SPAM is a compliance guide for businesses who send out commercial information via email and can be found here. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/ecommerce/bus61.shtm
It about all of the compliance laws about spamming. If you break them, it can be a costly business it is breaking the law. It is an easy document to read, but it is well worth reading before you start selling anything online. Better to be safe than sorry.
What do weblog, blog and microblog mean?
A weblog is a website that people use to post regular entries, like a log book…Hence the name web log. In recent times, it has been shortened to blog and each entry is known as a blogpost. The older blogs around are still referred to as weblogs and some of them are worth a lot of money. There are contests for the best longest running ‘weblogs’.
Microblogging is the name for mini posts, under 140 characters usually on sites like Twitter and Jaiku. People can post from mini computers, mobile phones and other hand held devices as well as normal computers. It helps people keep abreast of things quickly and make references to longer articles, posts and sites with URLs that are usually shortened.
URL re-direct
URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator and is the ‘address’ of the webpage. It is found in the location box at the top of the webpage. It looks like this:
http://www.thewebsitename.whatever.
The domain name is the bit that starts with www. and ends in .com or .org or whatever.
www.thedomain.com
The next bit is called the ‘path’ and that is the bit that sends you to a particular bit of the page. This looks something like this /thebitofthepage and this is found at the end of some domains.
You might have several URLs pointing to the same address. This is called re-direction. This is desirable for a number of reasons. You may want to mask a name, shorten it, or simply buy up similar domain names to stop the competition getting them. All of these can be pointed to or redirected to another website. There are simple tutorials and free services available to redirect URLs. A 301 redirect is not hard to do and can be done by your ISP or domain host if you get stuck. It should preserve your search engine rankings.
Niche
A niche is a portion of the market where there is more demand than supply. There are businesses that spend all of their time hunting for hot niches and you might consider consulting with one of them before you launch into a campaign, or you can choose to research for one yourself. You can compare keyword searches with available websites, look at Clickbank or use offline market research techniques.
Please be careful that you don’t get drawn into marketing a hot niche unless you are certain that it is in fact current.
Keywords
Keywords are often split into two kinds, long tail or narrow keywords or short tail or broad keywords. Generally speaking, you would use a long tail keyword for a specific non-competitive market. For instance www.foodforlesserspottedrarebirds.com as opposed to a short tailed keyword www.birdfood.com. The more stand alone keywords in a long tailed keyword the better the search engine rankings will be.
As ever, to your success, Kay
