Pros: Easy to install and customize. Relatively inexpensive. Cons: Limited optimization possibilities. More Info at www.x-cart.com

Prospect Path Ecommerce System

This is much less known shopping cart software but after checking out its features, we strongly recommend it to anyone who is serious about search engine optimization. It seems that this system was build with one thing in mind, search engines. It generates static pages automatically; that means that all pages in your web store are HTML with static URLs. System will also put name of product into title, keywords, description, alt tags, heading, body text and even file name of that product's page! All of this is done automatically as soon as administrator adds a new product. Prospect Path Ecommerce System also includes traffic statistic and ROI tracking. It can track buyers from affiliate programs, text links, banners and even magazines and newspapers (it employs promotion codes to tracks buyers from magazines and newspapers). This shopping cart is very easy to use but there is no installation wizard at this time. After purchase ABC4PC.com (creators of Prospect Path Ecommerce System) will install and configure it on your server for free. Cost of this shopping cart software depends on number of features you want but starting price is around $4,700.

Pros: Amazingly search engine friendly. Great tracking features. Cons: Difficult to install. Expensive. More Info at www.abc4pc.com

3. Organizing Addresses on List

I consider Ezine Announcer, http://tinyurl.com/53wo9 invaluable for posting articles. Its auto-fill feature completes online submission forms easily. And it does a good job sending customized email submissions. But I find its most important use to be mailing list management.

My own submission list exceeds 1000 addresses, so it became too difficult to keep organized and updated. Ezine Announcer comes with 1700 addresses included (plus purchasers receive future up-dates). That’s a good start if you haven’t developed your own list already. However, I found that my own tested list was much more extensive for topics where I submit most. By merging my list with that one (and eliminating overlap) I’ve now got best of both. And they’re arranged logically.

Customized Categories Save Posting Time

Ezine Announcer has several general categories (like Article Directory) and numerous narrow topics (like Finance or Health). It’s a simple matter to move an address from one category to another, or to add additional categories.

I split Article Directory into several parallel directories, which simplifies posting. Reorganizing categories further streamlined posting process - saving hours on each article.

New Directory Categories - My A list (and high Google Page Rank) - Password required (which tend to have more complications) - Submit by email - Must exchange links - Special requirements - Many topics (not primarily business) - Troubled sites (below)

When I encounter a site with problems (temporarily down, weird error messages) I move it into troubled category. They can be checked or removed later. But such irregularities no longer delay posting process. And I can deal with them when convenient.

Speed up your Learning Curves

Article marketing is a potent method to promote yourself, your business, your website, and your book. However, there are plenty of tricks to achieving most mileage from your efforts. Discover in-depth how-to for every step of process at http://www.promotewitharticles.com - Article Marketing Academy. You’ll get better with practice, and more momentum with every article you send out into vast Internet. But you have to get started... © 2004, Lynella Grant