The internet is probably the single most powerful marketing tool you are ever likely to use. With the potential to reach billions of homes around the globe, the Internet provides endless opportunities to market your company. Online marketing has already created many millionaires, many of whom now have businesses that practically run themselves. There are many ways to promote and advertise your company online. The following are proven to be very effective marketing tools:

1. Website. Setting up a website will allow you to introduce your company to internet users allowing you to target a bigger audience. You will be able to showcase your different products and services and boost sales.

2. Email Marketing. You can set up an official email address for your company and start soliciting email addresses of previous customers and prospective clients. This is a cost effect way to market future promotions, new products, and surveys.

3. Press Releases. Internet press releases work similarly to traditional newspaper press releases. Once you have written your press release you will then need to make sure you place it on numerous websites that receive a lot of traffic. Internet press releases enable you to gain as much marketing exposure for your business as possible.

4. Article Marketing. Article marketing uses keyword-focused articles on article sites. This is an important website promotion technique because some of these article syndication sites have a significant readership following. This will help increase your exposure and promote new business.

5. Online Marketing Research. Online marketing methods consist of surveys and questionnaires to customers. Market research can make data that will show you recommendations to improve your business.

6. Forum Participation. Participating and making active comments in forums will help you build credibility as an online marketer. You can also place helpful comments and replies including a link pointing to the affiliate product that you are promoting or selling. This will generate more traffic to your website or affiliate product.

7. Selling Products and Services. Internet marketing can be used to sell and market your company’s products and services. You can do this right at your own website or register at online marketplaces or social network sites. Online stores will allow customers to choose and purchase your product at the convenience of their homes while cutting your costs needed to maintain a retail store.

Dropbox has been around since 2007 but only released in 2008. It is a product of two MIT grads Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi. Dropbox makes life easier for people whose lives revolve around using the Internet for online file storage.

Dropbox is not the only file-sharing service available today. The others that are vying for users’ attention are Google, Windows Live SkyDrive, Apple iCloud, and Amazon Cloud Drive, to name a few. The choice of which online storage locker you choose is yours. But before you pick one, it’s best to know how Dropbox measures up against its competitors.

Simplicity of use

Dropbox and iCloud are the simplest to use followed by SkyDrive, Cloud Drive and finally Google. SkyDrive tends to be a bit slow just like Cloud Drive. Google is by far the slowest. Apple is a master at syncing files while Dropbox’s approach is seamless.

Supported files

Both Dropbox and Cloud Drive let you “drop” any type of file into their online storage lockers. SkyDrive also allows you to “drop” any type of file into their cloud storage. For Google and Apple, you can actually upload any file for as long as the file is attached to an email that you send to yourself or save as a draft.

File storage

Dropbox gives you 2GB of free storage. Get a pro account to get up to 100GB. Google seems to offer the most storage space with up to 16TB. But this amount is divided among its partner products like Picasa, Gmail, and Docs. Cloud Drive offers 5GB expandable to 1TB. iCloud has 5GB of space all for emails, contacts, calendar, documents and device backup settings. Plus Apple gives you additional space for photos, videos, apps, music, and books. The lowest is SkyDrive with 25GB. However, Microsoft has other online storage locker options than you can access. The beauty of Dropbox is that all your files are in one locker.

Price

This is where Dropbox lands way below the list. You get 2GB free from Dropbox. But each additional GB will cost US$2. Google is free at the moment and an additional GB of storage is only US$0.25. 2GB of storage on SkyDrive is free. Cloud Drive charges US$1 for every GB over the free 5GB limit. iCloud is free but charges US$25 a year for iTunes Match service.

Supported devices

Google and Dropbox support any device. Dropbox in particular has a lot of clients. Cloud Drive can support Mac, PC, Android and any Flash device. The iCloud is available for Mac and PC while SkyDrive only supports PC, Mac and Windows Phone 7.

Dropbox has its advantages and disadvantages just like the rest of the online file storage options mentioned with it. Before you decide which one to use, know what your needs are, what devices you have and how much you are willing to pay for additional space. Having an online storage locker for your files will make your life easier if you have a mobile lifestyle.

Dropbox serves as insurance for your hard drive files and it has other great features that can be taken advantage of. Do a people search and talk to your friends how Dropbox makes life easier. Share them the advantages of having one and how it offers free and paid packages to its users.

Since its launch nearly a decade ago, search giant Google has acquired or developed dozens of free web services. Everything from mail to maps, videos to voice chat, Google’s had a hand in just about everything. So it might surprise some people that it’s taken this long for the company to make its first foray into social-networking. While Google+ actually isn’t Google’s first social-networking experiment, it is undoubtedly the first serious threat to Facebook’s monopoly on the market. With Google’s sterling reputation for innovation and privacy protection as well as its vast existing network of apps and services, the official launch of Google+ last week had millions of fed-up Facebook users watching curiously.

Google first attempted social-networking nearly a decade ago with its oddly-named “Orkut.” Originally a pet project of Google employee Orkut Buyukokten, upon its launch the service received neither the publicity nor the popularity of Google+ and only limited attention from niche groups within the tech community. Orkut never became the social-networking success story Google may have hoped for, but 8 years later its two domain names rank 116^th and 94^th in overall traffic on the web, with over 66 million active users.

So what does Google+ have on its less popular predecessor? As the undisputed leader in internet-search, mapping, and soon to be e-mail (though growing by leaps and bounds, newcomer G-mail is still in third place), sporting the Google brand name is a clear advantage.  Besides its namesake, Google+ has just about everything its competitors offer, and even more. Its “hangouts” feature allows up to 10 friends to video-chat with one another, even offering support for mobile users with smartphones and fast networks. “Circles” allows users to easily organize their contacts into groups, and a “data-liberation” feature offers one the option of downloading all of their online content directly from the site. Though perhaps more relevant to the success or failure of Google+ is the growing distrust amongst social-networkers in regard to Facebook’s willingness to share user information with just about anyone. That, in addition to the near impossible feat of deleting a Facebook account makes Google+ a very desirable alternative for many.

Unfortunately for Google, none of this may matter. Within the first two weeks of its beta launch nearly 10 million users had joined the site. The first lucky few Google+ users were given 150 invites for friends. Surrounded by positive buzz on social news sites like Reddit it seemed like everyone wanted an invite. By early August Google+ had grown to 25 million users. Whether Google was trying to build anticipation or deal with unexpected growth is unknown, but invites were quickly put on hold and growth to the site slowed significantly. For the next month Google+ was stagnant, some even declared the half-budded site dead. With a nearly 3 to 1 male to female ratio, many saw Google+ following in familiar footsteps.

However, within the first 2 days of going public on September 20^th, Google+ added another 10 million users. While Google+ currently boasts an estimated 43.4 million users, a fraction of Facebook’s 750 million, it seems like it’s still too early to make any concrete predictions. Did Google’s decision to cap invites during the beta test doom the new social network before even going public? Only time will tell.

-Daniel Menon
Black Rhino Solutions, Inc.