When you have your own business at home, getting into internet marketing can quickly raise the status of your business. One of the most important facets to having success with internet marketing is how you are generating traffic.
With out traffic coming to your site it is impossible to have success. Therefore you must evaluate how you are going to generate a high traffic volume.
Why is article marketing important?
To generate more traffic to your web site, you need to let people know its there. When you write articles and publish them, you will find that, as long as you make the article relevant and interesting, they will be picked up by sites like E-zine’s that need fresh content and you will have a new permanent back link to your site.
How Is this important?
Well the more back links you have the better your site will show in the search engines organic (free) results which will generate more traffic to your web site and you’ll make more money!
By using a research tool like GistWeb you’ll be able to spend a lot less time creating the articles.
You’ll feel like submitting articles more frequently and by using a submission service like http:// www.submityourarticle.com you will benefit from having your article submitted to hundreds of publishers, and by using a very easy to master piece of software you can make almost every article submitted unique.
The way this works is that when you make your submission, you are invited to add alternative titles,and sentences, which when making the submissions the system uses in different combinations to generate multiple unique articles. When you submit more articles you’ll generate more traffic!
Blogs and comments
Another way to create links back to your site is to write great blog entries that people will want to post onto their blogs, you can even publish your articles on your blog. In the world of blogging, people very often use another blog as content for their site,and give the author a link or trackback.
This allows you to have a viral marketing source and you won’t need to do anything to generate this traffic. The beauty of creating a network this way is that the more you are on other people’s blogs and commenting on their posts, the more traffic you will receive.
The thing to remember is that people love to have visitors on their site and they want to know who those people are. If you’re commenting on posts they have written, you can bet that they are going to appreciate that and check out your site as well.
Whatever methods of web site promotion and marketing you use, you will need to know how many visitors or clients are attracted by each of the methods and what is the quality of the traffic generated from each marketing source. The reports and statistics of ProTrackerPlus.Com will provide you with the most complete information, so that you can concentrate your efforts on the most effective methods of web site promotion and increase the effectiveness of other methods.
About the Author
By Graham Andrew Taylor, Join the readers of Tips4-u and receive a free copy of “the Ultimate SuperTip” and 25,000 free traffic credits. Http://tips4-u.com
I would assume you have noticed, if you have followed some of my other articles on Affiliate Marketing training, that quite often my primary message for your home based business is related to day to day operations and long term planning as opposed to instant profits or miracle cure alls. There is a reason for this.
Until I learned to get my feet on the ground and build my business, not try to buy my business, I was going NOWHERE! No amount of money could provide the skills that are necessary to be effective with my Affiliate Marketing online business … I just ended up with pretty packages and didn’t have a CLUE on what to do with the contents!
So, what to do? Here is a summary of a conversation that I recently had with Christina Munoz, AKA “TheQuoteDiva”. We were discussing a recent high profile affiliate marketing program launch and reviewing the marketing skills necessary to benefit from this particular program.
I thought that perhaps hearing my same old drivel echoed from another active, successful Internet Marketer just might ring your bell!
It’s very tough to stay focused when everyone is raving about the next giant product launch and offering thousands in bonuses just to buy through their link.
Lately there is a lot about a new program called “Mass Control”. After reviewing it … it is truly - genius marketing!
But, it assumes you already have a product, a list, and joint venture partners lined up. This is super-advanced stuff and for those who already have a full system in place it is pure Gold!
However, if you don’t have the basics nailed, no amount of “advanced” training is going to help.
In order to capitalize on a system like this, what ‘constitutes’ a Basic System?
Until you’ve got a system in place, there’s no reason to keep buying stuff. It’s not gonna help until YOU make a commitment to work the plan.
After all, why would you want to dish out another $1000 or $2000 when you won’t be able to fully use what ‘Mass Control’ and other similar products can offer you?
Well, as usual, Christina’s comments took this author back to the drawing board to once again evaluate the foundation and structural integrity of my own online business.
Lacking understanding of all 10 basic elements in no way suggests that one cannot make very good money focusing on just a few of the Basics. For example, just having a list, an understanding of productive advertising, and a quality affiliate product can certainly generate significant revenue.
However, acquiring the knowledge, understanding, and ability to implement all of the basics will allow you to take a product, any product, analyze its strengths and weaknesses, and plug its unique components into your system to maximize profits.
As your efforts continue to build the applications available in your affiliate marketing tool box, the closer you move towards reaching the epitome of your development … putting your system on autopilot.
Plug and Play is an often used phrase to suggest the simplicity of marketing a particular system or product. Well, that’s great, IF, you have something to plug into.
Here’s a great exercise to judge just how far along you are in developing your rock solid business plan.
Write down all 10 of the “Basic” components listed above. Now, honestly ask yourself if you could implement each particular component if you were planning a new campaign for a product or service.
If any of the areas are a resounding NO, you have just identified a specific target for research and development. Put that integral component on the top of your ‘To Do’ list, and get right on forming another piece of your puzzle. Do research, review past articles or reports describing the process, make a mental outline of where this component would fit into your campaign, then put your thoughts to paper and … take action!
There is no doubt that if you polled 10 veteran affiliate marketers, each of their lists of the 10 Basics would differ slightly from each other. However, what they would have in common is a structured flow from the campaign conception through the sales offer and follow up.
Once again, I encourage you to focus on the basics in order to put yourself in a position to be able to jump onboard and prosper from a system such as “Mass Control”. Once you have mastered those 10 essential components, you’re WELL on your way to building your successful affiliate marketing business.
About the Author
For your FREE report from Super Affiliate “Ewen Chia”, and many more affiliate marketing tips, free tools, and success strategies, visit “Newbie Heaven” at: http://now4u-website.com The author would like to thank Chrisina Munoz for her input … visit her very enjoyable site at http://TheQuoteDiva.com
Article Marketing is one of the best and fastest ways to draw traffic back to your website. I’ve used various forms of Article Marketing for several years now and I’ve personally found it to be a simple and lucrative way to develop customers and traffic.
There are 3 things to remember about Article Marketing;
It helps to establish you as an expert in your field.
It doesn’t have to be hugely time consuming.
You can get your articles out to your readers pretty quickly
I’m going to share a couple of tips and a couple of FREE tools that can help you get started in Article Marketing.
The first free tool that I want to talk about is Article Submitter (http://abe5.com/41f). Article Submitter is a free program that will help you submit your articles to a number of article directories quickly and easily.
I first submit my article to GoArticles.com and then I keep tabs open with both the final article and the HTML version. This is because you’ll still need to cut and paste occasionally while submitting your articles and if you keep the tabs open then it only takes a couple of seconds.
Put your link in your Resource Box. It’s more important than your bio. Write it out, i.e. http://spiritualentrepreneur.biz, because many of the article directories programs will automatically hotlink it.
Article Submitter will show you which directories will require you to sign in. Take the time to join these and save your login info to Article Submitter. In the long run it saves a LOT of time.
Try to write a 1 page article each day, or at least a couple per week. Post these on your blog as well as the Article Directories. After awhile you’ll find that you have enough articles to actually create a BOOK.
Another great free tool is SocialMarker, a free bookmarking tool. Once you’ve submitted your articles to Article Submitter directories then go to SocialMarker (http://www.socialmarker.com) and run through that program as well.
Once you’ve set up your free accounts with the social bookmarking sites in SocialMarker it only takes about 15 minutes to submit your new article to about 30 sites.
Remember to take the time to write useful articles rather than fluff. A good article will be rewarded and passed on.
Once you’ve used SocialMarker a few times you’ll see which sites to ignore, depending on the subject of your post. You can set SocialMarker to skip these sites, which makes the submission process faster.
Set up your profiles on the various bookmarking sites. Articles with a photo get more attention.
Once you’ve submitted a few articles you may find that some sites treat you better than others. Maybe your articles will be better received or you may build up a community there. When you know this it helps you focus your marketing.
Take the time to build your communities. Contact other authors and offer to trade clicks, links and reviews. Find people in a complimentary field and their articles may also be useful for your blog and readers.
Article marketing can be a fast and easy way to build your network, get hits to your website and even create long term passive income, if you take the time to do it right!
If you’ve done business on the web then you’ve heard of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s that mysterious magical formula that is supposed to get your website to the top of the search engines so that you’ll get more hits to your website.
The reality that I’ve discovered based on several years of wasted time online, and this is going to be met with howls of outrage, mostly from those who want you to pay them to optimize your website, is that this is one of the biggest scams on the web.
The idea is that Google and Yahoo and the other search engines have this magic formula that you can abide by that allows your website to be placed in their searches depending upon the amount of relevant content and the number of links to and from other websites and a few other criteria. The higher you rank on the searches the more hits you can get to your website, and I agree with that concept.
However, the actual formula for SEO is not only mysterious, it’s actually kept secret to keep people from abusing it. The formula also changes fairly often because some of the smart folks who sell SEO eventually figure out the formula occasionally and then, for however long it lasts, they actually have a great product.
The problem here is that you can either spend a lot of money trying to catch that magic formula at the right time, or you can spend a lot of time, and for the entrepreneur Time IS Money (T=$), trying to figure it out yourself.
There are other ways that you could spend that time and money to get better results in my opinion.
Here’s a very short list of things you can do to help your SEO. Use this to get you started and then do some research;
1.Get your domain now – If you know that you are going to have a website or a blog then go ahead and buy your domain and start blogging. Don’t wait until you have your products ready. The reason for this is that one of the factors on Google’s list is age of the domain. The longer you’ve been around the higher you rank. Plus, you should be taking this time right now to learn HOW to blog before you are actually ready to sell your product.
2.Get listed in as many directories as possible ASAP – Use Directory Submitter (http://abe5.com/41d) and get started, but also Google for directories and add your links to the top directories that you can find. There really are no shortcuts for this, just do it.
3.Make sure that your Titles, Keywords and Metatags are right - Make sure that any Keywords are actually used repeatedly on your page that has the keyword in the title. Here’s a nice page with details;
SEO is an ongoing part of doing business online. You need to have a basic understanding of how it works and be current enough to know when you’re getting scammed. Be aware of 2 things;
1.The algorithms change, so this is not something you can do once and forget.
2.There really aren’t any shortcuts and most of the automated programs and people selling SEO can cause you more problems than they are worth.
Take your time and do your research. If you don’t expect overnight results and you’re here for the long haul then you’ll probably find that SEO really isn’t that big of a problem.
About the author
Robert Morgen experienced a near-death kundalini awakening in 1992.
Would you like to hear about 2 of the fastest growing businesses in the world, how to combine those businesses and how you can take advantage of that synergy? Would you also be interested in some basic marketing and how you can take advantage of the #1 All Time Best and Cheapest Form of Advertising in the world today?
One of the fastest growing segments of American business is Holistic Healing. According to the National Institute of Health over 62% of the American public takes advantage of some form of Holistic Healing.
Video Download sites such as YouTube and Google Video is the other fastest growing business.
According to a February, 2008 report by EMarketer, over 85 million Americans watch Podcasts. YouTube averages 30 million visitors a day who watch over 100 million Podcasts.
The numbers are staggering so today I’m going to talk about how to bring these 2 exploding markets together.
What YouTube can do for You
YouTube can be a great way to get your message out to the public. The most viewed YouTube video ever, “Evolution of Dance” was seen by more than 50 million viewers.
I’m going to share 3 advantages to having your own video on YouTube but first I want to answer one of the most common questions which is “Can my business benefit from having a YouTube video?”
The answer is, absolutely. No matter what you do, whether you are a massage therapist, a tree trimmer, dog walker or professional speaker, a short video that clearly demonstrates your skills and tells about your business will help you get more clients and customers.
The first advantage of having a YouTube video is that it demonstrates your skills and abilities in a dynamic and informative way. People can come to your website and SEE what you do rather than just read about it or look at photos.
The second advantage is Credibility! People are used to giving a lot of credibility to what they see on video. 50 years of the television industry has trained people to do that.
The third advantage is New customers. You can not only use YouTube to send targeted customers to your business, but the very existence of the video on your website will convert more of your visitors into customers.
More importantly, if you can create an engaging and informative video then other people will also embed that video on their website or blog and actually advertise for you! This is HUGE! This is called viral marketing or buzz marketing and it’s absolutely the best form of advertising out there.
How many of you have ever read a book, seen a movie, eaten in a restaurant or driven a car and then recommended it to a friend? This is the #1 All Time Best form of marketing that you can use! Word of Mouth sells more products than all other forms of advertising combined!
So how can you take advantage of YouTube?
Here are 5 simple tips to help you get results from your video;
1. Create an exciting title. Most YouTube videos are placed on a page with 20 other videos. If your title doesn’t grab people’s attention then you have very little chance of getting your video watched.
2. Keep it short! Today’s viewers have a very short attention span. As Terry Pratchet says “people like novelty, but not for very long”. Keep your videos under 5 minutes total and preferably under about 2 minutes. This gives you the best chance of having your video watched and then embedded on other people’s blogs and websites. If you have a longer video that you sell then think of the YouTube video as a trailer or an attention grabber.
3. Ask your network to support your video. Ask everyone you know to go to YouTube and check out your video and leave comments. The more a video gets viewed the more likely that it will get picked up and promoted by the YouTube system, so make sure to jump start your video by asking for support from your network.
4. Ask your network to promote your video. Ask everyone you know to recommend your video to friends, share it on MySpace and Facebook and just generally ASK for that word of mouth buzz. Even if you ask some members of your network may not help promote your video, but if you don’t ask it’s guaranteed that none of your network will help support your video.
5. Ask your network to promote your video on social media sites such as Propeller, Digg and Reddit. Social bookmarking is one of the most popular forms of internet marketing today because it’s easy, fast and free. In fact, a YouTube video is a great way to tell your friends about social bookmarking and get them involved, so be sure to include the links to the popular social bookmarking sites when you send out the notices about your video.
Getting a high quality video on YouTube can be a fast and relatively inexpensive way to market your holistic business. It can enhance your credibility, build your customer and client base and help your business make more money.
Once of the places where I consistently see people getting ripped off is with the creation of websites. This article is going to have a certain amount of jargon in it. Take the time to look up the words that you don’t understand because the links you find will teach you a lot.
If you are a sub-micro entrepreneur and have an extremely limited budget then there are 3 points that I want to make right up front concerning websites;
1. Domain Registry should cost less than $10
2. There are tons of Web Hosting Plans for less than $5 a month
3. There are a wide variety of free website builder software programs that let you build a simple and useful website quickly and easily.
If you absolutely want a website then keep those factors in mind.
However, my question these days is ‘Why would you want a website in the first place?’
You MUST have a web presence. That’s a given. If you want to start taking advantage of eCommerce and developing multiple streams of passive income then you absolutely must have a web presence. However, websites are far from the best way to accomplish that.
Blogs Blogs, or weblogs, started out a few years ago as a version of online journals. They had some qualities that didn’t exist (and still don’t) for most websites;
1. They are extremely user-friendly. Very little or no HTML needed in most cases.
2. Consistent look or theme throughout the entire site.
3. Easy to add pages and posts.
4. Easy to build traffic.
5. Huge support systems around the internet for promoting your blog and finding tools and accessories, usually called plugins.
I started using WordPress in 2006 simply because a friend referred me to it. There are other blog systems that probably work equally well so pick what you like.
I host my WordPress blogs on my own hosting account. You should be able to get a decent web hosting account for $50 to $100 per year, so DO NOT get caught up in the $29.95 a month traps that exist online.
Without getting too deeply into Search Engine Optimization (SEO) I just want to say that if possible get the keywords for whatever you do in the URL and avoid the .info and .biz domains. Some SEO experts will tell you that those domains have been abused by web scammers to the point where Google and the other search engines will react negatively to them.
Having said that, you’ll see that my primary URL is http://SpiritualEntrepreneur.biz. To me it was more important to get the keywords than to avoid the .biz. You’ll also notice that my URL leads to a blog.
One of the advantages to the blog system is that people can subscribe to it and have updates delivered directly to their email, phone, PDA or the chip in their head (coming soon). In many cases people will subscribe to your blog through a Really Simply Syndication (RSS) Feed and never actually come to your URL!
Installing and Using your Blog
Installing a WordPress blog literally takes less than 10 minutes (less than 5 if you know what you’re doing). You’ll need to know how to create a database and a few other techy things, but there are great step by step tutorials on the WordPress.ORG site that will help you do this.
My advice is to take the time to learn to install WordPress because you’ll then be able to install the myriad other PHP based programs that you’ll find useful online.
The forums and tutorials at WordPress.ORG (notice that I keep stressing the .ORG) will walk you quickly and easily through almost anything that you’d want to do with your blog. Be sure to search the forums before you write in looking for help. I assure you that the answer you need is probably already there.
One note about the forums – DO NOT write a post with something like “Need Help” or “Stuck and need answers” or “AAAAAAAAH!” or something equally stupid in the subject line. When you do that it keeps the people who might help you from being able to see what the problem is!
Put the ‘error message’ that your blog gives you in the subject line, or at least a description of the problem.
Updating your Blog
There’s a simple equation to blogging;
Frequent updates = more readers
Updating your blog doesn’t mean writing a new article everyday. There are hundreds of Article Directories online where you can get good content. I like GoArticles.com and everything I write gets published there. Go to the search box in the upper right hand corner, do an Author Name Search for Robert Morgen and you’ll find a list of my articles that you can use on your blog.
I generally only right about 20% of the articles that I post on my blogs and newsletters. The rest come from the article directories.
Syndication
Get the word out about your blog! I like FeedBurner.com because they give you a lot of tools to optimize your feed and your blog and make it easy for people to get you content.
Take some time and explore the different ways that you can use FeedBurner. It’s a great tool that I recommend wholeheartedly.
Plugins
There are literally thousands of Plugins available for blog systems. I use plugins for Google Adsense (creates a passive income stream from Google), YouTube, Search Engine Optimization and Social Bookmarking.
Content is King!
One last note. It doesn’t matter how much you promote your blog if you have lousy content. While Britney Spears may be able to take bad PR to the bank, you probably don’t have that ability.
Find GOOD articles to put on your blog. If you can create a blog that has good, helpful content then you’ll find that people will not only read and subscribe to your blog, they’ll refer their friends to it (Viral Marketing) and that is the best advertising you can get.
At this point you should have enough information to start getting the answers you need to set up your blog. If you started reading this article looking for a comparison of blogs v. websites you’ll notice that I didn’t waste time telling you the difference between the 2.
If you don’t know that already then save yourself a LOT of time, hassle, inefficiency and money and get your BLOG going asap.
Small business owners have always struggled to get more traffic for their websites. You can have the greatest product, the best deals and the most important information, but if you don’t get any traffic then it doesn’t matter.Viral Marketing can be the entrepreneur’s best friend. Also known as buzz marketing, viral marketing is the concept that you create an article or a video or some other informative and entertaining item that other people are inspired to share with their friends, family and coworkers.
I’m going to share 2 techniques and 1 free tool that I’ve used to get many thousands of hits to my websites.
Technique #1 Article Marketing. I still consider article marketing to be one of the best ways to draw new traffic back to your website. When I work with new authors I always tell them “Don’t try to write a book, instead just write one article per week. Use those articles to draw traffic back to your website while simultaneously compiling the information that you want to publish in book form.”
In others words, start writing now, and start benefiting from your writing NOW rather than when your book is published. The way you benefit from your writing is to publish your articles on the hundreds of article directories that you can find online. Be sure to put your website URL in the Authors Bio box that goes with your article.
When you publish your articles online then other webmasters will use those articles on their own websites. Remember that webmasters need tons of up to date, relevant content to put on their websites. If you can provide that content then they will be happy to publish your articles.
In my newsletters and online magazines I use about 4-5 times more content from other authors than I write myself.
Technique #2 YouTube videos. With the digital revolution it’s easier than ever to put a decent quality video online with YouTube.com, Metacafe.com and a host of other video sharing sites.
Make it funny, informative and short and other people will post it on their websites and blogs and refer their friends, family and coworkers to watch it. You can see a short video that gives you more information about how to use YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_mcc42QMhE
I also promised to give you a great FREE tool that will help you boost your website hits. I’ve personally used the Free Viral system for almost 2 years. It’s easy and it’s free and it works.
Here’s how it works;
1. When you register at http://abe5.com/3if, you will notice there are 6 text ads on the sign up page. Click on the ads, insert the code from the ads into the correct box. It only takes a couple of minutes.
2. Once you have all 6 ad codes, you can complete the sign up process and you’ll get your own viral marketing URL.
3. You then create your own text ad, which will go to the top of the 6 ad list.
4. Each time someone signs up for viral marketing using your links, they will have to view your ad or website to get their ad code. This applies to everyone who signs up under them as well, out to 6 levels.
5. Here is how the system works;
10 people sign up from your page 1 x 10 = Your ad on 10 new sites
10 people sign up from each of them 10 x 10 = Your ad on 100 new sites
10 people sign up from each of them 10 x 100 = Your ad on 1,000 new sites
10 people sign up from each of them 10 x 1,000 = Your ad on 10,000 new sites
10 people sign up from each of them 10 x 10,000 = Your ad on 100,000 new sites
10 people sign up from each of them 10 x 100,000 = Your ad on 1,000,000 new sites
You can see how this works at any of my online magazines and websites. If you go to http://sae.holisticplus.org you’ll see a green banner ad at the bottom of the page that says ‘Free Viral’.
One piece of advice. If you use the text links then be sure to cloak the link and shorten it in order to be sure that your link gets used properly. I use ABE5.com for my short links.
If you take advantage of and really learn to use these 2 techniques and this 1 free tool then you’ll have all the traffic that you could possibly need.
About the Author
Robert Morgen experienced a near-death kundalini awakening in 1992.
