For most good online marketers it took at least a year to get up and running to get successful. They had to budget their time and money well. Don’t assume that putting a huge sum of cash into your business will bring you instant rewards. It is important to spend your time and money on several different approaches to see which ones generate the best hits. You need to remember to be persistent and spend your time and money wisely. When you fail to plan you plan to fail at your business. You want to find targeted visitors that are interested in what you have if you want to make sales.
1. Build Your List
Most online marketers send their offers to many targeted sources and prospects that they have generated. They do this regularly and have great success. It will allow you to build a lasting and trustful relationship with the list members. As the trust grows so will your money. There have been plenty of marketers who have made thousands just from sending an e-mail to their lists.
2. Pay Per Click search engines.
This type of search engine is the way to build high volume traffic immediately. Many hosts will be more than happy to set you up with this and you will be able to see how many people have been to your site. You will also end up paying less per month. You will also want to get Wordtracker to get as many targeted keywords as possible. The more targeted keywords you get the more traffic to your sites.
3. Article Submissions
You want to provide free and interesting articles related to what you are trying to sell to your audience. This will inform them on the benefits of what you are promoting and give it worth. Make sure your articles are truthful and not plagiarized.
4. Regular Search Engines
You will want to get started immediately to be able to build an online web presence. This will help to promote your site and gain you ranking which will move you to the top of the list. The higher on the list of ranking you are the more hits you will generate. You can link your self to a reciprocal linking campaign. This will give you the highest success in search engine rankings than anything else.
5. Forum Posting
A great way to target your market is to join a forum that is geared towards your audience. You can become friends and be helpful with all the people. This will let you gain trust. You want to be friends with your customers when marketing on the net. Visit and join high traffic forums daily and share your experiences with them and offer any advice as much as you can.
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Writing and submitting articles is without doubt one of the most successful methods of driving targeted visitors to your website, growing your rankings and improving sales.
However, for most people article writing is a tough task as it brings back long gone often unpleasant memories of writing high school reports or university essays.
The good news is that by learning just a few easy moves, writing your own articles isn’t as hard as it may first look.
One of the major obstacles most new writers face is finding ideas to write about. Often the simplest way to begin is to write about things you have, are interested in or enthusiastic about.
Once you have decided on a broad theme, a good way to narrow the topic down is to concentrate on the problems that people face. In general, people read articles because they want to be entertained or they are seeking a solution to a problem they face.
Writing interesting articles is an exacting and more complicated skill. However, writing informative articles that provide answers can be as easy as sharing tips that you have learned.
You may already know the universal problems that people have in your specific topic, but if not, a good way to find out is to frequently search related online forums and note the most common questions being asked.
If you don’t have all the solutions, carry out some research to find the information you need. Frequently the answers are easily available by simply searching the major search engines.
Most people don’t like to read huge documents online, so your article should be between 500 - 800 words. If you feel this is far too many words, then a simple trick is to split the article into smaller sections, such as an introduction,
a small number of sub-headings and a conclusion.
All you need to do then is to write about 50 words in each sub-section and before you realize it, you have written a comprehensive and informative article.
Most significantly, don’t forget to add an “about the author” section where you can put details about how your readers can join your list or visit your website for further information about your topic.
The first draft should be for your eyes alone. Don’t try to produce a finished copy as you write. It tends to be much faster to get your thoughts written down and come back to tidy up later.
The last step in the writing process is to proofread your article making sure that the writing flows and would be fascinating to the reader. Ask yourself, ‘does the article supply answers the prospective reader is looking for?’
It can also be useful to have somebody else proofread the article. This is also the time to eliminate spelling and grammatical errors.
Once you have written your article, submit it to article directories. As your article gets published on other websites you will start to receive one-way links pointing back to your site. This will then help you to gain higher
rankings in the search engines, which will only help to direct even more traffic to your site.
Yes it does take time and effort to write articles, but doing so is the easiest and most valuable way of branding yourself, as well as driving limitless traffic to your website so you can build your list and increase your income. And isn’t that what writing useful informative articles is all about?
What is the key to Internet business success? It’s simple:
Targeted Traffic
Clever internet marketers have long used a variety of ways to herd targeted traffic to their web pages, such as: pay-per-click campaigns, email marketing, search engine optimization, and ezine advertising.
However, there is a simple, effective method that many marketers have missed — submitting brief, 400+ word articles, so that they appear all over the internet.
Linking Readers Back To Your Website
The time and effort you spend on these mini-articles is a shrewd investment. Here are a few of the ways widespread publication of your articles pays off:
Every article you submit contains a link back to your website. Every link helps your website gain link popularity, one of the factors in your search engine ranking.
If your article’s content matches the content of the web page you’ve linked it to, the search engines will regard this as a relevant link. Relevant links to your website are valued even higher by the search engines.
And ultimately, the higher your site is ranked, the more traffic you will get.
People Want Information
It helps to keep in mind that people who use the search engines are looking for information. If they happen upon one of your articles and find it interesting and useful, they will be likely to click on the link to your website to continue their research.
The more places your articles appears, the more people will find and read them, and the more traffic that will be funneled to your website.
What Makes An Effective Article?
How do you create one of these articles? Simple. Your article should be around 400-800 words long and contain just enough information to:
(a) offer the reader some useful facts,
(b) motivate the reader to click on the link to your website for more information, and
(c) attract the attention of an ezine editor who may republish your article.
A good article might contain 1 or 2 tips extracted from an information product you are selling on your website. You could also use paraphrased information from a web page you want the reader to visit. Also effective is a review of a product you would like the reader to purchase. The review would contain a link pointing to your affiliate page through a link tracker, or to a page on your own website where you offer more details.
Get A Ghostwriter
No time or inclination to write your own articles? Pay a ghostwriter to write them for you. Simply visit websites like Elance where you can post a description of the articles you want written, and writers will contact you.
When your article is done, you’ll want to submit it to as many places as possible, including:
Article Directories. They will run a quick content check, then publish your article. Once posted to one of these directories, it will likely be republished all over the internet. Many publishers are routinely on the lookout for quality articles. You simply allow them the rights to re-use your article and in exchange they leave intact the link back to your website contained in the bio at the bottom of your article. You just gained another link without lifting a finger.
Ezine Editors. You’ll get lots of well-targeted traffic by submitting your articles to popular ezines that are related to your niche website. Ezines are always in need of new, good quality content. Once your article is published in an ezine, you will get lots of publicity in return. Getting your articles in ezines read by hundreds, or even thousands of people is an excellent way to quickly increase traffic to your website.
Your Own Article Directory. Many ezine publishers and webmasters don’t realize that article directories even exist. Once they read one of your articles from a directory, they will visit your website, which could prominently display a link to your own article directory. The link should make clear the fact that your content is free for use in any website or ezine. “Free Content For Your Ezine” should appear in a link that is prominent on your directory website.
Keep in mind: this is a huge win-win-win process for all involved.
Authors get free publicity and links back to their website(s)
Publishers get free information for their website(s)
Readers get free quality information for their research and buying needs.
Publishing articles on the Internet is a tremendous way to increase the number of inbound links to your site. As articles are assimilated into search engine indexes, they also begin to act as landing pages generating traffic for your site. Whenever possible, you should publish articles to promote your site.
Article Content
The content of your articles should be directed to the most basic elements of your product or service. Whenever possible, try to write “how to” or “introduction to” articles. Topics like these will garner the biggest interest and be picked up by other sites. Articles that cover finer points of a subject work as well, but you should expect a smaller readership.
Article Tone
Your articles should be packed with information, not sales pitches. When writing articles, one tends to concentrate on how to get potential readers to visit your site. This approach is a mistake. You have to think of both the readers AND webmasters that will be looking for articles.
Image you are a Webmaster that needs content for your site. You go to one of the article directories looking for material to add to your site. Are you going to select articles that are sales pitches designed to take your visitors to another site? No. You are going to select articles that provide your visitors with some valuable information. Don’t write sales pitches!
Links
Articles are a great way to quickly build the link counts for sites. The search engines universally appear to like them, a rare event these days. So, what’s the best strategy for using links in your articles?
The best linking strategy for articles involves putting not more than two links in your byline. This is admittedly a personal preference, but I find more than two links looks “clunky” and many depositories won’t allow any more than two.
Regardless, the two links in the byline of your articles should go to two distinct pages of your site. The first might be to your home page, while the second goes to a page that is related to the subject of the article. With each new article, you should change the links to new pages. This allows you to build link popularity for both your home page and internal pages of your site. I have found Google, in particular, heavily favors sites that multiple pages with high link counts.
HTML v. Text Links
With some depositories, you have the opportunity to place html code in your bylines. This, of course, lets you avoid typing out the URLs for your site pages, but should you? I would encourage you to type out the URLS for one reason. It is important to make it as easy as possible for Webmasters to republish your article on their site. Don’t make them figure out the domains of your hyperlinked text, particularly sub-domains.
In Closing
I have used article campaigns to market many sites. As long as you go about it correctly, you should be able to do the same thing for your site.
You want more potential customers to your website. You want more back links to your website. You want better position in the natural search engine results. You want your products or services to become better know and your brand name to be recognized. All of these things are possible with a little work and the right knowledge. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques fill countless books being sold on the Internet and there are hundreds of companies and individuals who make a living selling their expertise in this area.
The SEO experts will tell you about on-page optimization, meta tags, keyword density and internal link structure. They will also tell you about off-page optimization, back links, relevant links, reciprocal links, high PR links. All of this information is important and should be addressed in your overall SEO endeavors. You want to cover all the bases in your goal to reach the front page of search results in the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) for your most important keywords.
But of all the techniques used for SEO, the most important today, are the back links or incoming links you have to your website. Your SEO endeavors will succeed or fail depending on how many other sites on the internet link back to your site. So how do you get other sites to link to your site? Write articles!
Now let’s talk about writing articles to increase the incoming links to your site. While this method is still not widely known or used by the vast majority of website owners, it is one of the best ways to increase the incoming links to your site. First, it’s free! If you can write even a little, you can produce an article that will increase your links and make your products, services or website more visible on the web. You don’t want to write a sales letter. You want to write an article that is somehow related to what you sell or the service you offer. You should write an article that shares your knowledge in a particular area and provides valuable information to your reader.
If you can’t write a lick or would rather spend your time doing other things, there are many places on the Internet where you can hire a writer to do the job for you. One of the better sites out there is elance.com, but there are many other sites you can chose from. You’ll be surprised at how inexpensively you can have an article written for you. The going rate seems to be $10 to $20 an article. Of course you’ll have to chose your writer carefully. Get some examples of the work they have done for others and pay close attention to the ratings they have from past customers. Make sure they understand you are looking for a ghost writer and that the articles must be original work. Also make sure it is understood that you will have exclusive rights to the article and they may not use this article for another client. After you have selected a writer to write your article, you must convey the subject and the kind of article you want him or her to write. Be as specific as possible to get the best results. The writer should also be willing to make changes if the first draft isn’t exactly what you wanted. This is pretty standard but worth mentioning before the writing begins. Payment is usually made when the job is finished and you are satisfied with the results.
Ok, now you have an article or 10, what do you do with them? You submit your articles to Article Directories. There are hundreds of Article Directories on the Internet. They provide a service to writers and publishers. For article writers they will list your articles for free and provide a bio box at the bottom of the article where you can promote your product, service or website with links back to your site. These articles are then syndicated to publishers of blogs, ezines, newsletters and websites who are looking for content. Each time a publisher picks up your article they must agree to publish it with the bio box and the links back to your site. Over time, one well written article can bring you hundreds of back links to your site. This is a viral method of site promotion. Your article will spread like a virus over the Internet, giving you name and brand recognition and those most important incoming links.
It is evident that whatever changes Google and other search engines make in future, still the game will be about quality web site content. Logically today we observe the increase of attention to web site content and everything that helps to score better with content over Internet has gained amazing demand.
No one was talking about article marketing a year ago, and now this keyword is searched by thousands. Articles give you publicity, better scoring with search engines, higher ranking. Articles are the peak of content game at the moment and here are the most crucial tips to win with article marketing on your web sites:
(i) Use search engine (SE) - friendly technologies.
Sitemap (Google + Yahoo).
Always use sitemaps on your sites. Create Google sitemap file, Yahoo sitemap file, submit them to relevant search engines - and you are sitting safe with all new content on your site getting indexed in days (5 days maximum). When others wait for Google sandbox for 2 months, you get your new content indexed within a week.
RSS feeds.
When you run article directory on your site, copy the content to RSS feeds. Then submit RSS feeds to MyYahoo and MyMSN. This increases indexing a lot. Plus this is extra way to make search engines see your real work on site.
RSS newsblocks.
As this technology is a nice content optimizer for search engines, they keep indexing good info inside the database of RSS news and give high relevancy content on your pages, helping you out with duplicate content crossroads.
(ii) Use anchoring to score on your keywords.
Anchored text is another content optimizing technology for search engines. It means that search engines can easily learn a lot from the keywords inside the anchored text to the link.
In practise it means if you wrote a promo article and submit it to article directories, make sure they allow to use anchored links in resource box to that article. After good submission you will have hundreds of sites pointing/voting for your site. Imagine if all these sites have a text link that says ‘My Keyword’ and the linking goes your .Your-Keyword-Site-Name.com Search engines will index all these pages with anchored text and you will get up the list for this keyword. You will save hundreds on advertising budgets to one way linking.
(iii) Keywords in names.
Whatever type of content you have on the site, stick to your keywords in naming file names, text links, pages using your keywords.
Search engines will never stop in their fight for bigger scope for indexing. Who knows, maybe one of top search engines will announce shortly the deeper level of indexing. If you make sure to name the files on keyword-wise base, you will score, because filenaming has big potential in terms of content optimization technique for search engines.
(iv) Never stop growing relevant content.
When you got the bots of search engines dwelling on your site pages, make sure to update content on regular basis, quality content. Search engines loves gradual and quality growth - even 2 new articles per day are fine, if these articles fit and up to the point.
Combine the tips above with smart SEO and your competitors will stand in line to join you.
Webmasters and newsletter publishers all over the world are constantly searching for new quality content. There are many websites that fulfill this need by providing pre-licensed articles. The requirements for using pre-licensed content is that the publisher must leave the author information and any links intact. Publishers are not allowed to edit the articles.
Many webmasters (publishers) will go to the free content sites to look for articles that they can use on their web sites, blogs, ezines, or newsletters.
How can this benefit someone who needs to promote their website?
If you can write an informative and useful article and publish it on a free content site you are well on your way to increasing traffic and popularity for your website. Every article that you write will have your own author information at the end. This author information will include a link to your own web site. When appropriate you can include a link within the body. Use the links sparingly as you do not want the article to be viewed as “spam”. Most free content sites will not allow affiliate links to be used within your article. As a rule try to write articles that are informative and interesting. Do not write an article that is simply a “sales pitch”. Publishers will not be likely to use an article that is written only to sell a product or service.
The more well written the article is, the more attractive it is for other webmasters and the more it will be used. That means more and more back links to your website. This is of course an excellent way to increase traffic to your website. This makes article writing an ultimate marketing tool.
A major factor in determining your page rank and search engine rankings is link popularity. Link popularity refers to the relevancy and number of links that point to your site from others. Basically speaking, the more inbound links you have the better your ranking will be. This is an important benefit to writing articles for content. Every time your article is published on a site you will automatically have an inbound link! And since publishers try to choose only those articles that match their subject matter and audience then most of those links will be coming from relevant sites.
To take full advantage of the link popularity factor it is important to use relevant keywords in the text links that you use. This is an important part of SEO or Search Engine Optimization. For example, instead of using “visit my site” as a text link use something like “Learn more about Writing Articles to Increase your Website Traffic and Link Popularity”
Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.
We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day.
It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the people that gets a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.
Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn’t expect profit. We have a startup capital that needs to be regained. With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.
Making Money out of your Traffic
The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is looking for something that they need.
The internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.
Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.
So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with the good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.
When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that these are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizeable portion of the traffic that you have generated.
This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happens would spell to more profits.
Affiliate Programs
Another method of monetizing your traffic are affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.
The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.
When purchases are made by customers that was led by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.
There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic. All it takes is a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-earning site. The internet is a veritable source of information, many tips and guides are offered everywhere in how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit earner.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
The author has a FREE CONTENT ARTICLE DIRECTORY located at authorarticles.com where you can get free content for your web site, newsletter or ezine. Additionally, If you have your own original articles you can submit them at this site. You are allowed to place an authors resource box at the end of your article containing a link pointing back to your web site. This is a proven way to add more in-bound links to your web site and improve your site’s popularity.