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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So what’s the difference between promoting your website and a brick and mortar store? That’s a common question asked by new internet marketers. It turns out the principles are the same but the methods are different. Let’s take a look at how.
The main object of promoting either store is to first create awareness of the stores existence. Secondly you want them to know what you offer and why it will improve their life. Next you want to show them how yours is better than others in the market. This is all to achieve your final goal of visiting your store or site. Making the sale is another topic all together.
If you have real deep pockets you can start by advertising in the New York Times or on NBC for a brick and mortar store or on MSN or Yahoo sites if you’re on the internet. Of course you have to remember your AOL users won’t see you there just as your CBS watchers won’t see you on NBC. Most start ups aren’t going to worry about this problem as they don’t have the money to do this kind of advertising.
So what method do you use to advertise and drive traffic cost effectively to your site?
• Tell your friends and family about your site. The average person has about 250 people they would invite to their wedding. Let them know what you’re doing.
• Sign up for a leads service that will refer leads to your site. This will be a nominal expense in relation to the leads if you use the right service.
• Post your helpful opinions on forum web sites. This will add credibility to you as an expert and refer people back to your site.
• Place Solo Ads in targeted ezines. Ezines are electronic newsletters that are directed to select groups. This is a very effective method.
• Google Adwords is another way to reach your potential clients. Google adwords allows you to promote your website anytime someone searches for the words or phrases you have selected.
• Another effective method is to make promotional handouts that can be passed out to those you meet. Of course this must direct people to your website.
• Place newspaper classifieds. You can put together a very cost effective campaign using weekly papers that are less costly and can reach your target market.
• Write and publish articles just like this one that show your expertise and direct clients back to your website.
• Start your own blog. Your own blog allows you to ad more pages of content that refers potential clients back and forth from your website to the blog and vise versa.
• Write, have written for you or find an eBook you can brand. The eBook should refer and link to your website throughout the book. This not only shows you to be an authority but also where they can learn more. Advertise your FREE eBook and give it away.
There you have ten ways to promote your website. It’s like advertising a garage sale with yard signs all over town. It’s like putting signs all down the interstate that directs people to which exit they need to visit you. The internet is continually growing. The potential is endless. Go get your share.
Rod Hey
.WinningLifeChoices.com/pips.html
3 Easy Steps to Work at Home Now!
Every webmaster wants links (possibly a lot of them!). That’s not surprisingly because links from other sites are not only a source of traffic, but also a very important factor that helps a site to rank well in search engines results.
Apparently submitting your site to web directories is one of the quickest ways to get links, but getting listed is sometimes much more difficult than it may seem.
The problem is that web directories are swamped by a large number of low quality submissions: poorly designed web sites, web sites without any original content or created only to display advertisements and so on.
For this reason directory editors review hundreds of sites per day and accept only those complying to a very strict set of guidelines. There are days, and I talk by personal experience, when more than 90% of submissions are rejected, in many case without even the need to visit the site simply because of a poorly written submission.
If you want to increase your chances to see your site listed, it’s essential to understand what informations you are required to provide about your site and how to properly submit them.
At least title, description and url are required by all directories.
Web site title
Directories have more or less restrictive rules about what you can or cannot have as your site title.
Some allow only your official domain name or company name, other are more liberal.
In any case a good title should never exceed 4-5 words. Using a long list of keywords as title (keyword stuffing), excessive repetitions and inappropriate punctuation must be absolutely avoided.
Web site description
Many sites are rejected due to an inappropriate description. A description is not an advertisement and should never contain superlatives or excessive marketing hype.
Directory listings are usually searchable by words contained both in title and description so the keywords commonly used to find your site should be included in your site description. However always write 2-3 complete sentences that sound natural do not make your description a long list of keywords.
Web site URL
You would say that people should at least be able to correctly submit their own web site url. If you work as directory editor for a while you will change your mind! It happens quite frequently that a site is rejected simply because of a mistyped url.
Never type your site url directly into the submission form. Test it in your browser, save it in a text file and copy and paste from there.
Each directory can have some other specific rules, so be sure to carefully read the submission guidelines and comply to any special requirement.
It’s said that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression: directory editors read the informations you submit before visiting your web site. Learn to properly write your submissions and you will greatly increase the chances to have your website accepted.
Web site promotion is a complex process, and one of the oldest ways to promote a web site is by the exchange of Links. Link exchange is the original web site traffic generation system. In the “old days” before the rise of search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN ( and all the others that have followed since ) the only way to find a web site that you hadn’t already been to was to follow a link from another web site. Therefor if your site didn’t have many links pointing to it, it didn’t get much traffic.
Search engines still use links to find new sites and to help with the calculation of a web sites importance or value. So the exchanging of links is still a very usefull way to promote your site and increase its importance to the search engines.
There are three main types of link exchange. The first type is the reciprocal link, where you literally exchange a link with another web site. They put a link to you on their web site, you place one to them on yours.
The second type of link exchange is not really an exchange at all. A visitor to your site simply decides that they will put a link to your site on their site. Maybe they like the information that is presented on your site or they like your product etc. These one way links are considered to be more important by the search engines than reciprocal links are.
This leads us to the third type of link exchange. This method of link exchanging is an “artificial” type two link exchange. How can that be? Aren’t type two links voluntary links placed by a visitor? Yes they are, but that effect can be simulated by doing the following. Basically the idea is to create a “triangle” of links - and it requires at least three web sites for it to work. Picture( or draw ) a triangle with a web site at each of the three points of the triangle. The web sites are any three sites, and they each only link to one of the other sites. So if the sites were to exchange links in a clockwise direction around the triangle they form an “artificial” set of one way, voluntary links.
So thats the three main link exchange types, now how do you go about the actual process of link exchanging? Well its really quite simple. The best way to exchange links is to ask the other web site if they are interested in do so. Usually the request is sent via email or a form on the site you wish to exchange links with. Regardless of how you contact the webmaster of the other site, remember to be polite and to give them all the information they may need to complete the exchange. For example, briefly introduce yourself and your site, with a link back to your site so they can have a look at it. It is good practise to have their link on your site before you contact them for an exchange. Once you start exchanging links you will soon work out what to say and how to say it. Unfortunately many sites are very slow to respond to link exchange requests, so it can take a long time to create a link directory - but it is still well worth doing.
There are “rules” for creating a link directory that should be followed if you want to get the most benefit from it. The rules are very simple and they go something like this.
1. Only exchange links with sites that are relevant to your site. Why? Isn’t any link a good one? Yes, to an extent all links are good - but some are better than others. If you concentrate your link exchange efforts to sites that are relevant to yours, then your site will be seen by the search engines as more important to your topic than if your links went all over the place. It is also better for your visitors to have a link directory relevant to the topic of the site they are currently on.
2. Don’t make your directory pages too long. In other words, if your directory pages scroll for more than 2 or 3 screens they are too long. Why? Because very few people will scroll further than 2 or 3 screens. So if your link is at the bottom it will rarely be found and that doesn’t encourage a webmaster to exchange links with your site. A common limit is 25 links per page of the directory. If you have more links than 25 for any particular catagory a numbered “sub” page is the best way take the extra links. For exanple if you have a directory page called “Software.html”, then once you fill that page with 25 links, the new page could be called “Software-2.html” etc. Remember to include easy navigation within the link directory - its not there just for the search engine spiders..
Thats about all there is to it, other than using link exchange sites and finding some link exchange software to make the job a bit easier. Happy Linking!
‘More than 80% of the traffic comes from the top ten search engines’.
You have probably read this statement many times and it’s true at least for the majority of websites.
So how about web directories? Is submitting your site to them a waste of time?
Even if directories usually don’t deliver a lot of traffic they contribute inbound links to your site increasing its link popularity a very important factor used by search engines to rank websites.
When someone queries a search engine using a keyword relevant to your site, higher is your site link popularity higher are its chances to come up near the top of the results.
Submitting your site to web directories will help you increase its visibility and attract more traffic from search engines.
However you need an overall strategy to successfully manage your directory submissions or you will only lose your time and energies.
Is your site ready?
You should never forget that directories don’t exist to give away free links. Their purpose is to provide their visitors with good quality sites.
If you want some chances to get listed you need a well designed web site containing useful and original content or offering useful services.
Your site must also be complete without broken links or links to ‘under construction’ pages.
Other things that can cause a rejection of your submission are: too many ads (especially pop-ups and pop-unders), automatic redirections to another domain, having the same exact content of other sites (example: the ’self replicated’ sites some companies provide to their affiliates).
Preparing your listing details
Open your favorite text editor and write down the following informations:
1) your web site URL.
2) your website Title. Some directories accept only the official site name as title, others allow some descriptive keywords, but in general stuffing a lot of keywords in your title is not acceptable.
Write 2-3 different titles in compliance with these different rules.
3) your website description. Write what your site is about in a couple of sentences. Avoid superlatives, exclamation marks, excessive hype and generally everything that makes your description sound like an ad.
Description should be written in third person. Avoid expressions like ‘we offer’, ‘we are …’.
4) a set of search keywords related to your site. Separate the keywords with commas, then write down the same set of keywords this time separated by spaces. Some directories require the first format, others the second one.
5) your full name and email address.
Once you have done save the document. By copying and pasting these informations into the submissions forms you will save time and avoid errors.
Or you can utilize Clipboard Magic. This free software allows you to save multiple rows of data and load them into the Windows Clipboard simply with a click of the mouse. It’s really useful when you need to fill in many online forms with the same informations.
Finding web directories
The next step is finding directories where you can submit your site.
You can use top directories to find minor and specialized directories
Spend some time to determine how each directory is organized and find the most appropriate category for your site.
Submitting to the wrong category usually causes a rejection of your submission.
Compile a list of all directories where you have submitted your site indicating the date of your submission.
Verifying the results
Not all directories send you an email when your site is listed.
You should periodically visit your list of directories and make a search for your site title or url.
Flag all directories where you find your site.
If your site has not been listed after about 2 months from the date of your first submission you can try to submit it again. My advice is to not resubmit more frequently.
You can also contact the directory owner and ask about the status of your submission, but if you don’t receive a reply, don’t insist. There may be many reasons why a directory doesn’t list your site, simply accept the fact that not all submissions are successful.
Submitting your site to web directories is an essential part of your website promotion strategy.
It’s a time consuming task, but with the right planning you will be able to manage it successfully.
Over the years I have had many accounts with Adwords, spending a small fortune with the Adwords service. So naturally I have picked up many cost saving tricks. I am aware that most people feel Adwords costs too much and delivers little results, this is completely untrue. Adwords is a service that is here to help us, so I have written this article to help web developers make the most out of the service.
1) Set your currency,
First and foremost, select the currency of which you locally trade in. You may think its wise to start your Adwords account in USD, but if you do not live in the USA you may get a shock when you find how much you have been charged.
2) Use negative keywords,
You are using the Adwords service to generate website traffic, so obviously you want the right traffic to generate revenue. Start by using negative keywords for people whom you do not want to click on your advert, the best place to start is the keyword “free”. As I doubt you want to waste money on traffic that will not generate revenue.
3) Make a strict daily budget
Make sure you have set out a daily budget, Adwords generally advise a way out of proportion budget. After all most new Adwords customers have no idea how effective the advertising will be. Do not start off with a bang, your pocket will feel it.
Just as important as the budget, be careful with the CPC rate. I advise you to start with a low number, each click soon adds up very quickly. I actually found that by lowering my CPC rate by 50% I doubled my visitor count…
4) Check those clicks!
One of the most talked about problem with Adwords is, click fraud. There are two main types of click fraud: the first is when any one starts clicking away at your advertisements trying to waste your money. It is very hard to stop this kind of fraud, if you are a victim stop your ads and file a report to Google ASAP.
The second main issue is now that google allows Web Developers to earn money off their websites by placing ads (Adsense) .some Web Developers try to cheat the system by clicking on their ads as much as possible. The best way to stop this kind of fraud is check your page log, Adwords allow you to block out websites that you do
not want your advert to be placed on.
Adwords does not have many protections against Click fraud, although they do disable Adsense accounts who cheat. Google are very hesitant to refund the victims, if at all. Reports tell many organisations are actually suing Google to get their money back, so be careful.
In this article I have illustrated some of the most beneficial ways to save money when advertising with Adwords. My main advice to you is, do not go crazy with your spending. You may not see the results you are after, it does take a wile to get to know Adwords. I have had many successful ad campaigns using the Adwords network. However I do advise to look around, with the ever growing popularity of MSN search you may actually find it much more affordable.
I hear many people moaning that they are not earning enough money from their website/s online. They had hoped that they would be obtaining more online sales or a lot more money from programs such as Google adsense after all of the online promotion that they had been doing over the previous months. In this article, I write about the bigger picture, the long term value of each site.
I have a lot of friends who are attempting to make money via the internet. Most of these people have invested in a number of websites which they are hoping will earn them a decent monthly income via adsense. They have spent a lot of time in attempting to drive traffic to these sites by way of writing articles and by other forms of website promotion. What I am finding however is that they are hoping for instant results and have a lack of patience. This time of the year (the summer), there are a lot less people who are willing to spend long periods on their computers due to the heat and the fact that a lot of them are going away on their summer vacation. Earnings from adsense are always likely to be reduced during these periods for these obvious reasons.
My friends do not seem to accept or understand this however and see all of the hours spent in promoting their sites as a waste of their precious time. Another aspect which has greatly annoyed and frustrated a lot of my friends is the fact that they are seeing no movement in the page rank of their sites. In the last two page rank updates Google has seemingly only updated the page rank of new sites, and my friends were hoping that all of their hard work would be rewarded with an increase in the visible page rank of some of their sites. This again is a lack of patience and is very short sighted. The backward links that they have obtained should have already resulted in an increase in traffic to their sites and they should not be so obsessed with this page rank issue. No doubt in time Google will update the rank of all of the sites and to stop promoting each site now would be foolish.
I also see each of my own websites as an investment. I would of course love to be able to earn quite a lot of money from them today but I am seeing it as a long term project. If I continue to work hard the traffic will steadily increase and within a few years the search engine position of each of my sites should be a lot higher than they are today.
The portfolio of sites that I own, also have a market value. If I wanted to, I could sell them and surely the more work I put in to promote each site, the higher this market value should be.
In conclusion, if you are not earning as much money from your websites as you had hoped, do not despair. Hard work generally pays off in life, see the whole thing as a long term venture, have patience and your rewards should soon arrive.
Every successful business campaign begins with a strong, viable marketing plan. To rise above in the internet marketing world, you must be prepared to pull out all the stops in the areas of promotion and advertising. Sound difficult? Think again. The expansion of the World Wide Web has made the complications of internet marketing promotion a thing of the past. With a wide array of promotional avenues to wander, almost anyone can be victorious in the internet marketing game.
Search engines have always been, and still are, the most effective way to generate traffic to your web site. The largest search engines have their own huge databases that contain tons of information that can be discovered through keyword searches. Keywords are an essential factor when dealing with internet marketing. Search engines account for over 80 percent of traffic generated to web sites. In internet marketing, every visitor is a potential customer. The more customers you have, the more money for you.
The mailing list is an excellent internet marketing technique that can be of great help when trying to accomplish your goals. The unique aspect of a mailing list is, while it not only brings recent visitors back to your web site, these visitors will most likely send your newsletter to their acquaintances. To utilize this internet marketing method to the fullest, develop an expansive customer list, and use this list frequently.
Blogs are a new and increasingly popular internet marketing technique designed to educate readers about your product or service. This marketeting method is favored because of the ability to create and publish information instantaneously on the web, and receive feedback from its readers. Blogs and blogging have become an excellent source for internet marketing promotion because of the constant content development, as well as, overall popularity. In the internet marketing realm, it’s the web site visitors that make the world go round.
So you’ve got a website ready to go and you want to get the word out to either make money on it or promote it so it’s the most popular page of it’s kind. Now what?
Well, the first thing you should do is double check to make sure the site is as search engine friendly as possible. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Done? Perfect. So, now it’s easy for the search engines to find and categorize it once they do find it. Time to get that website where it can be seen.
One of the most common ways to get a site’s pressence known in through Pay-Per-Click campaigns. They will assure you that the most qualified and targetted visitors come to your website. Keep your keyword and phrases as relevant as possible. If you keep your bids low it can be a profitable campaign when it targets the right audience. Keep track of the keywords people are clicking on to go to your site as well. This can tell you if you’re targeting the right people or if you need to change your ad approach. Yahoo and Google are two very popular websites to do PPC campaigns on. There’s numerous articles on the benefits and banes of PPC, and though it’s not the focus on this one, it’s usefulness to site promotion can’t be simply disregarded.
Posting on forums is another way to promote your site. Do it specifically on forums with a topic relevant to your website. Check the TOS and make sure you can do it there first though. Simply placing our web address in your signature can create clicks through the forum, as well as create backlinks for your site. If the forum has a high Page Rank in Google it will work out even better for you. The main benefit of this is the backlinks your posts create which some search engine “spiders” deem gradually more important as they find your site linked more and more in different places on the internet.
On the idea of linking, reciprocal linking is another way to promote your website. This just means trading links with someone by putting a link on your website to them and they put a link on their website to you. Websites like Link Market and SEO Link Exchange are designed for just this purpose. As long as you keep the sites linking to you and from you relevant to your own site it should be just a matter of time before the search engine spiders find your site. The old fashioned way of emailing the webmaster of the site’s can do it for you as well, but web services like the aformentioned ones, get rid of smaller steps that might make it harder to get linked using simple “Accept”/”Reject” buttons.
I hope this helps get your site to the top of the search engines.
1. Review your goals and markets for your site:
a) Are there clear business goals and desired outcomes behind your Web site, and for each major page or section? How will you evaluate your success?
b) Have you defined all the target audiences for the site, and the “languages” they speak? Do you have compelling benefit statements, testimonials, case studies?
c) Does your home page appeal to each of your target markets and audiences? Does it effectively direct them to appropriate areas of your site?
d) How compelling are the “calls to action” on each page?
2. How can you take your online business to the next level?
a) Is your site making the best use of available technologies? How will you stay on top of online developments in your field? Are all appropriate staff involved?
b) Does your content effectively position the expertise of your business? Are there media or public relations outlets that you could tap for wider promotion?
c) Are you taking full advantage of “real-world” opportunities to promote your site?
d) Does your business offer other services or customer support functions that you could provide online? Are there further efficiencies that you could achieve?
e) Review your contact databases and your use of e-mail to support your marketing. Do you have clear opt-in and privacy policies?
3. Review your Web traffic reports:
a) Are there any obvious patterns in your traffic, or the paths your visitors follow that you could capitalize on, or need to change?
b) What are the top exit points from your site? Where are you losing conversions?
c) Which external sites link to you? Are these appropriate? Are you generating sufficient return on investment for paid online advertising?
d) Do the search phrases for your site suggest ideas for new areas of business development?
(c) 2005. Philippa Gamse.