In the acutely current quondam, a acquaintance of ransack was auspicious ample supply to inherit her website listed (bookmarked) on Digg, a unquestionably popular societal bookmark site. With her allowance, I was given an excellent endanger to pass over and analyze the above generated from these types of sites. Look over on to ferret out the pro’s and con’s of public media placement traffic, and how it could be utilised in your own website or online marketing efforts.
Firstly, it should be said that any ilk of internet see trade, should not be considered useless. Visitors to your locality should all be welcomed, as any visitant is a righteous thing. In saying that, but, it should be well-known that traffic in all its greatness, is not created equally. Great differences suit patent when you start to analyze its source. The ambition of this article, is to take a much closer look at the transportation generated from collective bookmarking, from the standpoint of internet marketing.
Unless you’ve been living at the beck a throw for the past 2 years, you’d attend to a uncommonly momentous fashion on the web–social bookmark and media websites have change “all that” on the web. Slashdot, Stumbleupon, Digg; any of these non-professional sites sound familiar?
This is where a lot of sexual bookmark freight will arise from. In foundation-stone, these sites are driven and “controlled” at hand the users. Users or members judge which gratification they inadequacy to bookmark, and this commitment prompt into viewing and discussing of said bookmarked content. Sites such as these are immensely popular, and purl freight that the unexceptional website owner can at most at any point think up having. Thats a doom of conveyance, isn’t it? But is it surely freeessays.essay-911.com useful?
All this conveyance and hype must be a well-mannered possession, right? But is it in point of fact good your time? Should you blend active promotion to these types of sexually transmitted media websites? What about concentrating all your online marketing strategies on these types of sites? The issue more at theme is, what are the real pro’s and con’s of getting your website listed on the show bellman of sites like Stumbleupon or Digg?
As a website owner myself, I wanted answers, and I wanted them quickly. In withal, I wondered if utilising these sites could benefit me; i.e, could they hands me beget more revenues online?
Recently, my friends listing on Digg enabled me to have a upclose look at these sites, and the effects they brought to a website owner. This was a unforeseen for a first-hand, upclose study; I was not about to pass this up.
Come what may, this didn’t happen by chance. Kate took the conduct of placing the free “Addthis.com” bookmark to all her pages. You can also do this very easily. Using this comprehensible bookmark “button”, you can start to attract these sites. Be that as it may, be warned; a place featured on the front call out of collective media sites can almost instantly cause 100,000’s of visitors to your website; this in essence is ample supply see trade that it may encumbrance your server. Not permissible!
So be careful; lively advocacy to these communal bookmark sites should only be captivated upon if your servers or entanglement hosting gathering can withstand the immediate influx of traffic.
With Kate’s lenience, I utilised Google Analytics and started to analyze these types of visitors and social bookmark movement generated. Interestingly adequately, some darned important factors were realised. The Mass of this transportation will:
- Really pep back.
- Jolly occasional visitors determination lodge on your place; uninterrupted for the benefit of a short spell of time.
- Very only one visitors when one pleases actually stretch into the depths of your site.
- If you arrange a newsletter or comparable, you’ll mind that hugely few sign-up an eye to these.
- If you utilise any kind of marketing follow-ups, etc, very not many commitment enter.
(In saying this, an unknown fickle is the import of your site. Is it coolly written? Does it act well? Is it utilitarian or engaging to the visitor?)
Above from these sites does pose a completely routine muddle, however; its temporary traffic, to stipulate the least. The mass amount of above generated when one pleases most of the time simply pattern a hardly days at most, that is, until your listing or bookmark is removed from the face page. Most of these visitors commitment once in a blue moon carry on on your website for protracted, and the adulthood desert within seconds. In saying that, you may be enduring a two sign-up’s to your newsletter or Ezine, or visitors that explore your site. But carry on in scold, this hundred intent not be exact high.
Communal media locate movement can be likened to customers in the drive-thru sections of fast edibles restaurants; they report in and be appropriate as quick as they came. The visitors disposition basically consider your contentment, and before you be versed it, entertain already sinistral, surfing abandon to the paramount site to bet onto the next memo or listing. Social bookmark see trade bequeath each operate differently, to a large sweep, when compared to organic search engine conveyance, or your newsletter transport, for instance. Certainly differently.
Visitors from Kate’s article posts wishes generally go on increase up to 50 to a 100 unknown sign-ups a hour; much singular when compared to social bookmark traffic. In appendix, readers and visitors to her articles are in actuality interested in her content, and hence deceive been then exposed to similiar fulfilled upon reaching her website. So in this wrapper, there was no comparison.
The special of conveyance resolve continually lay in the visitors generated from search engines, atleast when comparing to the traffic from social bookmarking sites. A cast doubt upon assuage remains, however– is social bookmark traffic extremely all that useless?
Firstly, as previously mentioned, you desperate straits to about that no conveyance should be considered useless. Any classification of visitant to your website should be counted as a compelling thing. Any website p should realise that getting transportation and visitors to your website is a requirement; in another situation its practise deceit over.
When someone searches representing a particular stipulations in a search locomotive, and they boundary up at your website, this means that your visitant is there because you own what they’re looking for. This model of movement is essential to your website. Visitors like these are considered to be “targeted shipping”; that is, they’re more favourite to read your pitch-page, front on to your dirt, sign-up to a newsletter, or self-possessed allow a product. Additionally, they may also enhance replay visitors. Traffic like this is ideal. These are the types of visitors you in reality want.
However, its not all mephitic news. Societal media or bookmark sites do have on the agenda c trick a happy side.
How would you like the possibility of your website gaining exposure to millions of people? Sounds righteous, doesn’t it? Compensate supposing you may not take sales, for the benefit of precedent, this above can with in getting your websites favour unconfined there; branding it, creating a buzz.
If your website appeals to a more bulk buy, then you are monotonous more in luck. Sexually transmitted bookmark see trade in this case can be an exceptional creator of traffic and visitors.
Sexual sites such as these also be enduring another added bonus; gaining a connection on high PR7 and PR8 websites, with high see trade drift, can’t hurt your search engine rankings. After your website is featured on a sexually transmitted media site such as Digg, your component can also perform on a strapping number of unoriginal websites on the web, as much as 1000 or more. Much of this conveyance disposition also be using the Firefox cobweb browser, which is embedded with the Alexa toolbar– what does this do instead of you? Your Alexa above seniority desire be improved. As much as 50% of the visitors hitting Kate’s website we’re continual the Firefox browser.
Something worth pointing revealed, is that the above generated from Stumbleupon was much different. Longer stay durations were the common fetich in this traffic, that is, this transport behaved more like organic traffic. This could mayhap be attributed to the items that Stumbleupon is a higher rank orientation, and this was reflected from the higher trait of the visitors originating from there. This also made me report in to the realisation that not all venereal media/bookmark traffic can be sedate with the unchanged stick. This free essays occurrence also barbed me visible to something notable; the content featured on Kate’s website is geared for targeted visitors from search engines and articles, and is as a rule not suited to the mainstream net-surfer.
An guess to less ill document drop of this paradigm of traffic, is to works your website and its essence to more mainstream internet users. Whether or not this enables you to carry out a greater straight with of ascendancy, is largely dependant on what you offer and how it is offered. Another unidentified wavering, unfortunately.
In the in the vicinity tomorrow’s, I await to gain the unintentional to additionally study communal bookmark transportation, and its long-term effects on websites. In specific, the impact it would have on keyword rankings and element vogue rankings in search engines; no more than then can I submit c be communicated to any species of authentic judgements. However, after things being what they are, my percipience is being kept unrestricted, and the notion is being tossed up as to whether common media and bookmark traffic is as a matter of fact benefit the moment or the effort. Is the linger taken away from your usual day-to-day marketing efforts usefulness it?
Guesstimate there is solely whole speed to on out, really.
Online, buyers don’t often buy the first time. On the Internet, first impressions are not lasting. You need to keep a list so that you can sell to your customers. Like Gary North said, “There is a reason why most sites are not making any money. They violate this fundamental law of marketing: it takes more than one contact to generate a sale.” It has been proven that more than 70% of sales are made after the third, fourth or fifth contact. Hence your site should have an Autoresponder.
Autoresponder is a script that you place on your site where visitors can sign in their names and emails. It stores it for you and even delivers message you want to the list, any time, any day. Forrester Research said autoresponders are the greatest marketing invention ever created for the Internet.
People run into millions of sites daily, they will forget yours easily. So you have to collect their name and email address so that you can communicate with them regularly. Site visitors need to be turned into regular visitors and directed to other sites or products over time. The list is where the money is. Make people sign up for your newsletter, free download, or free course. Sign up people into your list which entitles them to discounts, freebies and you can finally lock them in as faithful customers.
Online, you don’t make money on ticket sales, but when you give people a free class, get them into the door first, you can then sell to them later. But building a list of 10,000 loyal subscribers is not easy—almost impossible for most sites. Those days it is easy to build a list. Today how do you get the people to your site in the first place so that they can sign up? Even if you force them to sign up, probably because you are giving them freebies, they don’t want your follow up. People usually use phony email address to sign up for free stuffs. Perhaps you have an e-book and they want it. They will sign up and download it, then unsubscribe, or report you it as spam, and block your mail from coming in.
Paypal did not force people to sign up with them. They have over 50 million accounts and transact about $70 million per day. Yahoo and other big site have loyal subscribes because the offer quality service and they don’t abuse the privilege.
Most webmaster manage to build a list of 3000 people and they send ads to them every week trying to sell but all these just annoy people as they unsubscribe. When people sign up, don’t flood them with emails or ads. Do it once in a while i.e. weekly or monthly. You must give quality information that your target audience will find of great value. Download “Evil ways of making money–what the rich won’t tell you” free at oxcheck.com and learn how to introduce survival tactics into your business.
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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I monitor a lot of blogs, forums and news sites with my trusty RSS reader. One of my favorite sites is SitePoint, which is a terrific discussion forum for webmasters, programmers and domain name investors.
I’ve had some great conversations on the forums and via IM that have been very enlightening.
In a recent post, one of the SitePoint forum guys was lamenting the fact that he was having trouble getting to 100 unique visitors per day.
There was some good, solid advice that I would like to share and build upon:
1. Make sure your posts are optimized with popular keywords. I would be careful with this one because you don’t want to lose your blogging voice or make your pages read awkwardly by jamming in as many keywords as you can. Do check for the most popular keywords in your universe, though, using a tool like WordTracker. As a poster on SitePoint said, using the competition values in WordTracker allows you to pick keywords that haven’t soaked the web yet.
2. Use a service like PinGoat to ping blogger indexing sites every time you change your site. Pinging is basically extending an invitation to indexing services like Technorati, IceRocket and Feedster to come to your site and index it. The more indexing you get, the more exposure you get. PinGoat is a terrific service that pings them all at the same time.
3. Update your Google Sitemap every few posts and resubmit it. A Google Sitemap is an interesting and amazing phenomenon. Here is how Google explains it:
The Google Sitemaps program is two-way communication between webmasters and Google. You can give us information about your site so we can index it more effectively, and we can show you how we see your site and tell you about any trouble we’ve had crawling it.
Basically you create a special xml file and tell Google to go look at it. It uses the file to better index the site. And it definitely works. There’s even a Plugin for WordPress that will build the perfect sitemap for Google. You can read more about sitemaps by visiting the Google Sitemapspage.
4. Post relevant comments on blogs related to your content area. Look around, find people blogging about the same stuff as you. Monitor their blog sites and participate in the discussion. Be sure to include a link to your site in all of your comments. It’s a great way to correspond with like-minded people and get your name and site name out there.
5. Search for link partners and link exchanges at least once a week. If you find a site you like, include it on your link page and drop the site owner an email. He or she will most likely list your site as well. Join a couple of free or cheap link exchange sites and stick to your subject area when exchanging links. Always visit the prospective link exchange site and ask yourself if you would be doing your readers a service by sending them to that site. If not, don’t link to the site.
6. Write great content, and don’t plug stuff unless you are familiar with it and approve of it. If you write interesting content about subjects that interest people they will always find you. Don’t hustle your readers &ndash if you are going to plug something for money, make sure the product or service is something you would use and recommend. If people sense a hustle they will not convert and they will not come back.
7. Watch your keywords and make sure they are performing. DigitalPoint has a terrific tool that will help you track your keyword placement over time so you can see how your efforts are doing.
8. Perform some basic Search Engine Optimization. Learn how to not only optimize your posts, but optimize your entire site. You can get some great tips and tools at SeoChat.com
9. Shake loose a couple of bucks and buy some ad space. Once you’re certain your blog looks and operates perfectly, spend $100 on Adsense ads and see how that helps.
10. Be patient. It isn’t going to happen overnight. It will take weeks or months to get things rolling.
Those who blog partly because they want to earn some extra money often ask the question:”Why is my revenue so low?” There are people who think that blogs simply can not generate much money. They are wrong! Blog can generate you the same amount of money if not more compared to any other website. Now im talking about PPC (Pay per click) sorces of revenue such as google adsense here.
The main problem I have noticed is that people tend to concentrate on wider markets. If you are running a personal diary kind of blog, the chances are that there are thousands of similar blogs around. The more competition you have, the harder it will be for you to make some cash. Instead try concentrating on smaller markets also known as niche markets. Not only it will be easier for you to develop the traffic, the CPC (Cost per click) should also be higher due to advertisers demand exceeding publishers supply.
Secondly you need to have a unique selling point. You need to give your readers something that nobody else does. This should really help you get returning visitors.
Finally it’s the ads themselves. You should channel your ads. This way you will be able to measure your ad block’s performance. One of the most important things is to experiment. Try different ad formats, colours and positioning. Run your setup for a few weeks, note the performance and try something different. Even if you think you have found the optimum ad setup keep on trying to improve it. In most cases you can always tweak something to make your ad performance better.
If you need help finding traffic for your blog, you can always submit your blog stories to the new personal blog news publishing system designed especially for the blogging community at the blog reporter
Someone wrote a comment on one of my articles at EzineArticles that I had written about the need to have a Wordpress blog. The point made was that whether you have a Wordpress blog or one of the other types of blogs, you still have to have people coming to your site.
Traffic is a part of the formula that you must have for the success of your Internet venture. Without people coming to your web site you will have no sales. Without sales, you have no Internet income.
In this article I will discuss how to get links to your Wordpress blog. If you just bought a new domain and put a Wordpress blog on that domain you will not get any traffic. That is, unless you have lots of links pointing to your blog. Remember, “no links equals no visitors”. Let me say it another way, you have got to get links pointing to your site or you will not succeed!
These links should be high in terms of quality. If you get twenty five links from sites that are not authority sites it will not do you much good. It would be much wiser to get five links from web sites that have good page rank and are closely matched to the overall theme of your blog.
There are basically two ways to get these types of links. First, you can research the web and find high quality web sites that are theme related to your’s and email them asking for links to your site. However, why would they want to link to your new page rank zero site?
You will get better results if you build a “Blog Farm”. A blog farm has one distinct advantage, it is under your complete control. Instead of having to go asking for links, you will have the ability to post a link from your blog farm to your new Wordpress blog yourself. You will have the power to add a link to “any” new blog that you build in the future.
This is what happens, the link to your new Wordpress blog draws the search engine spiders which is mandatory in order for your blog to be indexed in the major search engines, which are Google, Yahoo, and MSN.
I will go over exactly “how” to build a blog farm in my next article.
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!
There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:
1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to “Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts” by TNL.net
2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.
3.) Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.
4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.
5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.
6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.
7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?
8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.
9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”
10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.
11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.
12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.
13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.
14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.
15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.
Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!
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 have been blogging for just over two months now. Many of my mentoring students have been asking my advice on blogging. I have so far hesitated to teach much about blogging, because it’s not something I feel I “know” yet. I feel much more comfortable teaching about things I know.
Well… I took a look at Alexa today and noticed that this blog almost hit the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet today. I have been seeing success with many of the methods that are unique to blog promotion. I felt it was time to write a post about blog promotion… BUT… WAIT! I haven’t even explained why I have this blog thing. I can’t really jump into getting traffic to your blog without explaining why I have a blog and why you should have one too; now can I?
Let’s go back to my history. I “made it” online without many of the tools you see me offering today. I had no products. I had no copywriting ability. My search engine ranking data was my key to my original success on the Internet. I would simply create high ranking web-sites for some market and sell the traffic from those sites directly to those who did have copywriiting ability and products. Obviously I no longer recommend that. Having your own product and copywriting ability are both multipliers to knowing how to get traffic. Now-a-days I focus on all three aspects of your Internet business and recommend that you do the same.
With that said… don’t underestimate the traffic business. Consider this. Who is the richest man in the world? Right. Bill Gates. He sells software. Software is a good business! Consider this though. Who are the 3 leading sites on the Internet? Go check Alexa if you don’t know. OK; don’t check. I’ll just tell you:
1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. MSN (Microsoft)
Now take a look at that third one. That’s the company that Bill Gates (the richest man in the world; remember?) started. Now he’s messing around on the Internet in the #3 spot.
Now; let’s take a jump here. What do those three sites sell? Ok; take a minute on this one. There will be a test.
That’s right. They sell traffic (or they mostly sell traffic… Yahoo and MSN are a tiny bit more diverse than that). Now isn’t that interesting… The richest man in the world… who go that way by selling software… now wants to sell traffic.
OK; that was a diversion. We’ll come back to that later. What I wanted to tell you about was my experience selling traffic (which is still the largest part of my business). I made a mistake. I sold traffic anonymously under corporate names. None of my traffic customers know who I am. They just buy traffic from XYZ Corporation because it converts to sales for them. XYZ Corporation has no personality. In fact, it’s fully automated and most of my customers seem to like it that way.
I tried to change that a couple of years ago. I started sending them emails teaching how they could get the most out of my traffic service. I was too late. They didn’t know me and they didn’t want to hear from me.
Then I tried one last attempt (I’m glad I did) by offering them a special on traffic that month. I think I did a two for one deal or something like that. Over 25% of my customers bought a new campaign that day. I made over $60,000 in one day with that one email. I thought that was cool! I still do. I can write a single email and make thousands of dollars in a single day. I think a lot of marketers like that.
The power of your customer list is incredible! If you can convert 2% of strangers into customers with a sales page, you can convert 25% of your existing customers into customers of another product with that same sales page. That’s powerful!
I tried it with another product. It was a good product. It was mine. It was the search engine research itself that lead to the traffic those customers were buying. In effect, I was offering to teach them how to generate the same traffic that I was selling to them. It flopped miserably. No-one bought. I tried several other products. Nothing. Why?
Some of the responses told me right away. Even though I was writing under the company name, they didn’t know me. I’ll repeat that. They didn’t know me. They knew my company. They knew that my company delivered great converting traffic, but they simply didn’t know me. An endorsement of one company by another isn’t very powerful. It isn’t nearly as powerful as an endorsement by an individual.
So, I went on to do the Freedom Events. You know how they went. Based on the endorsement of a few well-known Internet marketers, they sold out. Lesson learned. To get that 25% number, you need one of the following:
1. To be marketing to your customers as a company and selling a special offer on the product of your company that your customers already know about.
2. To be marketing to your customers as a person and selling a special offer on any product that you personally endorse… and have never given a bad endorsement on a product to your customers before.
I wanted to do the latter with my own customers… not those of another Internet marketer.
What is the best way to do that? As I look around, a blog is the absolute perfect vehicle for that. As I sell products (and cross-promote them on the owner’s pages), I also promote this blog. I do it very early in the process. It is mentioned on the owner’s page and is also mentioned in the very first email most people get after purchasing one of my products.
They buy the product from a stranger, but I introduce myself as the creator of that product very early by pointing them (you) at this blog.
Then, I don’t hide the blog behind some corporate image. You do buy my products from a corporation, but do you even know the name of that corporation? Who cares what it is called? I want you to get to know me. That’s the purpose of this blog.
Now some folks are finding this blog before they purchase one of my products. That’s OK too. Some people buy a product based on the sales page. Some buy because they know the author never produces junk. Some have a combination of those reasons.
OK; so… yes… you should have a blog. I suggest that you create your blog between your 3rd and 4th product in your primary market. That’s when I created this blog. That is also when you want to start cross-promoting your 3 or 4 products on their owner’s pages.
Here are some other things that I think are important:
1. Register your name for the domain for your blog.
2. Put your name at the top, not some cutesy blog name.
3. Share of yourself. Do not post to your blog like you are a customer service rep answering the phone for a large company… never revealing anything of yourself… only the corporate script. Chat with your customers like they are dear friends. Don’t give out your home address or phone number, but within the context of the blog… what are you afraid of? Let your blog readers get to know you.
4. Post often. People can get into the habit of doing something daily or hourly very easily. It is much more difficult to get into a weekly or monthly habit. Post at least daily so your blog readers can get into a daily habit of reading what you have to say.
5. Don’t worry about giving away secrets of your products. That’s one reason I only sell software, video and mentoring products right now. It’s simply not possible to accidently give away too much in text on your blog. Software and video are both more robust mediums than text. I can explain in words all day long how to do something… it will still be useful to buy the software to automate that task and/or buy the video to actually see how it all works.
6. Get a subcribe link up on your blog (and all of your content sites). Some people will want to follow your blog, but won’t remember. You need to give them a way to allow you to send them reminders when you post. This will dramatically increase your number of repeat visitors over time.
OK; I think that answers the question about why I have a blog and why you should too… and how you should set it up. Now, I can jump into the specific ways to get traffic to a blog that only exist for blogs… not other types of sites. I’ll do that in a future post.
For now, go register your name and get Wordpress installed on that domain. Get your subscribe link up. Write an article and submit it to your blog… and then submit it via Artemis Pro with your blog mentioned in the resource box of your article. That’s how I started just a little over two months ago and as of today… I’m almost in the top 10,000 most visited sites on the Internet. See if you can beat me in the next couple of months.