My New Top 10 Free Website Traffic Generation Methods – Part 1
In 2008, I wrote an ebook that revealed my most effective methods of generating free website traffic. As online conditions and technologies change, I feel it’s now time to update that ebook.
However, instead of revealing my new top 10 free website traffic generation methods in ebook format, I’m going to do it in a 10-part article series.
While I do list these methods in order of my preference, it’s not necessarily by which ones produce the most traffic. Instead, I list them also considering which produce the highest quality traffic, and therefore adds the most to my bottom-line.
Let’s get started…
My number one favorite method of generating free website traffic is via an affiliate program. I like releasing simple, inexpensive products that pay as much as 100% commission on the front-end. Properly done, this can create thousands of affiliates all working frantically to send you highly-qualified BUYING traffic.
They find and send you traffic that you wouldn’t otherwise have, and you reward them for doing so.
If you’d like to see a live example of how I do this, visit: http://sellmorebigticket.com The product there is a $17 audio/ebook combination where I pay affiliates 100% commission. That ebook is called \”The Secrets To Selling More Big Ticket Products\” and is an MP3 and PDF transcript where I share exactly how I do that 
There are a number of keys to making this most effective, and I see many people who attempt this tactic missing some of the most important elements. Those keys are:
1) You want to make managing the whole system as easy as possible. If your system is too burdensome, you won’t use it for very long. I use the Rapid Action Profits system, developed by my friend Sid Hale, to manage this affiliate program. I use it because once I set up a site, RAP makes management practically hands-free. The script can be configured to pay any percentage commission that you desire on a front-end and/or back-end product.
The beauty of the system is that when a sale is made, the affiliate is paid instantly directly to their Paypal account, and the customer is redirected to a download page. At that point, my affiliate has sent me that prized traffic, but as importantly, is also building me a mailing list.
2) You need to also have a good back-end product in-place. I typically have a second product that I offer immediately after that first sale. You can offer affiliates any percentage commission on this sale, and I often don’t offer any since I’ve given them all of the money from the front-end sale.
The key though, is that if you do offer a back-end product (or one-time-offer) you will often get a major percentage of customer take it. So, if you don’t have that offer in place, you’re leaving behind much of your profits.
3) You need to have follow-up in place. It does little good to build that list if you don’t later follow-up with them. Another reason that I like using Rapid Action Profits is that it builds a database right within the software.
Since some web hosting companies limit the number of emails that you can send from their servers (at one time), RAP also offers the capability for automatically building your list on a third-party system (such as Aweber.com or ProfitAutomation.com).
I have at least 30 sites built using RAP. Those are all traffic generation systems. Can you tell that I like RAP? You should check out RAP at
\” target=\”_blank\”>http://timic.org/RAP
4) Here’s where a lot of people using this traffic generation method cut corners, and fail…
You need to give affiliates lots of great tools so that it’s really, REALLY easy for them to register as affiliates and then promote like crazy.
Many of your affiliates won’t feel comfortable creating tools on their own. So, if you don’t give them the tools, they’ll end up doing nothing. Tools should include:
The tools should have the affiliates’ links automatically inserted in the proper places – something RAP handles beautifully. If you force your affiliates to have to track down links, and then manually edit the tools you offer, many won’t bother.
5) Here’s how you make your traffic generator go viral…
Invite your customers to become affiliates after they purchase. I’ve seen many merchants put links to their affiliate program right on the sales page. I don’t like this technique since I feel that it can distract customers that your affiliates worked hard to send you. So, I don’t feel that it’s fair.
Instead, I put links to sign-up for the affiliate program on my product download pages, AND often in the products themselves. Simply explain to customers that they can register, promote the product, and earn instant commissions. This is very effective, especially when you have all of those great affiliate tools in place.
It’s also very effective because the INSTANT commissions helps those who need the cash now!
Ok, I’ve just shared with you my very favorite method for generating free website traffic. I basically get others to send me the traffic, and then I have tools in place to leverage that traffic.
Stay tuned for part 2…
About The Author:
Willie Crawford has been marketing goods and services over the internet since 1996, and teaches many of his tactics in his free ezine. Be sure to not miss the rest of this series by subscribing at http://WillieCrawford.com/
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Hitting Your Stride: Four Keys to Timing Your Blog
There are a number of important factors that go into the production of a first-class blog. Quality of content, the layout of the page, how best to integrate video, formal versus informal tone, each of these is a decision that must be made during the creation of the project. That all comes before more esoteric concerns, which include the integration of meta tags, link building, traffic generation, and keyword/SEO implementation.
Yet underlying these important issues is one that many people wrestle with: How often should the thing be updated? Innocuous as it sounds, post frequency is actually vital to the success of any content project, and especially to blogs. Equally, it is a surprisingly complex decision that can involve numerous factors. Time, place, and availability of content all have parts to play in determining just how often you need to update your blog.
Finding the Right Frequency
Blogging is an extension of the principles of marketing. You want to get your content the exposure you feel it deserves, so you market it as best you can to cultivate an audience. This involves doing the legwork and research necessary to act on good information, and testing your ideas while allowing room for adjustment as you work and grow. Chances are you will not hit the right rate of posting immediately, and that is all right as long as you’re prepared to adjust when it’s required.
No single article can cover every eventuality of course, but we can break down a few core principles to get you thinking in the right direction. The key is to consider these ideas and extrapolate from them, using the other lessons you’ve learned, to build a solid, whole-picture approach.
1 – Make content king.
More than almost any other community, web users are keenly attuned to fluff pieces that don’t really say much. This isn’t true for 100% of the community of course, but those who can pick out an airy, pointless piece will almost invariably be sure to point it out, leading to some word of mouth you probably didn’t want. Don’t pick an update schedule that can’t live up to the content you have available. Stick to a schedule that you know you can provide a quality post for, every single time you sign on.
This has a twofold effect. One, it keeps the ‘pressure to post’ at a minimum. Content drives the posting, and you aren’t struggling every third day to come up with more information, or worse to rehash the information you’ve already posted. Secondly, it shows you have respect for the community, and keeps them interested and coming back.
2 – Set the time and day.
Even though the web never sleeps, a great part of the world still functions on a Monday to Friday, 9-5 schedule of sorts. Taking these rhythms into account can help you build the ideal web traffic for your project. For example, a blog focusing on home and family concerns and selling books related to it might not find as much of an audience during traditional business hours as during the time when people are at-home with their families. Granted this is only a rule of thumb, as many people surf the web for their favorite blogs during lunch breaks.
Another part of this element is the Monday-Wednesday-Friday cycle. Many business blogs and publications settle on a three-a-week update schedule, and the MWF routine works out very well for this. They’re all business days, and the schedule covers the start, middle, and end stretches of a workweek.
Of course since this ends up being something of the default, it means that Tuesdays and Thursdays end up with comparatively little content for people to peruse. Sundays suffer a lack of content as well, for the obvious related reasons. If you find yourself preferring less frequent, longer posts, consider a T-Th routine to take advantage of the ‘gap’ between other updates.
3 – Have a conversation.
One of the most interesting contributions to modern marketing is the blog comments section. Every blogging software out there has some feature for allowing or disallowing comments. As we’ve discussed before, consumer input can have an incredible effect on any brand, and blogs are no exception.
Taking advantage of this resource requires a certain amount of patience. Conversations develop in the comments section as people discuss, dispute, and debate the merits of what you’ve posted. In short, you need to not just let this happen, but cultivate the effect. Allow reasonable discussions to grow, and comment yourself on the more relevant points. Let the consumer know their input is being seen, and that you care enough to respond to it. Posting new blog posts too frequently overruns this tendency, and could rob you of vital feedback.
4 – Be nimble.
As we’ve mentioned, you are not likely to get it right just out of the gate. You may bite off too much to chew, or update too infrequently for people to care. Evaluate the data, ask your consumers questions, and be prepared to change as needed. Flexibility is the ultimate survival tool on the web, and your blog will benefit if you approach the affair with an open mind and a willingness to try several approaches. Pick an update schedule, observe it, and then experiment with others until you have the one that best fits your needs.
About The Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat, a digital content agency. Brandsplat creates blogs, articles, videos and social media in the \”voice\” of our client’s brand. It makes sites more findable and brands more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
Read more of Enzo F. Cesario’s articles.
Online Brand Building – Do You Need a Social Media Newsroom?
Curriculum vitae, work experience, references, skills inventory, resume: all describe a source of information where people can condense the vital information about themselves into a single document for interested parties to examine. The idea is giving people an overview they can sort through in order to weigh your merits and strengths against their needs, as well as to get an idea of how you present yourself.
This concept has been adopted for the web in a number of ways, but none more unique than the social media newsroom. A combination bulletin board and press collection, the SMNR is a one-stop location for people to find out critical information about you. Whether you have a new book you’re promoting, a lecture tour you want to draw attention to, or a business plan you wish to propose, the SMNR is the place you gather all the information about your venture together into a clear, concise summary.
SMNR Basics
As implied in the name, a newsroom is a page where you compile relevant press (your own and others’) about the relevant topic. It lists the basic information, quotations, summaries and news stories in question, but then it also goes a step beyond the basics.
In previous articles we’ve discussed the advantages of integrating your audience into the brand, and taking advantage of the web’s powerful communication abilities to bring their influences into the picture. The SMNR doesn’t just present good press, it includes communication venues for people using Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Digg and more. It includes a comments section for added communication, and options for instant messaging or blog connectivity. In short it is more than just a static page, and is an active communications hub.
Do You Need One?
Any organization interested in creating and maintaining a vital web brand will find the SMNR an incredible, vital tool toward this purpose. If you have any good press, such as a positive review or mention from a SM group, consider putting up an SMNR page to centralize further promotion efforts.
The value of the SMNR lies in its convenience for your audience. As we have discussed, the web has allowed people to develop an incredibly short and discerning attention span. If you centralize your relevant information so that people can browse easily, they will be more likely to stay and peruse your content than if they had to hunt down the information themselves. Instead of looking for reviews of your company’s quality, they can find it all right at hand in your SMNR.
Which Social Media?
Given the sheer variety of social media networking sites, there is no one design of SMNR that will work in every situation. There are of course the broad guidelines already discussed, but these are not specific to any situation and for good reason. Applications such as Twitter or Digg are fairly universal, serving as conduits rather than direct sources of information. However services like Myspace and Facebook have differing user bases, and one may be more appropriate to your organization than the other. You must do the research to see what suits your business needs.
The most important piece of advice is to make your SMNR its own distinct element. We have discussed the importance of giving your online marketing efforts their own focus, rather than simply getting to them as you have time. The SMNR is no different. It will not replace the draw of a good blog or video series, just as an author’s webpage does not replace the act of actually reading his books.
Instead, find the social media networks that tie most organically into your usual web branding efforts, and build from there. If you’re focusing on a smaller audience, include instant messaging service so people can drop into the page chat room for quick input. If you’re going for a wider audience, Twitter is still an excellent way to quickly link your newest article or bit of press.
The Press Release
An integral part of any newsroom is the press release. This is not strictly speaking a traditional news story so much as it is a formalized announcement using the news style. As an illustration of the difference, a news story is when a journalism organization covers an event and relays the information. A press release is when the organization itself gives out information they feel is important, usually through a news channel. A good press release keeps to the basic facts, and is short and punchy.
The press release is therefore an outstanding tool for any SMNR. Brief and concise, it explains why your newest venture or change in policy deserves attention. It can be linked through your preferred social media tools and disseminated quickly, bringing people to your page for the full story. From there they can be directed to other materials, and you have your audience at hand.
Extra, Extra
Once again, the focus of the SMNR is as much about drawing in user commentary as it is about distributing information. Take the time to analyze the comments and usage figures from your newsroom against your chosen metrics. Listen to what people are saying, and engage them about these comments. Many good ideas have been lost simply for lack of communication, so take advantage of the fact that your audience is literally right there, in the newsroom with you, and ready to have a dialog.
About The Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand management specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat. We are social media consultants. Make your site more findable and your brand more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
Read more of Enzo F. Cesario’s articles.
Online Brand Protection – Must-Know Tactics to Safeguard Your Business
Intellectual property, trademarks and copyrights–if you are in business, you probably know what these are and how important they are. However, an online business has additional factors that must be considered to protect its brand within the Web’s wide exposure.
What follows is an excerpt from a Brandsplat Video Report in which Brandsplat CCO Enzo F. Cesario interviews Daniel Greenberg, director of domain name management and online brand protection for Lexsynergy. Greenberg is also a practicing attorney who specializes in Internet Law and Trademark Law. (Watch the complete Video Report at http://www.brandsplat.com/videos/video-report-online-business-brand-protection.asp)
CESARIO: Can you tell us a little bit about brand protection? Can you define it for us?
GREENBERG: Brand protection involves various methods that allow a brand owner to prevent third parties from infringing upon their particular mark. So, for instance, it includes buying a trademark, registering a domain name, registering copyrights, patents and designs where applicable. In essence, it prevents third parties from using the particular mark unlawfully. For instance, the word Brandsplat would be a trademark, the domain name is Brandsplat dot com and the layout and content of the site would be copyright. So, all these put together is intellectual property, which amounts to brand protection.
CESARIO: So is your domain name an online trademark? Can you expound on that?
GREENBERG: Yes, it has become a species of online trademark. For instance, most people do their business online, they shop online, they bank online; and if you don’t have control of your brand over the Internet, it will be very difficult for customers to locate you. So, if you had to compare it to the bricks-and-mortar world, it’s almost the signage that is outside your business. For instance, in the online world, if you don’t control your particular mark or your brand, it’s as if your competitor has taken your particular mark and put it outside his store. So it has become a brand identifier on the Internet.
CESARIO: I see. So how has Lexsynergy protected their brand online?
GREENBERG: When we first started off we were very cost-conscious, so we started with a Google search and a free online trademark search, which you can do with several databases online, to see if anyone else was using the name Lexsynergy. It is an invented word that doesn’t mean anything, so it’s easier to protect. We then secured the domain name in all generic top-level domains, such as com, net, org, info, biz, tel (e.g. Lexsynergy.com, Lexsynergy.tel, etc), and in the countries where we trade or intended to trade. Country code top-level domains or ccTLD (e.g. Lexsynergy.co.uk or Lexsynergy.us), we secured those. And once we had done those, we branched off and started to file trademarks to protect ourselves. And obviously, trademarks are more expensive so we did that at the end as the business grew.
CESARIO: Those can be very expensive. How would you advise a business that doesn’t have a lot of resources to protect their brands online?
GREENBERG: I would start off by coming up with a unique name first, just to make sure that no one else in your particular industry is using that particular mark. I would also try to find an inventive word such as Google or Kodak — those words that mean nothing. For instance, Apple is a very good trademark for computer products in a computer store, but a very poor trademark for a grocery store because it’s descriptive of what it would be selling. So come up with a unique name, then do these online searches through social networking sites or search engines; and if they’re available, go for the domain names, then go for the trademarks. And just remember trademarks are territorial, which means that you only get protection in the country in which you register the mark, and domain names are international, in that they give you international exposure. So I would advise to go that route.
About The Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand management specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat. We are social media consultants. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
Visit Enzo F. Cesario’s website.
Awaken The LION Within You
Yesterday I read the \”Mr. Brave\” book to my 3 year old son.
And he asked me \”What’s brave?\”
I explained to him that brave is anything you do when you are scared to do something, but you do it anyway. And that is a big part of living, isn’t it?
Gathering the courage which the Lion thought he didn’t have in the Wizard of Oz and doing stuff despite our fear.
I think Richard Branson put it best when he said: \”The brave may not live forever – but the cautious do not live at all.\”
And that’s a very true statement in my book.
After all, what is living if you are always playing things safe. Always taking the safe job. Always living out of fear.
Isn’t it far better to throw caution to the wind, bite the bullet and give things a shot?
I mean, within reason.
Richard Branson (yes, I have just finished reading his book, Business Stripped Bare) defines the most critical factor in any business decision you’ll ever have to make as all boiling down to this question:
\”If this all crashes, will it bring the whole house tumbling down like a pack of cards?\”
So it’s a balance, right?
But I truly do believe fortune does favour the brave.
And when you promote your business via direct response marketing you test small before rolling out a campaign.
You don’t throw $40,000 at an ad without a test.
YOu put $1,000, $2,000 or $5,000 towards it and see if it flies.
And then when it does, you reinvest your funds.
What’s more, you try lots of different campaigns and have lots of different marketing funnels so if one thing stops working for you, you have plenty of others.
But it takes courage to spend money on an ad.
It takes courage to start up a new campaign.
It takes courage to send out 1,000 direct marketing letters without knowing for sure if they are going to work. But as you can see at http://www.scottbywater.com/proof this approach works.
So have the courage today to grab the bull by the horns and start up a new campaign for getting more customers.
And if you want to increase your odds of making it a success, make sure you check out
\” target=\”_blank\”>http://www.morecustomersmadeeasy.com/
About The Author:
Scott Bywater is an advertising copywriting expert and the author of Cash-Flow Advertising. To gain access to all of his copywriting tips on how to get more customers via his eye opening \”Copywriting Selling Secrets\” newsletter, simply head on over to his web site at http://www.copywritingthatsells.com.au/
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Online Brand Building By the Numbers
In the process of building your company’s online brand, you’re going to have to deal with a veritable ton of information. We have discussed how the practice of Web Analytics can quantify all manner of data such as number of users, the location of visitors, and changes over time, all intended to allow you to analyze your brand’s performance. However all the information in the world isn’t going to do your online marketing efforts a bit of good if you aren’t able to measure it against carefully chosen benchmarks of performance. In short, you need to identify your metrics.
What is a Metric?
Boiled down, a metric is some unit of measurement intended for you to compare current information to previous information, and to evaluate the difference in light of your goals. An example of a metric is the Conversion Rate, which is typically defined as the number of visitors who took a desired action divided by the total number of visitors in a given time period.
Metrics vs. Goals
It is important to understand the metric is not the goal itself, but rather the way to measure that goal. For example, visitor traffic numbers in a given month (quantity time) is a metric. It is a unit of data that can be compared to other units. Trying to increase user traffic is a goal that can be evaluated for success by the use of metrics (i.e., if user traffic decreases from one month to the next, the goal has failed).
Setting Your Metrics
The keys to every metric are universal: quantity and time. Visitor rates per month, unique visitors per quarter, bandwidth use before and after an advertising campaign—each of these is based on a quantifiable measurement within a predetermined timeframe. The key is to have a piece of hard information that can be compared between two points.
In the online branding arena, there are numerous metrics you can choose to help evaluate your brand’s performance.
Usage statistics – Hard numbers that can be compared by date, user statistics are essential and vital. This category includes numbers of unique visitors, time spent viewing each page, how frequently certain videos are downloaded, and the like.
User Commentary – While this may seem a more qualitative category, there are actually several ways that user comments can be judged in mathematical terms as metrics. Evaluators can measure comment proportionality (percentage of positive, neutral, and negative commentary per product, for example). Including a rating system enhances this effort, as it allows comments to be summarized, reducing the time spent on reading and interpreting the text itself, if necessary.
Social Media Influence – Social Media venues are the newest and most efficient source of word of mouth press. Being linked through a popular blog or Facebook page can spike a brand’s visitor statistics overnight. In this case metrics can include the number of link-backs spread around various Social Media sites, or the popularity of a site’s own SM pages in various communities.
Timing is Everything
The Web is a place where time becomes downright bizarre. Companies start overnight and fold just as quickly, so the perception is that any changes have to be immediate and drastic. The problem is that this can be utterly counterproductive to good metric analysis. Metrics take time to properly analyze, and indeed are useless without the consideration of timing.
Consider a webpage that gets a total of twenty-one unique visitors. This doesn’t actually say anything in and of itself. Now, compare a page that gets twenty-one unique visitors per week, and one that gets twenty-one unique visitors per minute. Suddenly a comparison can be made. This is it the essence of metrics, comparison over time.
You must establish realistic time goals for your brand, so you can logically evaluate the impact of various decisions and procedures. To do otherwise is simply robbing yourself of any way to use the vital data you’re gathering properly.
Some sample time benchmarks include the obvious daily, weekly, monthly, yearly and quarterly periods. These should be examined in a before-versus-after context. For example there is Burger King’s quirky Ugoff campaign, which ran for a single summer in 2004. The metric in question would be the number of Burger King salads purchased before, during, and after the campaign.
A Parting Thought
It is important to remind yourself that a metric is not the goal. Just as importantly, remember that the metric is not the brand itself. Metrics are measurements. The brand is something that can be evaluated in the light of the metrics you choose, but the brand is greater than the sum of its parts. It is a thing distinct unto itself, the image of your organization that is presented as a combination of the actual quality of a product and peoples’ perceptions thereof.
Consider very carefully what exactly your brand is, and what you want the brand to be. Compare the two honestly and carefully, and you will find that the metrics you need to evaluate the success of your brand are actually quite easy to discern.
About The Author:
Enzo F. Cesario is an online brand management specialist and co-founder of Brandsplat. We are social media consultants. Make your site more findable and your brand more recognizable. For the free Brandcasting Report go to http://www.BrandSplat.com/ or visit our blog at http://www.iBrandCasting.com/
Read more of Enzo F. Cesario’s articles.
The Road To Online Marketing Success Requires Commitment
Unsuccessful online marketers are notorious opportunity seekers – giving an opportunity only a couple of weeks to start showing results, before changing directions to chase the next flavor of the week. It almost seems that the majority of online marketers are chasing get-rich-quick schemes, rather than trying to develop a legitimate business.
Sometimes it seems like the majority of online marketers change the program that they are promoting, almost as often as they are putting gasoline into their car. \”Okay honey… I filled up the car today… it is time for us to find another business opportunity to promote…\”
There is also another group of online marketers, who seem to make a real commitment to a specific business opportunity, but success continues to elude this group is well. The second group fails to make a commitment to a particular marketing plan that is designed to help them to achieve success. Like the first group, they change directions, as often as they put gasoline into the car.
Those who are successful online, are the kind of people who make a solid commitment to a particular business model and make a long-term commitment to a realistic marketing plan.
I am not telling you these things because I think I’m better than you… In fact, I am telling you these things because I am guilty of having done the exact same things myself.
Towards the end of 2001, I finally started making serious money online, after having spun my wheels online for more than four years, chasing one opportunity after another, until I made a commitment to a particular business model.
I managed to increase my income year-over-year, and in March of 2005, I quit my job and started working full-time online. I have continued to earn a nice living online, ever since.
My 2009 revenues were down, but primarily because I was working less than normal… In November 2008, I learned that my father was ill… I had my suspicions right away, but we did not have verification of cancer until February 2009. (Contrary to popular belief, he was a non-smoker.)
As 2008 wound down, I made a commitment to my father that if he needed any assistance whatsoever, that I would make myself available to help him. That meant, if he needed transportation to and from doctors’ appointments, I would drive the one-hour to his house, and then take him wherever he needed to go. If he needed me to come to his house to help him with anything whatsoever, I would come to his house to help him.
I made the commitment to him, and I honored that commitment to him.
My online business suffered considerably, as a result of my making that decision. But, I have no regrets… It was the right thing to do, and I am grateful that I did it.
My dad passed away in November of 2009.
I continued to miss work, through November and December of 2009, while doing those things that must be done in relation to matters of his funeral and his estate.
Just a couple weeks ago, I sat down and calculated exactly how much time I actually spent outside the office in 2009.
Not all of my absenteeism, during 2009, could be attributed directly to the time I spent assisting my father during his illness. In March of 2009, I had missed two weeks when we moved across town. My websites had also suffered a 16-day shut down in May, because I was unable to update the DNS records for my domains, when my web hosting company migrated my account to a new server. When I went to do the DNS updates, I discovered that ICAAN was in the process of shutting down my domain registrar and moving my domain registration information to a new domain registrar. Unfortunately, during a move of that type, updates cannot be made to the DNS records. So, my websites were offline until ICAAN finished its work.
All told, I missed two weeks while moving, two weeks while waiting for ICAAN to get everything moved so that I could update my DNS records, and another 12 to 14 weeks while assisting my father and taking care of the things that I needed to take care of after he passed away.
During the course of the last eight years, there has only been one year in which I was not fully committed to my business. That year was 2009. I did not walk away from my business, but I had made the decision that taking care of my family was more important than my business.
While my business, my reputation, and my income suffered tremendously in 2009, due to my frequent absences and slow responses, the commitment that I had shown my customers in previous years helped my business survive 2009 intact.
Now that I have returned to my business full-time, my revenue is starting to bounce back.
The past nine years has been a wild and exciting ride. The thrill of growing a business from nothing to something worthwhile has been an awesome experience for me.
But to the point of this article, this story would have been very different if I had not committed to a specific business model in 2001, and it would have been very different if I had not committed to a specific marketing plan for the promotion of that business.
If I had not made the commitment to develop a viable business model and commit to a specific marketing plan, I would have probably still been working 60 hours per week on a job when my dad got sick. If I had still been working in the brick-and-mortar world of retail sales, I would not have had the opportunity to help my dad when he most needed my help.
Then again, I would have had a different job than I had previously, because my last employer went out of business in January 2009.
With all that has happened in the last 16 months, I count among my greatest blessings the care and concern that was shown to me by my clients. Sure, some of the new people had absolutely no patience for my absences… But, I received a large number of personal phone calls, snail-mail letters, e-mails, blog comments, and tweets from my clients and people that I know from online, who wanted to offer their support to me, during my emotional roller coaster ride.
My greatest blessings have been realized in 2009 and 2010. I am blessed by the wonderful people, whom I have met online through my online business. And I am blessed to have a business that was strong enough to survive my frequent absences, during the last 16 months.
Those blessings were available to me, because I made a commitment in 2001 to stop chasing new opportunities every couple of weeks. I made the commitment to a business model that I believed could be successful, and I made the commitment to promote that business in a consistent and reliable manner.
When I brought commitment to my online marketing endeavors, I finally started to make money online. As I maintained that commitment over several years, I was able to grow my business to the point where I would be able to consistently earn enough money from my business, so that I would never have to have an outside job again.
To be honest, I believe that the reason my business continued to attract new customers through 2009 was because I had used article marketing to promote my businesses. The articles I write and distribute, for the promotion of my online businesses, seem to have real staying power.
The articles that I wrote and distributed, over the last nine years, continue to influence readers to visit my websites and to learn more about my businesses and what I can do for the reader.
Between September 2008 and January of 2010, I only wrote and distributed four articles for the promotion of my websites. During those 16 months, I barely wrote and distributed one article every four months, yet the traffic to my website was only diminished during May of 2009, when my sites were off-line.
I honestly believe that the reason my websites continued to attract new visitors and new customers, during this period of time, is because I had more than 150 articles online, posted on thousands of websites, doing the hard work of convincing people that they needed to visit my websites to see how I could help them to accomplish their goals.
When your articles are as useful five years from now as they are today, your articles will have the same potential of continuing to send visitors to your website for many more years to come.
If you are seeking true success online, and you are still chasing the flavor of the week in business opportunities, I strongly recommend that you pick out something that seems to have real potential for you and to make a commitment to see it through to success.
If you would like to learn more about how to make article marketing work for you in the same positive manner that it has worked for me, pick up one or both of my article marketing ebooks shown below in my author information.
About The Author:
I encourage you to download my free ebook, \”Article Marketing: Beyond The Basics\” ebook at: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/advanced-article-marketing.html If you find my free ebook useful, and most people do, I would encourage you to purchase the more advanced ebook, \”How To Use Article Marketing To Positively Impact Your SEO Efforts\”. It is 70-pages of hard-hitting information about how to make your article marketing truly profitable: http://thephantomwriters.com/ebooks/article-marketing-seo.html My name is Bill Platt, and I have been earning a nice living from article marketing for more than a decade. In my ebooks, I try to share with you the lessons that I have learned about how to get the most from your article marketing.
The End Of Dumb Affiliate Marketing
One of the saddest things that I witness day after day is affiliate marketers who really struggle to make sales. They send out email after email, promotion after promotion, yet often make very few sales.
This is not only sad, it’s also needless \”practice bleeding.\” Making affiliate sales is easy when you know the secret. It’s even very scientific and does have fairly predictable results.
Let’s look at what most affiliates are doing wrong, what I’ve termed \”dumb affiliate marketing\” and how that can be easily corrected.
Before I offend anyone, I should explain that when I use the word \”dumb\” I mean untargeted. I come from a military background, and I think of \”dumb bombs.\” Those are bombs that are dropped off of an airplane and they tumble unguided towards a target. They may or may not hit the target but once they are released they get no guidance.
A \”smart\” bomb often has a built in navigation system, and after it is dropped from an airplane it often flies a precise, pre-programmed route of flight to a target – often getting satellite GPS updates enroute. A smart bomb can be dropped from miles away, and be steered right though a window on a building that the pilot flying the aircraft never even sees.
Your affiliate marketing can be just as on-target when you acknowledge and harness just a little know-how.
Promoting an affiliate product no longer needs to be a gamble.
First of all, you need to tap into data that is readily available on which products are already selling. One source of this data is the blogs maintained during many affiliate sales contests. Monitor these to see how well a given product is selling, and to see if you want to invest your time and effort into setting up a protracted marketing campaign. You can market many of these products after the big initial launch is over – often with lessened competition.
I personally also rely upon my network of friends who readily share with each other which affiliate products are proven sellers. Many of us are members of a Facebook Group called \”Affiliate Products Proven To Sell.\” If you are on Facebook, you can join this group for free by registering at http://timic.org/APPTS
Many affiliates also struggle because they use marketing methods that are outdated, and simply no longer work. One newer method that works like CRAZY is using quality videos. You can now have CUSTOM videos created for you for under $50 each, and that includes professional voice talent. For that,
I personally use Jason Anderson’s team at: http://timic.org/ProVideos
These are not PLR videos. They are produced from scratch and are mini-commercials. Mine are 1-minute because, just like your audience, viewers of my videos have short attention spans. So, take a clue from the television industry. They’ve mastered getting the message across in 30 seconds to 1 minute. You need to do the same.
Another fact that you need to \”get\” – a fact most struggling affiliate marketers still refuse to acknowledge is that your promotion needs to be for just ONE product. If the purpose of a solo mailing or ezine issue is to promote a specific product, then just mention that ONE product in the email.
Without fail, when I’ve tried to promote multiple products in an email, even if they were all free, overall response rate significantly decreased. I think that it’s because when you promote several products in an email, it comes across as too desperate. Be laser focused rather than using the shotgun approach.
Many affiliate marketers fail to make sales because they promote something that they like rather than something customers are ALREADY buying. With so many great products out there, I do not believe in being the guinea pig. You should only promote affiliate products where the product owner has thoroughly tested market demand AND his conversion process.
It’s foolish to put time and effort into promoting unproven products when you can just pick the low-hanging fruit by offering your customers the products that they’ve proven to you that they want.
Given that often there are numerous affiliates for a product that’s a proven seller, you may need to differentiate yourself from all of the other affiliates. One easy way to do that is to offer a valuable, related bonus. I like using unique audio interviews or related courses as bonuses.
If you’ve taken the time to actually communicate with your subscribers and customers, your offer isn’t identical to that made by others marketing the same affiliate product anyway. Just the fact that it’s YOU, whom your clients have grown to know, like and trust, that’s marketing the product… makes it different. The difference is that purchasing through your affiliate link is less risky.
That is one of the key factors in smart affiliate marketing. Earn their trust and the sales come a lot easier. I actually have subscribers email me doing a big product launch ASKING for my affiliate link. Over the past 13 years, I have built that kind of customer loyalty. If you work at doing that, everything else will fall in place.
Now that you know the secret, it’s time to stop doing dumb marketing. If your sales aren’t what they should be start by looking at WHAT you are marketing. Is it something that your customers really want? If it is, then next look at HOW you are marketing it. Read back thought this article for tips on the profitable way to do that.
About The Author:
Willie Crawford is a seasoned affiliate marketer with 13 years of experience selling goods and services online. He now spends several hours many days mentoring other online marketers on a private discussion forum that’s part of a tight-knit membership community called \”The Internet Marketing Inner Circle.\” Join them at: http://timic.org/
Follow @WillieCrawford on Twitter.
Who’s Linking to Your Web Site – and What Does That Say About You to Google?
Linking is the mechanism that connects all the pages on the Internet. You’ve got links throughout your web site to let people navigate their way around. You may have links going out to other web sites that you think will be useful for your visitors. And hopefully you have links coming into your web site from independent sources.
All types of links can impact your search engine optimization results, helping determine where your web site shows up online. Though the hardest to control, inbound links pointing to your site can make the biggest impact.
At its most basic, the concept is that if several high-quality sites are linking to your web site, then Google and other search engines figure your site must be a popular, valuable resource – and they will be more likely to show it higher in their search results. In effect, your site receives \”link juice\” from other web pages that link to it.
However, it’s not enough to secure a couple links and then sit still. The Google PageRank algorithm looks at the pattern of links to your site as they build over time.
Building the right kind of links can bring a major payoff, while a wrong turn could get you penalized – and the Google Sandbox is not easy to dig out of.
Armed with a bit of knowledge and some creativity, you can build up valuable incoming links naturally and powerfully, avoiding the traps that plague amateurs.
Spice Up Your Links With Some Variety
There are all kinds of link farming schemes to grow links, and you need to run the other way from these. This is also called reciprocal linking, where you exchange links with other web sites that will then link to you on a mass scale. Warning: Google is onto this.
While it’s perfectly advantageous to link to high-quality sites that also link to you, the key here is to cultivate a natural mix of links over time.
Is it natural to suddenly have 100 links pointing to your site, all with the same text? Of course not. When people link to you naturally, they might use your business name (SEO Advantage) or some variation on a descriptive phrase (search optimization company). If too many similar links exist, it can signal that those links were generated artificially and potentially result in penalties.
Also consider which pages on your site inbound links point to. Your home page is probably going to get the most, but it’s natural to have links pointing to specific pages inside your web site, too. Cultivate links to your services, your blog, your news pages, your articles, etc., to help those pages get indexed and build their own PageRank. Called deep links, these can help bolster your site’s overall performance.
Some links also carry a title tag, which is indicated in the source code. This is a little too technical to go into detail here, but if you can influence this you’ll want both the link text and title to vary a bit among the links pointing to your site. Once again, the key is to grow your links in a natural pattern.
Not Every Link Carries The Same Value
Links from popular, established web sites usually carry the greatest value. That’s because they have high PageRank from plenty of other people already linking to them. A link from CNN.com, for example, will carry much more weight than a link from a free press release distribution site that few people know of. Likewise, a link from www.sbdpro.com will offer greater impact than a link from a directory that uses no-follow tags.
No-follow tags are the bane of naive link builders. It’s tempting to think you can just link to pages on your site from your Twitter tweets, Facebook and other social media applications. However, many of these sites as well as online ads and also some directories employ \”no follow\” tags that prevent the search engines from following a link to your site. In this case, it’s as if the link doesn’t exist in the eyes of the search engines. (That doesn’t mean the links aren’t valuable to people who find you and follow the link, it’s just not helping your web site show up in Google.)
So, How Can A Business Build Incoming Links Naturally?
The mix of links created out on the web pointing back at your web site should avoid skewing toward any particular type. A good mix that you can influence may include:
A sample schedule could mean every month you list your site in two good directories, link to interior site pages from a couple relevant posts in your own blog, distribute one press release to news sites, and write one great article that other people may want to link to and then let them know about it.
A word about selecting outlets is in order, too. You’ll need to carefully assess each place you target in order to determine the link value they can pass onto you. For example, different press release submission sites and directories can offer you a wide variety in link value. This can be time-consuming to determine but worth it when your site’s PageRank starts to climb. (Find some information on how to evaluate outlets in this article on press release optimization.
See Who’s Linking To Your Web Site
You can see all the links pointing to your site via a couple handy tools online. Go to Google.com to see who Google is crediting with a link to you. Enter in the search box [link:www.yourwebaddress.com] without the brackets.
Not all your links are going to show here, though, but you can use
About The Author:
Stone Reuning is president of SEO Advantage, a search engine optimization company that helps businesses harness the revenue generation potential of their websites. Referenced in books such as \”Writing Web-Based Advertising Copy to Get the Sale\” and the BusinessWeek bestseller \”The New Rules of Marketing and PR\”, http://www.seo-advantage.com/ offers information to help small businesses compete online.
Read more of Stone Reuning’s articles.
Your New Business Name: Three Problems That Could Spell Trouble
When I interviewed a gardening specialist years ago for a story unrelated to gardening, she used a phrase to illustrate one of her points that I just couldn’t understand. It sounded like \”squash vine bores,\” and I had to ask her to repeat it three times because I couldn’t settle the unfamiliar sounds in \”vine bores\” into words. I wrote it down, then later emailed to check the spelling, and learned that it should have been \”vine borers.\” She was happy to help me get it right, but if that had been a company name or product name rather than just a phrase, the company behind that name would have been in deep trouble.
If customers, referral sources and media people can’t correctly translate the spoken version of your business name into writing, or if they can’t make sense of it when they hear the name, word of mouth publicity hits a major snag.
Problematic Factors in Understanding the Sound of a Company Name
1. Foreign sounds. In 1915, California farmers banded together to rename the ahuacate, a pear-shaped fruit with pebbly skin and an oversized pit inside. They knew this Aztec word was hard for Americans to pronounce, and the Spanish name, aguacate, was just as difficult for them. The new made-up name they agreed upon, avocado, sounds vaguely Latin American but does not give English speakers any problems.
If you are looking to a foreign language for your company name, beware of names with sounds that English doesn’t have. For example, Xiao Palace would be a terrible name for a Chinese restaurant in the U.S., while Ming Feast would be perfectly fine.
2. Unusual letter sequences. Zion National Park in Utah was originally called Mukuntuweap – its Paiute Indian name. Local Mormon settlers successfully lobbied for its official name to be changed to Zion on the grounds that people feel more comfortable visiting a place when they can pronounce its name.
Here it’s not so much that the component sounds don’t occur in English. Rather, trouble occurs when the syllables don’t follow English-language patterns. That’s also why Internet startup names like GlibJix, Kazalpa and Blaxnort (which I made up, but without exaggerating) inevitably sound like characters in a science fiction novel, not like companies. Nonexistent words are much easier to hear when they have a closer resemblance to existing ones.
3. Awkward word breaks. With a two-word name, the ending sounds of the first word can interfere with understanding the second word. This is most likely to occur when the first word ends with a sound very similar to the way the next word starts. For example, when I once told someone over the phone that my book was called Six Steps to Free Publicity, he asked me to repeat the title and told me he’d initially heard it as \”Six Debts.\” Try to avoid multiword names that require a careful space between the words in order to be heard correctly.
Mishearing especially affects song lyrics, where people can hear the Beatles line, \”The girl with kaleidoscope eyes\” as \”The girl with colitis goes by.\” Likewise, someone who’s not from California can mishear PG
About The Author:
Marcia Yudkin is Head Stork of Named At Last, a company that brainstorms creative business names, product names and tag lines for clients. For a systematic process of coming up with an appealing and effective name or tag line, download a free copy of \”19 Steps to the Perfect Company Name, Product Name or Tag Line\” at http://www.namedatlast.com/19steps.htm
Read more of Marcia Yudkin’s articles.
