April 27, 2009

How To Drive Free Traffic To Your Site With Articles

Tools to drive visitors to your website are many but the main one that should be employed is the use of articles. The popularity of article writing and exchange has emerged as a convenient way for people to promote and get fresh content for their sites. The popular search engines want new, creative material and content for their users who are very demanding. Most internet users consider the internet to be one huge database and the search engines also see it as a giant source of information. It is a good idea to understand what it is the search engines are looking for, so rewriting an article automatically makes it something the search engines want, unique content.

However, you may be of a mind to start writing articles from scratch and discard the idea of rewriting existing articles and if that is the case there are a few things you will need to consider. Once you have determined a topic to write on you need to do some research and this is easily done online by entering a search phrase for your topic into your favorite search engine. The importance of making the article flow correctly must not be underestimated so ensure that you have a beginning, middle and an end which should hopefully round up the article nicely. The conclusion is a winding up of all the information you have just written and doesn’t need to be more than about four sentences with most articles approximately twenty sentences long. Remember to split the article up into about three or four paragraphs for easier reading and once you have written the article, you need to include a resource box containing your information and any links.

Article writing is a great way to make money online whether it’s through advertising and promotion for your website or for writing articles for other peoples’ websites. It’s the first article that can be difficult to write so how do you start? Article ideas can easily come from real life, for example, if you have a long and happy marriage, then write articles which help people with their relationships. You could also, get some ideas for niche markets and the articles would at least give you a starting point for writing.

In order to excel at article writing, do not forget that it’s imperative you use good writing methods. Writing on a daily basis will help achieve this because you will come across the same problems faced by every other regular article writer but it will help you to improve. This method works well and that’s the reason why I believe you should remember that the more writing you do, the more effortless and productive it will become. I wish that these guidelines were like the Holy Grail of writing but they’re not although they have worked for many writers including myself, only you can decide whether it’s this system or another that best suits you, however, whatever method you choose, stick with it.

Make Easy Money With Twitter

Step 1) Get one or more twitter accounts. 
Twitter requires no email activation, so get 1-10 accounts to start with.

Step 2) Join twitterad. 
They pay by paypal, within 48 hours! You choose which ads you want to post on your twitter profile and you will get arounf $0,06 to $0,20 per click. It doesn’t really matter as you will get a lot of clicks, so don’t worry! After you joined twitterad, you can add your twitter profiles. To post an ad, simply press ´post ad´ and select the profile 

Step 3) Mass follow people. 
If you follow them they will follow you back and then you can ‘promote your ad’.This can be done with the free website twollo. You can follow people that twittered about certain items with twollo. You can follow people that twitter about the same subject as the ppc ad. You can set it up in less then a minute and it will work for you till the limit has been reached. Now that’s what I call time-effective 

Step 4) Wait for people to follow, or rinse and repeat

April 24, 2009

How to Choose the Best Keywords

First, think about the theme of your site and write down the words you would use your self when searching for a similar site. Now if the sites you expected came up then you have got a good list of keywords ready to build your site content around.

Do not make your content TOO keyword heavy though as this will result in a penalty from the search engines, there are lots of free tools available for you to check your keyword density and they will tell you what state your site is in regards the keyword situation.

Another good tip is to check your competitors who are getting good search results, view the source code on their page and make a note of their keywords, now have a look through that pages content to see what kind of keyword ratio they have. Do not copy a competitors keyword and content per se, but use it to your advantage. A lot of websites tend to take their foot off the gas once they have a good search engine position. You need to put time into this constantly to stay ahead of the game.

Use Googles webmaster tools they are there to help you. Make sure your meta tags are correct, poor meta tags can affect you more than you think. Once you have good keyword density then you need to start building up traffic.

How Much Important is the Content of your Website?

“Only the content of your website gives you promotional leg to stand on”

Everyone wants to make money on the web and so as you. This you can make only if you have a web presence and bring customers to your website and turn leads into sales. Your search engine ranking is the key to the amount of visitors, and the success of your website, finally. But… but… but… this is not an easy task. In the age of tough competition it’s difficult to achieve top ranking on the top search engines and for the top keywords.

Its good to a have website highly rich with animated pictures, graphics but if content of your website is not good then its really not worth to have that. Stunning visual design may do a great job of attracting visitors, but, if in the end, the substance isn't there, all your effort was in vain.

Content is the most vital part of your website. No matter how good is the design or how fast your site, people visit for content, and that is what you should be giving them. There are so many sites around which have no real content, or are just plain boring with some animated pictures. Good content keeps not only your visitors interested and give you a good site but it can also help you to promote your website.

What I believe is, for any type of business, a plenty of well-written, informative, related content of your website is a prerequisite to infinite success. The more pages and words you have, the more chance you have or being on the top as a search result. You must have heard about Google, EBay, Yahoo, MSN, etc. Would you say that these sites have stunning designs and visual effects…Not at all!! These sites offer information first i.e. content. See, Google gives you one of the best search results; yahoo provides content, news, products, etc in abundance. You will be astonished by the fact that the top-ranking web pages on Google are consistently much better written than the vast majority of what one reads on the web.

So how can you get high-quality content on your website? There are many ways to add content to your website:

Write Yourself
Writing yourself is the cheapest way of generating the content. But for this you need a good knowledge of your subject to be able to write effectively on it. If you have the skills and time to generate content then this is really the best route to take. You have to focus on your site’s purpose and find a way to balance the information in categories that help communicate your goals.

Hire someone else to Write
If you do not feel confident enough of writing great content yourself, it's better to hire a good writer to do it for you. But before choosing an appropriate copywriter, but he should possess Search Engine

Marketing (SEM) or Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copywriting experience. As you have a website which is selling your business, and your main aim is to bring traffic to your website. So a person with an experience of SEM/SEO can only do wonders for your business. Last but not the least, If you are running a business and want traffic then there must be more value in writing higher quality content than in redesigning your site or updating your technology. Just get your designing out of the way and let your visitors have what they want, information. I'm not trying to detract from visual design, information design or good technology. Each makes a huge difference in the quality of a web site, but the web site doesn't stand a chance without content.

April 23, 2009

7 Search Engine Optimization Strategies That Work

the Internet becomes even more pervasive, the importance of search engine optimization continues to grow.You can make the most of your Internet marketing efforts by following the same steps that top ranking sites do for improvinge their rankings.You may think that top ranking sites have to spend lots of money to get there.The truth is that sites who come out on top, follow some basic search engine optimization guidelines.These guidelines are easy to follow and often cost little or nothing to put into practice. 

1. Manually register your site with DMOZ, also known as the Open Directory Project.The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors and feeds other leading web directories. 

2. Manually submit your site to Google.If you’d like to wait, Google will eventually spider your site and return it in search result listings related to your site name and keywords.However, this may take some time.For faster inclusion, visit Google and submit your site manually. 

3. Purchase a listing with Yahoo! Directory Submit.Yahoo! like Google provides many search products.However, Directory Submit is essential for any business on the web. For a fee of $299 Yahoo! will include your web site in their directory that fuels websites like Yahoo!, MSN and AltaVista. 

4. Make sure you are using keywords with a high KEI.This measure takes into consideration both the popularity and competitiveness of your keywords.By focusing on keywords with a higher KEI, you can optimize your chance for search engines to select your site for keywords at little or no expense. 

5. Engage in a link building campaign.The more links you have to your site, especially if they have a high Google Page Rank, will signal Google and other search engines that your site is important.A great way to do this is through article submission or affiliate programs. 

6. Make your site easily to crawl.Search engine do not like dynamic pages.Although this is changing with the advent of Google Site Maps, it is still important to ensure that all search engines can easily traverse your website.Make sure to use HTML coding and avoid dynamically created pages. 

7. Be patient.Once you follow these suggestions, allow search engines time to re-index your site.In the Internet age, we’re looking for instant results.However, it does take some time for all of your search engine optimization techniques to take hold. By implementing the suggestions we’ve discussed in this article, your search engine optimization efforts can generate positive returns.As the world of search engines continue to evolve, it's important to learn about the latest techniques and requirements for improving search engine results.Continue to focus on SEO.If you do, you’ll find yourself at the top of the rankings!

Creating A Successful Blog Final Part - Monetize / Making Money

OK. This bit is not that easy. But with a bit of dedication, patience, and hard working it is very likely to generate money from your blog. There are a lot of people out there, making living from their blog. As long as,
you keep doing the above steps, you can also make money with your blog. But, how can you make money?

The answer is; selling the right products. It is very unlikely and difficult to sell software or diet products on a blog, which has a niche about animals. So key to selling on your blog is offering right products to your visitors. But where can you find the products to sell?

You can use affiliate programs to find products to sell on your blog. Affiliate programs supply you with the links, which includes your referral ID. So, if some one buys that product by using the link that is displayed on your blog, you get commission. Here are few Affiliate sites you can use.

Creating A Successful Blog Part 5 - Getting Traffic

All your SEO work is done, you set up your affiliate links, and now what? You need traffic to your blog. There are a lot of ways to generate traffic to Blog. However, generating steady and good traffic also takes time. Here are few tips you can try for blog traffic.

1. Inform your friends and families that you set up a blog and you need a support for promoting it. You never know, some of them can even be interested with the products you are selling and you may make your first sale to them.

2. Always participate with other blogs as well. Visit blogs that have related content to yours. Don’t hesitate to give your opinion in their comment section. Try to make commenting on other blogs habit. Commenting can generate good month of traffic if it is done regularly. Always remember, just dropping your link to a comment box of a blog called Spamming. It will not help you at all.

3. Participate in forums and groups that are related to your niche. Always try to get an active role and try to help as much as you can. If you do, people will very likely to visit your signature link to your blog.

4. Yahoo Answers . This also good way to generate traffic. Same as forums, you answer peoples’ questions. In Yahoo Answers, there is a section called resource. There, you can put a link to your website. Again, spamming is not acceptable in these sites and your account would be terminated immediately.

5. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories. Article writing can be a very effective way to promote your blog, if it is done regularly. But, it is difficult to write lots of articles to publish in these directories. So, here is something I do. Although it cost me some money, I use software to rewrite my article. For instance, whenever I write a blog post, I rewrite it with this software. So I can use one version of the article for my blog and other versions for article directories. I also try to change the article for each directory. So, I won’t have the same content all over the web.

6. Participating in Blog communities such as MyBlogLog and Blog Catalog. You can also make friends here. 

7. Use Twitter. You probably don’t need any explanation on this as  it has been so popular. But Twitter can be a good way to promote your blog. Some people just promote their blog by posting their blog title on Twitter. But this usually put people off. You should use it as normal, but every now and than you can post your blog pots to share with your followers. You can follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/omarketingplace

April 19, 2009

Creating A Successful Blog Part 4 - Get People to signup to your RSS

RSS is probably most effective way to inform your visitors about updates on your blog. Also, it is very good way to make your visitors to come back to your site. It allows your visitors to subscribe to your blog, just like subscribing for a magazine so it can be delivered to your door every week.

With the help of RSS you can inform your visitors with the new content and new products. But how do you get them signed to your RSS?  First, you need to have good content. If you provide useful content your visitors would want to come back. So, if you have an RSS option (WP Blogs has it by default so you don’t have to do anything), they
can subscribe to it.

Second, you can provide free things to your visitors. providing something free if they subscribe to your blog. You can use various tools to help your users to signup for your RSS. FeedBurner is probably the most popular one to use.

Creating A Successful Blog Part 3 - SEO

After choosing the niche and the blogging platform, the 3rd stage is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). You need to optimize your blog, so you can get visitors to your blog. Without visitors, it doesn’t matter how well the content, your blog worth nothing. Therefore you optimize your blog to get those visitors you deserve.

Identifying Search Queries (Keywords)
Any SEO project should start with research. Before starting you need to identify the search queries for your site. But try to keep those queries as specific as possible. For instance if your blog is about Acne, try to go for queries such as “Acne Information Blog”, “Natural Remedies for Acne” etc. After deciding on the queries write them down.

Analyze the Keywords
You can analyze each keyword or query that is identified above by using the tools such as WordTracker and Keyword Difficulty Tool. These tools will help you to see the competition for the keywords you chose. Also, they will identify the number searches conduct per month. By properly analyzing your keywords and its usage over the Internet will help you to use the right keywords. 

Identifying the Competitors
By using your chosen keywords you can conduct a search. Then in the result identify the sites that are in the first page. Visit these sites and browse through. See what kind of information they provide and how the site is structured. After, you can use the Yahoo Site Explorer tool to identify the sites that link to your competitors. This tool is very helpful to identify the sources of the links and traffic of your competitors.

Onsite Optimization
After completing all the steps, now it is time to optimize your content. Here are the thinks you need to consider:
· Include keywords in your Title tag. That is title of your blog posts.
· Include keywords in

.

· Try to use your keywords within your posts.
· Make sure your URLs are search engine friendly. For example instead of having www.blog.com/?type=acne&remedies=natural, have it as www.blog.com/acne/natural_remedies.
· Remember to include keywords in images tag.

Building Links to Your Site
Now, you can start building links to your site. You can start with submitting to directories, which also will help you to get indexed faster. After that you can write articles and submit those articles to article directories. You can also submit your links to social bookmarking sites such as Digg, Redit, etc.

April 18, 2009

Creating A Successful Blog Part 2 - Choosing Blogging Platform

I will not waste your time on his section a lot. There are lots of blogging platforms available such as Blogger, Typad, etc. But I would highly recommend you to use WordPress. Why?

Lots of Nice Templates
You can find lots of freely available WordPress templates over the Internet. These templates are easy to install and also professional looking template. With the help of WP templates you can convert your blog into professionally designed website. Here you can find library of WP Templates

Ease of Use
Ok. It is probably not as easy as other blogging platforms. But anybody can learn the basics of WP blogging within minutes. And when you become comfortable enough to use WP, then you will understand what I mean by “easy to use”.

Huge Plugin Library
As I explained before, plugins are ready made applications that are ready to use in your WP blog. For instance you want to create a gallery in your blog. Instead of developing the gallery from scratch, you use one of these plugins. All you do, upload the gallery plugin to the right folder, and then activate that plugin in your WP control panel. You can find collection of different plugins for different purposes here.

Creating A Successful Blog Part 1 - Choosing the right niche

This is probably the most important bit before you even start writing to your blog. You need to decide what your blog will be about? If you can’t decide this from the start, then you will have big problems to keep the blog up to date. You will struggle to find content to create your blog posts. So how, do you choose the right niche?

About the niche, many would tell you choose something that is less popular amongst others. Although it is right, I would say best niche for you is the niche you are most comfortable with. A niche, which you have some knowledge. Try to be as specific as possible with your niche.

After, you choose your niche you need to cover every branches of that subject. For instance if you are writing about dogs, try to include most common illnesses a dog would have, what would help to prevent lots of dog hairs? Etc. Divide your subject into branches. The more brunches you cover in your blog, more helpful you will be to your visitors. Also more successful your blog will be.

Right Niche = Something You Know

April 17, 2009

Selling Online Advertising Space

Another way to create income is from sell your own ads space. Once your website starts receiving traffic, you will want to consider selling advertising space to other webmasters.  To do this you can either make a separate webpage dedicated to advertising or sell banner space on the top, sides or bottom of your website.  Price-wise you can charge per impression, (if you’re selling banner space), or monthly.  If you charge per impression you can do this on your own, provided you have the right scripts and tracking software or you can use a separate service such as Adbrite.com, (which takes care of everything for you).  

Email marketing can offer you an additional way of selling online advertising space.  You’ll learn the specifics about this later, but basically, how it would work is you would place the webmaster’s advertisement in your e-course or newsletter.  It could be a blurb or a feature article talking about the webmaster’s site.  Either way, it will get sent to all of the subscribers on your list.  If things work out as the webmaster hopes, he or she will get a sale.  Price-wise, you can pretty much do what you want especially if you have a very large list.  Keep in mind, however, that the more you charge the less people you will get to take advantage of your offer, especially if the price is in the hundreds or more. 

If you want a quick start for selling online ad space, you can consider using Adsomatic.com.  With Adsomatic.com you are given the chance to promote an online classified site.  The advertising space you can sell comes in the form of three banners.  There is also Adsomatic.com’s affiliate program, offering a fourth income stream.  But the beauty in this program is not through these elements, but rather their email marketing mechanism.  When people sign up to use your classified site, your account manager stores the email address.  While you won’t be able to see it, you will be able to send an email to that subscriber through the Adsomatic.com network.  You can use this email system to create newsletters or e-courses, which can feature advertisements from other webmasters. 

To get a visual of what your Adsomatic.com site would look like, look at the screenshot below. 

Wholesaling or Dropshipping ‘Niche’ Products

Wholesaling is when you buy inventory at a significantly lowered price then sell it to consumers. You hold all the responsibility for packaging and shipping methods. Conversely, with dropshipping you only purchase inventory when you make a sale from a customer. Once you let the company know you need a product delivered, they will take care of the shipping and packaging. Dropshipping is an extremely convenient choice for an Internet newbie, but it tends to offer less profit margin than wholesaling. Regardless, before you can wholesale or dropship with most companies, you will need a business license. The exception is Doba.com, which is a dropshipper that will work with individuals who have not yet gotten a business license or don’t wish to get one.

Okay… so you understand what wholesaling and dropshipping are, but what are ‘niche products,’ and why do they matter so much? Why can’t ‘regular’ products be sold through these means? Well, simply defined, niche products are those that meet the needs of a specific market, which are often neglected by mainstream businesses. For example a company selling ‘dog brushes’, (a ‘regular’ product), would be meeting the needs of a general market. However, a company selling a ‘shaggy dog brush for sensitive skin dogs,’ would be meeting a niche market. The latter company would actually be more successful because there is significantly less online advertising competition for ‘shaggy dog brush for sensitive skin dogs,’ than there is for ‘dog brushes.’

So, how do you find niche products to wholesale or dropship? The best way to do this is to use keyword analyzers. These are programs that tell you all the versions of a keyword that has been entered into a search engine. Google and Overture offer free keyword analyzers, but these are not the best to use. This is because since they are free, the keywords that are given are more likely to have already been used. For this reason consider using a paid keyword analyzer such as Word Tracker. To use it simply type in a product that you would be interested in selling. The site will return all of the keywords related to that term. Pick a keyword that gets a lot of searches but not a lot of advertisers, (Word Tracker will provide this information to you). After selecting this keyword, go to a regular search engine. Type in the keyword along with the term “dropshipper,” or “wholesaler,” making sure you include the quotation marks. Look through these listings to see if you can find a dropshipper or wholesaler selling your desired product. If you do not have much luck doing this, you can type the term in E-bay or another auction site and see if someone is selling the product in wholesale ‘lots.’ Alternatively, if you decide to join Doba.com you can enter the term into their internal search engine, to see if they have the product available for dropshipping. And if all else fails, you can simply call various brick-and-mortar wholesalers or dropshippers and ask them if they have what you need. To find brick-and-mortar wholesalers or dropshippers to call, simply look in your local phone book or visit Yellowpages.com.

Selling E-Books

E-books are the same as ‘regular’ books only they are in electronic form. They can be read on computers, PDAs, special e-book readers or smart phones. In terms of topics, e-books can be fiction, non-fiction or informative self-help books. However, in the world of Internet marketing, most e-books that are distributed tend to be of an informative nature. In fact, do you remember reading about Clickbank earlier? If you want to see examples of the types of e-books that webmasters are more likely to sell, simply look through Clickbank’s product listings. Alternatively, you can also do a search on E-Bay for e-books that are available for auction.

So, how do you obtain e-books for sale? If you have a talent for writing, you can simply create one yourself. You can use Microsoft Word or special e-book software to accomplish this goal. If you don’t have a talent for writing, you can hire a ghostwriter or buy either private label content or e-books with resale rights. Private label content should be what you go after if you want to change anything within the e-book. On the other hand, if your only goal is to sell, then getting e-books with resale rights is the way to go.
Two excellent sites for finding private label content and resale e-books are Infogoround.com and Ebookwholesaler.com, respectively. In terms of finding a ghostwriter, you can use freelancing sites like Getafreelancer.com or Elance.com to hire an individual or even a company.

CPA Ads

Ads that are Cost Per Action, (or CPA), are similar in appearance to pay-per-click ads. Like pay-per-click ads, they show themselves in the form of small text advertisements on the top, bottom, left or right sides of the website. Yet, unlike pay-per-click ads, they pay when an action occurs. This action could be a visitor making a sale or signing themselves up as a lead, but that’s the extent of it. Clicks in and of themselves are not considered valid actions.

Of the CPA Ad networks used by Internet marketers, Azoogle is the most well-known. Although many webmasters see it as an ‘alternative’ to pay-per-clicks, it can still be a useful income stream. However, the downside is that Azoogle is more strict when it comes to who they will accept into their network. So, you may want to hold off applying for them until you get some quality traffic for your website.

Pay-per-click advertisements

Pay-per-click advertisements / PPA show a list of ads on your site.  If one of these ads are clicked on by your visitors, you receive a commission.  This commission can range from as low as .01 to as high as $66, though most of the time you will earn just a few cents.  Still, if you can get a lot of legitimate clicks to these ads, (with legitimate being clicks from genuine visitors and not from yourself or ‘bots), you can easily make hundreds, maybe even thousands with pay-per-clicks.  Take a look at the screenshot below to get an idea of what you would be making your money from if you decide to use a pay-per-click. 

The sections circled in red are what typical pay-per-click ads look like.  In this example, the ads are indicative of Google Adsense.  Ads from other companies would generally look the same, with the only difference being who’s listed as the sponsor.  However, keep in mind that depending on the contract of the pay-per-click network you decide to work with, you might only be limited to showing just their advertisements.  Of course, this is just when it comes to the pay-per-click arena.  You would still be free to show as many advertisements from other income streams as you want, provided that your site offers worthwhile content for the visitor.   

In terms of the approval process for pay-per-clicks, it’s similar to affiliate marketing, though usually these networks are not as strict.  As long as your site is not promoting hate or excessive violence, more than likely it will get approved.  

What Is Affiliate marketing ?

What Is Affiliate marketing ? the affiliate marketing is when you promote another company’s / personal website in return for a commission.  This commission can be generated in a number of ways, though the most common is when a sale, lead, or click is actually made from your advertising methods.  Less popular ways of getting commission could be based on if a company’s URL has received a click, or if their ads received impressions, (which are simply the number of times an ad has been viewed).  Either way, promotional methods would be the same regardless of how commission is generated.  This means you would either advertise the URL directly or use the URL within a banner.  In both cases the URL would contain special coding that would trace back to your affiliate account.  This is done so you can be properly credited if your visitors take the actions that a company desires.  

Most of the major companies on the Internet are using affiliate marketing.  However, they do not necessarily advertise their affiliate opportunities blatantly.  Most of the time you’ll have to scroll down to the bottom of the site, where you’ll find in smaller font ‘Affiliate Program,’ ‘Affiliates’ or similar wording.  For example, take a look at the screenshot below of the bottom portion of the site BestBuy.com.  


Can you see where the circle is?  This is where you would go to find information about BestBuy.com’s affiliate program.  If you were to click on this link, you would be taken to a signup page.  On this page you would have to enter in general information such as your name, address, telephone number and site information.  Once this info is submitted, you’ll have to wait a few days to see if your site is approved.  Indeed, this process is the same for virtually all types of affiliate programs whether it’s BestBuy.com’s or another website.  

If you’re not interested in signing up for affiliate programs through an individual company’s website, you can consider joining an affiliate network.  With an affiliate network, you can apply for more than one company at the same time.  But first, you must get approval from the network itself.  You do this by offering the same information as you would if you were applying to an individual affiliate program.  This would be your name, address, telephone number and site information.  You may also need to fill out a Form 1099, depending on the affiliate network.  Once you get approved, you’ll get access to an account manager where you can start applying for the affiliate programs of specific companies. 

One of the most popular affiliate networks around is Commission Junction.  All you really need to get approved with them is a URL, which, (as you will learn about later in this e-book), you can get through a web hosting company or a domain name service.  After you provide this information, they’ll let you decide what companies you want to work for.  When you are ready for this step, everything will be conveniently laid out for you categorically.  The screenshot below provides a visual of some of the many categories CJ allows you to choose from for your affiliate programs. 



Another widely-used affiliate network is Clickbank.  Signing up with Clickbank is easier than even signing up with Commission Junction, since a URL is not required and the approval process is done instantly.  However, Clickbank is not as extensive as Commission Junction.  All you are able to sell through them are e-books and software.  Yet, the network has over 10,000 of these products, giving you great latitude for what you should promote.