Three Strategies to Increase Website Traffic

Three Strategies to Increase Website Traffic
No matter what your real purpose is for having a website,
the fact remains that you want traffic to it. Perhaps you
put up a website to establish an online venue for your
friends and family to get together and share messages,
photographs, and whatnot. Or perhaps you're an online
entrepreneur looking to market your business' products or
services to Internet users. Whatever its purpose, a
website needs traffic - the more traffic, the better.

But a perennial problem remains: how do you increase
website traffic? Aside from shelling out money for those
"traffic building" packages or paying for links (which is
getting to be really hazardous to your website's page
rankings and overall standing with Google), there are still
several strategies for driving traffic to your website -
and keeping them there. I'm going to present you with a
few good ones:

Keyword Searches - There are several keyword tools on the
Internet that can help you increase web site traffic, if
you know how to use them properly. I'm talking about tools
like Yahoo!'s KW Selector Tool, Wordtracker, KWDiscovery,
and Google's KW Tool, to name a few. Using these tools,
you can search for high-traffic keywords or phrases that
have some relevance to your business or website, but with
very little or no advertisers using them at all. These
keywords will help you develop your business' brand and
your website's exposure to search engines.

Just be sure to provide your visitors with the kind of
content they're looking for - whether in the form of listed
resources, articles, multimedia, or the like. Doing so
will help your site get the best kind of publicity there is
in the form of viral marketing - where word of mouth about
the quality of your site spreads like wildfire, bringing
more traffic to your website and keeping them there.

Controversy is the Key - Sometimes emotions get the better
of people, especially when they see, hear, or read about
something that they strongly feel about. In this case, why
not channel these emotions into traffic for your website?
Your main targets will be impassioned and (sometimes)
overzealous Internet users who harbor strong feelings about
a particular topic. Just generate controversial content
using articles, blog posts, videos, or statistical reports
(whichever method is applicable).

After generating this content, you must be ready to defend
your position through blog posts, comments, forums, and
anything else that could be useful or appropriate. If done
effectively, this method will increase web site traffic for
you through various sources, but most of it may come
directly from the individual or organization you
challenged. Make sure that you handle all feedback and
discussions in a professional manner, though. Doing so
will allow you to develop a respectable persona online,
even with those whom you are disagreeing with.

Cover Important Events - Of course, the type of event
varies according to your particular interests and the niche
of your website. Gaming expos, tech shows, the like - all
can be taken advantage of to bring great and updated
content to your website, and droves of traffic along with
it. Try to cover the event as much as possible by taking
pictures, shooting some videos, making new friends and
acquaintances, and taking detailed notes all the while.

Of course, make sure that everyone knows you're going to
feature all this stuff on your site within the next few
days (the sooner the better). You can really increase
website traffic through this method, and the amount of
traffic you can get may vary from hundreds to thousands,
and maybe even tens of thousands. It all depends on the
popularity and size of the event itself. As an additional
tip, underground or exclusive events make for better
coverage - but be sure to get permission first.

There are a lot more excellent strategies to increase
website traffic, and I'm pretty sure you know a few others
already. Effective use of these methods will allow you to
see a boost to your website traffic for a long time to come.

----------------------------------------------------
Richard Legg is a web traffic expert and generates over 1.5
Million visitors a year to just one of his websites.
Discover how you can instantly increase website traffic for
free at http://www.MyInstantTraffic.com

How To Monetize A Blog Or Forum

How To Monetize A Blog Or Forum
Blogs and forums are ideal "traffic magnets" for a website.
Your website's visitors know that they are frequently
updated, and that they are interactive, so they keep
returning to "join the conversation."

Search engines know that they are frequently updated, so
search engine spiders frequent return to re-index their
content. Properly configured blogs will "ping" the search
engines and directories each time that they are posted to,
constantly calling the search engine spiders back.

Since blogs and forums even come pre-installed in C-panel
on many hosting accounts, getting a website going can be as
simple as registering a domain name, hosting it at a host
that offers C-panel, and with just a few clicks of a
button, selecting the blogging or forum platform that you
want to use.

You can even customize the look and feel of that blog or
forum later if you want to. That way, you can literally
have a website up and running in UNDER an hour. All that
you need to do is make the blog or forum your homepage, and
your site is literally ready for the world!

The big question has always been, how do you then earn
revenue from that blog or forum. Here are some options
that I use and recommend:

1) Use your blog or forum to build a niche mailing list
that you then market to via email. Simply post a
subscription form right into the html code of the blog or
forum that invites your visitors to join your mailing
list. If they enjoy the content on your blog or forum,
many visitors will subscribe. You'll build a mailing list
fairly effortless over time.

If you're really lazy, that mailing list subscription can
be to an "evergreen" newsletter. That is, you can write,
or have written, a series of email messages that each new
subscriber gets in sequence when they sign up. Put together
52 issues that are scheduled to go out once a week, or 24
issues that are set to go out every 2 weeks, and you have a
newsletter that essentially "runs itself" for a year.

Each issue of your newsletter could contain: a simple
article, an editorial, and a product recommendation. It
doesn't have to be any more difficult than that.

I write each issue of my newsletter fresh, but do know
people who use the "evergreen model." They simple set the
autoresponder sequence to start over again when the last
issue is reached, then they periodically add new issues to
the series or revise outdated issues.

If you'd like to see how I've integrated a subscribe box
right into my blog, you can check it out at:
http://WillieCrawford.com/blog/

With a newsletter, the most often missed point is that you
DO need to sell your subscribers on signing up. You do need
to give them a compelling reason, assure them that you'll
protect their data, and instruct them on exactly how to
signup.

2) Use your blog or forum to sell affiliate products. This
can be as simple as putting graphics and product
recommendations right into your menu bar. I do that on my
blog at the url above.

On my blog, I now sell affiliate products that pay me 50 to
100% commission, and that pay me instantly. If you check
out my blog at the url above, you'll notice an animated
150 x 600 banner that advertises several products.

When a website visitor clicks on that banner and buys one
of those products I earn 100% commission, and it's
instantly deposited directly to my Paypal account. Not only
do I earn a steady stream of commissions from my blogs and
forums, but I don't have to wait on slow-paying affiliate
programs.

The banner on my blog is called "Niche Widget" and is was
added to my blog simply by copying and pasting a tiny bit
of code into the webpage. It will work on ANY blog, forum,
or webpage, even on your Faceback or YouTube (or other
social networking websites) webpages.

In fact, adding the Niche Widget to sites like Facebook or
YouTube is as simple as clicking on the Widget where it
says "Grab This Widget." This prompts you to log into any
of over a dozen social networking sites and AUTOMATICALLY
add the widget to your profile. However, that is primarily
designed to send your widget viral, and have lots of others
passing along YOUR affiliate link. To get paid you need
to click on the link that says "Make Money With It!"

What could be easier?

With Niche widget you can choose from a variety of niches
ranging from pets, to relationships, to marketing, to
food, or health, and the widget will display ads paying you
from 50 - 100% on products related to that niche. The
database has over 2000 different digital product in it.

To get the Niche Widget absolutely free, you just visit
http://Niche-Widgets.com and sign up. There are premium
accounts, but you can go with the free account if desired.
The difference is that premium accounts pay higher
commissions and pay you a percentage of sales on free
accounts when others sign up through you.

With the premium account, when someone who signs up through
you earns 50% commission, you earn 25% commission, and the
owner on Niche Widgets earns the other 25%.

I really like the system. It was earning me MORE than
Google AdSense the very first day that I installed it.

3) Google AdSense or other pay per click programs. You
register for one of these accounts, insert the code into
your page, and then you basically "sell your targeted
traffic."

The AdSense code displays related ads on your blog or
forum, and then when someone clicks on an ad, that
advertise pays Google for the traffic, and Google pays you
an undisclosed percentage of that advertiser's payment (for
each click generated).

This was at one time my favorite revenue model because it
required very little work. You simply insert the code into
your webpages, blogs, forums, etc., and then someone else
finds the advertises who pay you. However, after only a
little testing, and noticing a higher revenue stream, I AM
replacing AdSense on most of my site with Niche Widget.
You can get that again at:

http://Niche-Widgets.com

4) Your own products. If you have your own products, you
can market those directly from your blog or forum just as
you do affiliate products. For example, I have both a blog
and a forum on my soul food recipes site. On both the blog
and the forum, I run an ad for a cookbook that I wrote and
sell copies of EVERYDAY.

Since I know that many of my repeat visitors already own my
cookbook, I also use to run Google AdSense ads, but now
use the Niche Widget.

The Niche Widget displays rotating ads for other cooking
related digital products... mainly cookbooks.

5) Product Reviews. It also makes perfect sense to write
reviews of products and services related to your niche and
then post those on your blogs or forums. I do that by
writing reviews and posting related articles on my blogs
and forums.

This works because the reviews, or articles, containing
niche specific keywords let the search engines know to rank
my blogs or forums highly for those keywords. This content
(these reviews) posted regularly, are what call the search
engine spiders back time after time to keep re-indexing my
sites.

I've just outlined five ways that you can monetize a blog
or forum. On many of my sites, the blog or forum is EASILY
the most visited page on the entire site. Visitors will
often visit the blog or forum on your site repeatedly, and
NEVER venture off the blog or forum to check out the other
sections of your site.

Therefore, if you do want to earn a living from your
website, it is critical that you use proven effective ways
to monetize your blogs and forums. I've just given you
FIVE that earn thousands of dollars per month for me :-)

----------------------------------------------------
Willie Crawford is an internationally-acclaimed
speaker,author, seminar and radio show host, and leading
Internet marketing expert. When not out fishing in the Gulf
of Mexico, you'll find Willie sharing his 11 1/2 years of
online marketing experience with members of The Internet
Marketing Inner Circle
Join them at: http://TheInternetMarketingInnerCircle.com

Will Offering a Free Course Cannibalize Your Sales?

Will Offering a Free Course Cannibalize Your Sales?
One of the biggest fears people have about offering a free
course or free sample chapters of their online product is
that this will cannibalize their actual sales.

This was certainly our fear too when we first started
adopting this strategy. But we soon found that the free
course increased sales and signups by close to 100%!

The graph below shows signups and sales on a test site we
implemented for a client. We first attempted to go directly
for the sale.

This experiment lasted 6 weeks. Signups hovered around 200
per week while sales were around 100 units. People signed
up not to receive a free course but to get on a mailing
list for special offers.

We later started offering a free course. Visitors on the
main page of the site could no longer sign up for special
offers. Instead, they could sign up for a free online
course spanning 3 weeks.

At the end of the course they would receive an email
promoting a special offer. 8 weeks after offering the free
course, total signups had more than doubled!

The total increase was 105%. Sales too, shot up - by 96%.
Rather than cannibalizing sales, offering the free course
had actually doubled them.

So don't worry about losing sales by offering a free course
or free information. Anything you can do to put yourself in
further contact with your visitors can boost sales.

And if your product is good, a free course will inevitably
result in more sales.

So how to design your free course? Designing Your Free
Course When designing your free course, follow these 2
rules:

Rule 1: Give Away Just Enough to Create Desire The first
thing you need to do is decide what bits of information
you're going to give away.

You want to give away just enough to entice the reader to
purchase your full product. Try to craft your free offer so
that it allows you to email the subscriber with free
information at least 7 times.

Rule 2: Give it Away Slowly Second, you must spread out the
information over several days. Let's say you're selling a
book on competitive rock climbing. Your book contains 29
chapters. You decide to give out 7 chapters for free.

You DO NOT want to let the subscriber download ALL 7
chapters in one go.

Let them sign up to receive one chapter every 2 - 3 days.
By spreading it out this way, you allow yourself more time
to form a relationship with the reader.

You also make it easier for them to consume the 7 free
chapters by spreading them out rather than handing it to
them in one go. Remember, you need to contact the
subscriber around 7 times on average before generating a
sale.

If your free course is a software product, then you can let
the subscriber download a limited version of the product
(with some features turned off). You should always require
subscribers to provide an email address before downloading
and you should email them a friendly tip or suggestion
every few days.

The purpose of the email is to remind them to consume the
product and to create a bond with them. Simply allowing
your subscribers to download a software product and then
forgetting about them is not a smart thing to do.

Create a relationship! Setting Up the Course Your free
course should start with a welcome email followed by Lesson
1.

Every 2-3 days the subscriber should receive another lesson
or nugget of information. We recommend at least 7 lessons
in total. At the end of the 7th lesson, the subscriber
should receive a promotional email offering them a reason
to buy your product immediately.

----------------------------------------------------
Bjorn Brands is a successfull enterprenuer who transitioned
from having his own building company to a great online
business. Check out his site and see for yourself how he
can help you do the same at http://www.moneyacces.com

What Do You Need To Start Making Money Online

What Do You Need To Start Making Money Online
When getting into online marketing what you need to start
making money online depends on what type of work you are
getting into. If you are doing affiliate marketing you do
not need as much as if you were to start your own business.
But assuming you want to start your own web site, there
are a few things that you will need in order to make money
on the internet.

The first thing you will need to make money online now is a
plan of some sort. Having a plan can help you determine
what type of business you want to start, what product you
want to promote, and how you will market the business. You
plan will serve as the basis of your site for how it will
become successful.

The next facet to starting your web site is purchasing a
domain name. Unlike what many people believe, there is
much more that goes into selecting a domain name other than
just picking a name. Your domain name is your identity; it
is what people know you by. Therefore, you want to try to
include your businesses name or specific keywords within
the domain if at all possible.

After selecting a domain name it is time to search for a
web hosting provider. The web host is the key part to you
having success with internet marketing. If you have a poor
web host chances are your site will always be down. You
want to find a web host that is reliable, handles
complaints quickly, and is always ready to respond to your
need.

Once you have your web host, it is time to start creating
your site. This means coming up with a creative business
name, writing fresh and enticing content, and designing a
visually appealing web site. Every little detail can make
or break your site. Therefore take time to produce a site
that will catch the visitor's eye right away.

Lastly, you want to begin marketing your site the second it
is up and running. The only way you can begin to make
money online now is if you begin promoting it. DO NOT wait
to start promoting your site until it is further developed.
All this will do is take away from potential traffic and
business you could be getting. The sooner you begin
marketing the sooner you can get your first sell.

There are a lot of details to pay attention to when
starting an internet marketing web site. Before you can do
anything, though, you have to have a plan, a domain name,
and a web host. These three things will get you started so
you can begin making money online.

----------------------------------------------------
Wake up. People are making fortunes online passively. Learn
something and improve yourself. => http://www.abunza947.com

Starting A Online Business

Starting A Online Business
Starting a successful on-line business is not an easy thing
to do. One of the most difficult parts is separating the
hype from reality. If you are new to internet marketing
then you have already seen the huge number of ads trying to
get you to use their 'secret' method to making thousands of
dollars on the internet.

Unfortunately, for most people this is a really daunting
task and very few actually succeed. The reason for most
people is that they end up purchasing scam after scam and
do not find a business opportunity that works for them.

There are many different ways that you can make money
online. The most important is to choose a program that will
suit your personality. This could be network marketing,
affiliate programs, advertising, selling your own programs
or ebay. The important thing is that you need to learn the
skills to succeed.

In any case, using online opportunities to make money at
home is fairly simple. All you need are a couple of basic
things to get started. These basics include a product,
people who want your product, a way for customers to buy
the product and a way to deliver the product quickly and
easily.

Whether you go with direct sales or affiliate marketing,
you need to find people who want what you have to offer.
This is called your "market" and can be identified with a
little research. Finding people who want your product is
called building a list. A list that is well researched can
be extremely profitable.

Make sure you choose an business opportunity you are
familiar with. Being familiar with an industry will give
you an advantage and a head start, compared to an industry
you are unfamiliar with. Being familiar with the industry
will also keep you interested. Losing interest and becoming
bored with your internet business could easily happen when
taking on a new challenge and niche you have no experience
with.

In summary an online business fulfills a lot of people's
dreams of owning a business. The drive to work from home is
what fuels a lot of these desires and dreams. However even
an online business can be tough to get started and running
properly because it shares some of the similar problems of
offline businesses of requiring focus and time management
to be in place.

All businesses whether, online or offline, require traffic
(customers). This is the life blood of any business.
Getting this traffic or customers is a time and cost
management decision the business owner must be aware of
from the beginning.

----------------------------------------------------
Billy Vaughn is a successful entrepreneur who has been
involved in network marketing since 2004. He now builds his
business primarily online via internet marketing. For a
limited time, Billy is offering mentoring to those serious
about achieving success online.
http://www.LittleTicketToWealth.com