Click Here!
Advertising your business effectively on the internet is still the
single most important skill to learn for any business to survive online.
So why is it so difficult to find the effective advertising sources you need?
I probably don’t have to tell you that the internet is full of free advertising. It
comes in many forms, from websites that advertise other websites, to text-box
ads on the sides of pages, to spyware, spam, blogs, bookmarking tools, & autosurfing…
There are almost too many ways to get visitors to your website or blog
now, because creative entrepreneurs are figuring out new ways to do it daily.
This industry has grown so large in fact that there are even many FREE ways to
get traffic to your website. Legitimate traffic for free… And plenty of it, too. This
represents an awesome opportunity for new business owners without a huge
advertising budget.
That’s what this Encyclopedia is all about. I’ve spent years exploring, building,
and testing these resources, and I’m going to share them all with you today. I’m
even going to review them all for you with quick-glance indicators that reflect
each free traffic source’s:
Quantity (How many visitors you can get.)
Quality (How Targeted the Visitors can be to your niche.)
Time to Delivery (How fast all of your traffic can arrive.)
They will be rated on a scale of one to five, 5 being the best possible. A Zero rating means that it’s not applicable.
It is my goal for this book to be a completely indispensable handbook for all online businesses that advertise.
A common misconception that many webmasters have is that all free forms of
traffic are very low in quality. Some will even quote the instances that software “bots” will be delivered as a visitor instead of a human.
Scams do happen from time to time, there’s no dismissing it. All of the traffic methods reviewed in this encyclopedia however, are genuine methods that are
usually scam free. A great benefit about using free advertising is that there’s no reason for a scammer to try to target you, since you’re not a paying customer. No
credit card number, no scam. A mild case of spyware is the worst you should
expect. (So get your anti-Spyware and anti-virus up to date before trying some of these!) The fascinating thing is that research has revealed that these forms of traffic are not usually just cheap, un-targeted surfers. There’s plenty of free Pay-Per-Click traffic out there, just as targeted as Google’s AdWords. In fact, when you get down to the “P” section, I’m showing everyone reading this book exactly where they can pick up their own free 100,983 visitors in paid, WELL-TARGETED
traffic! There are also free ways to get incredibly large amounts of traffic, that only require a modest amount of your time working on the front end. SEO, Link Building, and Article Marketing all can make your site the most popular site on the net for your niche market, yet they don’t cost a single penny to do correctly.
Furthermore, targeted traffic isn’t the only traffic you’ll ever likely need. I’m sure you would be ok with a couple hundred thousand semi-targeted or Non-targeted
visitors on your site tomorrow, building up your Alexa Ranking and showing the world how powerful a draw your website has… Also, with those kinds of
numbers, you stand to make more than just a sale or two, no matter how
unrelated the referring site is. I’m going to spill the beans on a method to do just that for you under the “Traffic
Exchanges” section. The rest of this book is just as useful, in fact, what I’ve mentioned here are not the only juicy bits! However, juicy or not, you must choose a strategy for your marketing efforts and stick to it, because different strategies require different types of advertising.
What it all comes down to is which KINDS of traffic you need for your marketing strategy. You’ll be sure to find a few in this eBook to fit your needs. So before we get started, let me reiterate that every technique in this encyclopedia is completely free for you to use to drive some form of traffic to your website with. All techniques listed here have been tested, not just by me, but by other online marketers and even ratings services in some cases.
There are no sources of traffic here that require you to use a credit card. (Unless you upgrade to some premium level of service, of course.) With these free
services alone, anyone easily build up enough traffic to their site to make you wonder how Google can charge so much for AdWords listings!
So why am I giving this knowledge away for free, instead of hoarding all the traffic for myself? I thought you might ask that… I certainly would.
You’ll find the answer to that question here under the letters “E” and “V” - This isa Viral eBook, which is one of the methods with the highest “Quantity” & “Time to Delivery” out of all free traffic generation types that there is. Yes, I’m getting tons of free traffic from this eBook, because it is so jam-packed with useful
information. Keep that in mind as you read any section of this book; no matter which of the methods you use to drive your traffic, it all works out in the end that the only real way to convince anyone online to visit your website is to offer them
something valuable.
Anyway, I hope you find this Encyclopedia as useful as many of my past readers
have, and that it helps to make your business a huge success, no matter what
that business is. I’m rooting for you, and if you ever need any advanced tactics
on any aspect of your Home Business, swing by the Home Biz Factory and I’ll be
sure to have just the training you’re looking for, all for free.
To Your Surefire Success!
Luke W Parker
The Surefire Success System
The Home Biz Factory
Thursday, January 13, 2011
Affiliate Programs
If you have a website that sells a product online, and you’ve
built in a fair amount of room into your price for it, then you
have an opportunity here to use a GREAT free traffic source.
In fact, running your own Affiliate Program helps you in more ways than one. By
signing up affiliates to go out and sell your product for you, you’ll not only build a
huge salesforce, (assuming you make your offer tempting for them) but you will
also be building hordes of one-way, targeted links back to your website as they
advertise in the various places.
Drawbacks?
You must be very persuasive to get an interested following to do serious selling
for your product.
To overcome this issue, simply build more room into your price so that the
monetary gain for your affiliates is too tempting for them to refuse. 50%
commissions are quite standard these days on informational products, with some
products go all the way up to 100% commission structure, so that the seller can
build up a newsletter list.
I would have to say that, especially when dealing with Clickbank (the #1
infoproduct marketplace for affiliates) 75% commissions to your affiliates is the
way to go. That’s just because there are so many products out there competing
for an affiliate’s attention… So since 75% is the maximum that clickbank allows,
you’ll soon learn that affiliates will swarm to these products first and you’ll build
up a sales force (and incoming links) quickly. –And you can always turn down the
commission later.
Naturally, if your product is not available for online delivery (i.e. software only)
then the ability to attract affiliates will be much more difficult for you… Not
impossible though, because some affiliates understand the importance of offering
their readers a full range of products built around a central niche theme.
Having an affiliate program that offers multiple tiers helps as well. There isn’t an
affiliate marketer alive who wouldn’t like to earn residual income from the work of
others.
There are two different ways to get started with your own affiliate program. Both
can be free, and of course you pay your affiliates out of sales afterwards.
The most common form of affiliate program is when a webmaster loads software,
usually some form of PHP or Perl script onto the server, integrating it with the
website. These have been sold for years to webmasters and lately have even
been offered for free.
The second type is a service run off-site, through providers such as
ClickBank.com, Commission Junction, or PayDotCom. (There are many
other, non-free ones too.) They do the added work for you of helping your
products get found by more affiliates, and they even feature your product in an
online marketplace of theirs. Naturally, they want their cut of the product’s sale
too, usually in the range of 4% to 8%. (Some let you even split that fee with your
affiliates.)
These services may be more effective in the long run for the average infoproduct
seller, but quite often they do not offer the flexibility that many
webmasters need to best promote their own product line. In those cases, using
server-side software scripts is the only way to go.
Finding a free copy of your own Affiliate program software to load onto your web
server is quite painless, as there are now several different scripts to choose from.
To find your own script, simply google the phrases “free affiliate program
software” or “free affiliate management software.” They should both return helpful
results for you.
Naturally, you’ll have to investigate each one in depth to see if it runs on your
particular server in your software environment. No matter which way you go,
there will be plenty of research involved; this is not something you can start up in
the next 20 minutes. (More like 2-7 days.) Once it starts though, assuming you
make your offer attractive enough, this could really bring in hordes of traffic
immediately.
built in a fair amount of room into your price for it, then you
have an opportunity here to use a GREAT free traffic source.
In fact, running your own Affiliate Program helps you in more ways than one. By
signing up affiliates to go out and sell your product for you, you’ll not only build a
huge salesforce, (assuming you make your offer tempting for them) but you will
also be building hordes of one-way, targeted links back to your website as they
advertise in the various places.
Drawbacks?
You must be very persuasive to get an interested following to do serious selling
for your product.
To overcome this issue, simply build more room into your price so that the
monetary gain for your affiliates is too tempting for them to refuse. 50%
commissions are quite standard these days on informational products, with some
products go all the way up to 100% commission structure, so that the seller can
build up a newsletter list.
I would have to say that, especially when dealing with Clickbank (the #1
infoproduct marketplace for affiliates) 75% commissions to your affiliates is the
way to go. That’s just because there are so many products out there competing
for an affiliate’s attention… So since 75% is the maximum that clickbank allows,
you’ll soon learn that affiliates will swarm to these products first and you’ll build
up a sales force (and incoming links) quickly. –And you can always turn down the
commission later.
Naturally, if your product is not available for online delivery (i.e. software only)
then the ability to attract affiliates will be much more difficult for you… Not
impossible though, because some affiliates understand the importance of offering
their readers a full range of products built around a central niche theme.
Having an affiliate program that offers multiple tiers helps as well. There isn’t an
affiliate marketer alive who wouldn’t like to earn residual income from the work of
others.
There are two different ways to get started with your own affiliate program. Both
can be free, and of course you pay your affiliates out of sales afterwards.
The most common form of affiliate program is when a webmaster loads software,
usually some form of PHP or Perl script onto the server, integrating it with the
website. These have been sold for years to webmasters and lately have even
been offered for free.
The second type is a service run off-site, through providers such as
ClickBank.com, Commission Junction, or PayDotCom. (There are many
other, non-free ones too.) They do the added work for you of helping your
products get found by more affiliates, and they even feature your product in an
online marketplace of theirs. Naturally, they want their cut of the product’s sale
too, usually in the range of 4% to 8%. (Some let you even split that fee with your
affiliates.)
These services may be more effective in the long run for the average infoproduct
seller, but quite often they do not offer the flexibility that many
webmasters need to best promote their own product line. In those cases, using
server-side software scripts is the only way to go.
Finding a free copy of your own Affiliate program software to load onto your web
server is quite painless, as there are now several different scripts to choose from.
To find your own script, simply google the phrases “free affiliate program
software” or “free affiliate management software.” They should both return helpful
results for you.
Naturally, you’ll have to investigate each one in depth to see if it runs on your
particular server in your software environment. No matter which way you go,
there will be plenty of research involved; this is not something you can start up in
the next 20 minutes. (More like 2-7 days.) Once it starts though, assuming you
make your offer attractive enough, this could really bring in hordes of traffic
immediately.
Article Marketing (A Subset of Link Building)
Writing articles about your topic of interest and sending them
out to article directories, other websites, and eZines to
publish is an almost ideal way to gain free advertising. I really
can’t recommend it enough for long-term link building campaigns. All you need is
time & writing skills for this self-compounding method to make your website one
of the most respected and authoritative sites on the net.
I realize that this method has been out in the open and even done to death over
the last couple of years, especially with the popular trend called “Bum Marketing,”
however I find that a lot of people who have tried Article Marketing quickly give it
up before seeing any success.
It seems that everyone sets out writing articles, no matter if they do it themselves
or pay someone to do it for them, by submitting one or two articles to the main
article directories found in the more popular article submission software suites,
such as Brad Callen’s great, free Article Submitter software.
Some sort of article submission software is pretty much necessary because it
can take a long time to submit an article to even a handful of websites… The
automation that all of these softwares offer are not just ‘set-it and forget it,’ and
you Don’t want them to be! The way that the Article directories are set up, you
will most definitely still have to go to each site and make sure it populates all the
right fields properly. (But the software makes that much faster.)
The main problem that people have with any article submission software is that
when most people first try them, (I am certainly guilty of this myself) they want to
‘test the waters’ to see if the technique works or not before they commit to it fully.
With most purchases you make in your life, this is a fair strategy - but not when it
comes to an article submission campaign. The real benefit in sending out your
articles is by doing it in bulk, over time.
What proponents of Article Marketing have so far failed to tell me (but I learned
for myself the hard way) is that one or two articles out there pointing back to my
website, no matter how many directories I send it to, is only going to help an itsybitsy,
teeny weenie bit, and then slowly fizzle away.
More than likely it won’t even send a single visitor to my site… It will only help my
PageRank a bit, for a while.
This of course assumes that I haven’t gotten it published by an eZine owner who
has a really big list… Since there is no way to be sure that you can get it
published by an eZine owner with lots of influence, we won’t depend on it for this
example. Think of that as a surprise bonus you can sometime get with this
system, if it happens at all.
The way to surely succeed with articles is to have an article submitted to all the
directories EVERY WEEK, all linking back to the same website. This of course
takes time and patience, which is the only reason that so many people fail at this
strategy.
I don’t feel it’s worth my time every single week to write and submit an article, I’ve
got more important things to do with my life. Worse yet, I’ve so far made a living
from informational AdSense publishing (VRE) sites, so running an article
campaign for each of these 250+ small websites is simply impossible.
However, over the last year I’ve tested 10 different campaigns of article
submission for 10 of those sites, and the one result they all had in common was
that bulk, regular submissions are the key.
I hired someone on rent-a-coder to submit my articles for me once a week for 3
months, and right now (4 months later) a few of those sites are #1 in Google with
no other promotion except for link directory submissions.
It’s a prime example of the tortoise and the hair… But in the first and second
months of the campaign, I was sure my turtle was asleep!
For more advanced instruction on Article Marketing specifics, I even made a film
walking you through the process. You can check that out here:
How to Generate Serious Website Traffic with Article Marketing
Enjoy!
out to article directories, other websites, and eZines to
publish is an almost ideal way to gain free advertising. I really
can’t recommend it enough for long-term link building campaigns. All you need is
time & writing skills for this self-compounding method to make your website one
of the most respected and authoritative sites on the net.
I realize that this method has been out in the open and even done to death over
the last couple of years, especially with the popular trend called “Bum Marketing,”
however I find that a lot of people who have tried Article Marketing quickly give it
up before seeing any success.
It seems that everyone sets out writing articles, no matter if they do it themselves
or pay someone to do it for them, by submitting one or two articles to the main
article directories found in the more popular article submission software suites,
such as Brad Callen’s great, free Article Submitter software.
Some sort of article submission software is pretty much necessary because it
can take a long time to submit an article to even a handful of websites… The
automation that all of these softwares offer are not just ‘set-it and forget it,’ and
you Don’t want them to be! The way that the Article directories are set up, you
will most definitely still have to go to each site and make sure it populates all the
right fields properly. (But the software makes that much faster.)
The main problem that people have with any article submission software is that
when most people first try them, (I am certainly guilty of this myself) they want to
‘test the waters’ to see if the technique works or not before they commit to it fully.
With most purchases you make in your life, this is a fair strategy - but not when it
comes to an article submission campaign. The real benefit in sending out your
articles is by doing it in bulk, over time.
What proponents of Article Marketing have so far failed to tell me (but I learned
for myself the hard way) is that one or two articles out there pointing back to my
website, no matter how many directories I send it to, is only going to help an itsybitsy,
teeny weenie bit, and then slowly fizzle away.
More than likely it won’t even send a single visitor to my site… It will only help my
PageRank a bit, for a while.
This of course assumes that I haven’t gotten it published by an eZine owner who
has a really big list… Since there is no way to be sure that you can get it
published by an eZine owner with lots of influence, we won’t depend on it for this
example. Think of that as a surprise bonus you can sometime get with this
system, if it happens at all.
The way to surely succeed with articles is to have an article submitted to all the
directories EVERY WEEK, all linking back to the same website. This of course
takes time and patience, which is the only reason that so many people fail at this
strategy.
I don’t feel it’s worth my time every single week to write and submit an article, I’ve
got more important things to do with my life. Worse yet, I’ve so far made a living
from informational AdSense publishing (VRE) sites, so running an article
campaign for each of these 250+ small websites is simply impossible.
However, over the last year I’ve tested 10 different campaigns of article
submission for 10 of those sites, and the one result they all had in common was
that bulk, regular submissions are the key.
I hired someone on rent-a-coder to submit my articles for me once a week for 3
months, and right now (4 months later) a few of those sites are #1 in Google with
no other promotion except for link directory submissions.
It’s a prime example of the tortoise and the hair… But in the first and second
months of the campaign, I was sure my turtle was asleep!
For more advanced instruction on Article Marketing specifics, I even made a film
walking you through the process. You can check that out here:
How to Generate Serious Website Traffic with Article Marketing
Enjoy!
AutoSurfing
A great method to bring in tons of completely
uninterested traffic. See “Traffic Exchanges”
uninterested traffic. See “Traffic Exchanges”
Blasting - (Scam Alert!)
This generic term is sometimes used loosely for sending out
large amounts of (assumed non-spam) email, such as to
multiple eZines or Safelists. See “eZines.”
However, there is a lesser-understood ‘technique’ called Blasting that scammers
commonly use to sell software. Beware any Software that claims to “Blast” your
website out to large numbers of directories, other websites, classified Ads, FFAs,
or even “free” eZine publishers. If they are charging money for this software or
service, you won’t ever hear from them again.
If they aren’t charging money for it, then they’re harvesting your email address
and you’ll be the next “blastee.”
large amounts of (assumed non-spam) email, such as to
multiple eZines or Safelists. See “eZines.”
However, there is a lesser-understood ‘technique’ called Blasting that scammers
commonly use to sell software. Beware any Software that claims to “Blast” your
website out to large numbers of directories, other websites, classified Ads, FFAs,
or even “free” eZine publishers. If they are charging money for this software or
service, you won’t ever hear from them again.
If they aren’t charging money for it, then they’re harvesting your email address
and you’ll be the next “blastee.”
Blogs (A subset of Link Building)
These great tools act as duplicate websites that are extremely
easy and free to set up, and can generate traffic very quickly.
All you need is some content, not even very good content,
and you’ve got a great “Second site” for the search engine to follow your links to
and from.
Ever since Google bought Blogger.com, Googlebot has paid a lot of attention to
what’s happening in “the Blogosphere.” Search engines still love to spider Blog
content more often than other types of websites, since blogs were invented to be
easy for SE Spiders to traverse in the first place.
A unique feature of even the free blogs like Wordpress & blogger is that you can
set them up to automatically “ping” certain Search Engines or even social
bookmarking sites to request that the spider comes out for another visit every
time new content is added.
However, the hype about blogs has mostly died down now. (Thank goodness!) At
first it was well justified, and then a method of website marketing called “Blog and
Ping” was overused in early 2006 by most of the Internet Marketers of the time.
It involved making tons of blogs with almost no content in them except a link to
their website, and then setting them all to ping immediately… This caused
Google to hold an emergency war council and now the Ping feature is only
marginally better than not at all. –It is still an advantage over normal websites
though!
The other great thing about a Blog is that you can get attention to it, not just by
pinging but with any of the thousands of social bookmarking tools, per POST, not
per website, which is a powerful thing. There are many marketers who are using
Wordpress blogs installed on their own servers to generate 4,000 unique visitors
every day right now! –Not peaks, but Constant traffic… Although they do have to
come up with good content daily for that to stay at that level.
You can read a lot more about Web 2.0 and Social bookmarking in later
chapters, including how they relate to blogs, but the thing to decide at this point is
if you want to build a huge, high-tech blog yourself, or if you just want to use
other’s blogs for some easy traffic.
Check out this service by none other than Mike Filsaime: The Free Advertising
Blog. It’s an interesting example of a blog turned into a free-for all ad posting
site. He’s basically just allowed anyone to sign up for free and start posting their
ads, even in full HTML. –With a few hundred or thousand blog postings a day, I
get the idea that no one’s ever going to read these things… But since it’s a Blog,
you know Googlebot will!
A BLOG with thousands of posts a day?? Let’s just say that the jury is still out on
how long this will last. –But you might as well sign up and get your free one-way
link to your sites with it while they’re still valuable.
The reason I mentioned Free Ad Blog wasn’t just to build downlines, but I wanted
to demonstrate a point; it’s easy to find blogs that are watched by search engine
spider constantly, so you can submit one-way links back to your site. This is by
no means the only blog online that will let you post for free.
So, a big bloggin’ operation or simply small blog hit n’ run jobs; It’s up to you how
to use weblogs. They are extremely flexible & powerful when coupled with social
bookmarking tools, and the Blogosphere is growing exponentially, daily. But no
matter which you choose, I recommend you start somewhere, because we’re all
going to be blogging eventually if we still have a need for any traffic.
easy and free to set up, and can generate traffic very quickly.
All you need is some content, not even very good content,
and you’ve got a great “Second site” for the search engine to follow your links to
and from.
Ever since Google bought Blogger.com, Googlebot has paid a lot of attention to
what’s happening in “the Blogosphere.” Search engines still love to spider Blog
content more often than other types of websites, since blogs were invented to be
easy for SE Spiders to traverse in the first place.
A unique feature of even the free blogs like Wordpress & blogger is that you can
set them up to automatically “ping” certain Search Engines or even social
bookmarking sites to request that the spider comes out for another visit every
time new content is added.
However, the hype about blogs has mostly died down now. (Thank goodness!) At
first it was well justified, and then a method of website marketing called “Blog and
Ping” was overused in early 2006 by most of the Internet Marketers of the time.
It involved making tons of blogs with almost no content in them except a link to
their website, and then setting them all to ping immediately… This caused
Google to hold an emergency war council and now the Ping feature is only
marginally better than not at all. –It is still an advantage over normal websites
though!
The other great thing about a Blog is that you can get attention to it, not just by
pinging but with any of the thousands of social bookmarking tools, per POST, not
per website, which is a powerful thing. There are many marketers who are using
Wordpress blogs installed on their own servers to generate 4,000 unique visitors
every day right now! –Not peaks, but Constant traffic… Although they do have to
come up with good content daily for that to stay at that level.
You can read a lot more about Web 2.0 and Social bookmarking in later
chapters, including how they relate to blogs, but the thing to decide at this point is
if you want to build a huge, high-tech blog yourself, or if you just want to use
other’s blogs for some easy traffic.
Check out this service by none other than Mike Filsaime: The Free Advertising
Blog. It’s an interesting example of a blog turned into a free-for all ad posting
site. He’s basically just allowed anyone to sign up for free and start posting their
ads, even in full HTML. –With a few hundred or thousand blog postings a day, I
get the idea that no one’s ever going to read these things… But since it’s a Blog,
you know Googlebot will!
A BLOG with thousands of posts a day?? Let’s just say that the jury is still out on
how long this will last. –But you might as well sign up and get your free one-way
link to your sites with it while they’re still valuable.
The reason I mentioned Free Ad Blog wasn’t just to build downlines, but I wanted
to demonstrate a point; it’s easy to find blogs that are watched by search engine
spider constantly, so you can submit one-way links back to your site. This is by
no means the only blog online that will let you post for free.
So, a big bloggin’ operation or simply small blog hit n’ run jobs; It’s up to you how
to use weblogs. They are extremely flexible & powerful when coupled with social
bookmarking tools, and the Blogosphere is growing exponentially, daily. But no
matter which you choose, I recommend you start somewhere, because we’re all
going to be blogging eventually if we still have a need for any traffic.
Blog Comments - (A subset of Link Building)
Much like Forum Marketing, commenting on other people’s
Blogs is a great way to build incoming links and also network
in your niche.
Finding blogs that are on your niche topic is as easy as going to Blogger’s search
at: http://search.blogger.com, to a great tech head’s site called Technorati:
http://technorati.com, or directly to Google’s whole web Blog Search at:
http://blogsearch.google.com.
Once you’ve found a blog that is on your topic, I recommend bookmarking it and
the others you find into the same folder so you can watch them from time to time.
What’ you’re looking for is a question that you can answer. If you simply make a
posting that sounds like an advertisement, they you’ll be spamming the blog, and
surely the blog’s owner will delete it, and may even ban your IP address.
The trick is to answer a question someone else asks with your business being
part of the solution. You want to show off your expertise without sounding too
arrogant, and of course you want to get a link in. Always offer help and advice,
and only market yourself when it’s part of a solution to someone else’s question.
The real benefits of this method are long term, as you want to be found by both
SE Spiders and humans alike, talking authoritatively on your niche subject. No
one blog posting will bring in tons of visitors, however, and you aren’t going to
find the ‘ripe’ questions out there every day.
Blogs is a great way to build incoming links and also network
in your niche.
Finding blogs that are on your niche topic is as easy as going to Blogger’s search
at: http://search.blogger.com, to a great tech head’s site called Technorati:
http://technorati.com, or directly to Google’s whole web Blog Search at:
http://blogsearch.google.com.
Once you’ve found a blog that is on your topic, I recommend bookmarking it and
the others you find into the same folder so you can watch them from time to time.
What’ you’re looking for is a question that you can answer. If you simply make a
posting that sounds like an advertisement, they you’ll be spamming the blog, and
surely the blog’s owner will delete it, and may even ban your IP address.
The trick is to answer a question someone else asks with your business being
part of the solution. You want to show off your expertise without sounding too
arrogant, and of course you want to get a link in. Always offer help and advice,
and only market yourself when it’s part of a solution to someone else’s question.
The real benefits of this method are long term, as you want to be found by both
SE Spiders and humans alike, talking authoritatively on your niche subject. No
one blog posting will bring in tons of visitors, however, and you aren’t going to
find the ‘ripe’ questions out there every day.
Banner Ad Exchanges
Most people will agree publicly that they never click on banner
ads. Then they go home and click on them without even knowing it. Banner ads
today are all about creative placement which can work well when done right.
It’s true that they’ve lost their effectiveness significantly… In 1994, webmasters
could EXPECT 5% or more clickthru rates for semi-targeted banner ads! We
were in the infancy of marketing on the internet and back in those days we all
thought that Advertising wouldn’t go very far online! How naive we all were…
But in 2000, Harvard University did an in-depth experiment on web surfing with
the conclusion that we had trained ourselves to avoid looking at banner ads.
Specifically, the strip across the top 10% of the screen was virtually invisible to
us already.
Clickthru rates plummeted from 5% way down to 0.0005%, and I have no idea
where they are today. The same old banner ads simply won’t ever work again.
So, why did I rate them 3 out of 5 for quantity?
Advertisers have figured out how to make banner ads somewhat effective again.
They simply move them around on the page, make them into different shapes,
turn them vertical, or whatever else to vary them from one page to the next.
They look different, and generally webmasters know to only place very targeted
ads on their sites, because the more targeted the ads are to their content, the
better the clickthru rate will be.
The method that allows you to get access to this form of advertising for free is
called a Banner Exchange. Like a traffic exchange, these work by you
exchanging impressions with other webmasters.
All you have to make is a single banner, (obviously the more, the better) and
place it along with your website profile into one of the many Banner Exchange
services. The drawback is that you have to find a site to display other people’s
banners on your site… A catch that most sales websites can’t afford to live with.
If you can find room on your website for such a banner, these do move some
traffic around pretty well now that they’ve divided up all members sites into
categories… That way you’ll only show ads on your site from other websites in
your own general niche. And the more times you show that banner, the more
times yours will be seen.
Overall, it’s an average traffic generation method, nothing too powerful. Perhaps
you’ll have a use for this kind of traffic, but in most cases I’d say that you could
do much better.
If you’re interested, you can easily find a good exchange by googling: "Best
Banner Exchange." Often you’ll see Banner ad exchanges built into other
services mentioned here such as traffic bars and surf exchanges.
Most people will agree publicly that they never click on banner
ads. Then they go home and click on them without even knowing it. Banner ads
today are all about creative placement which can work well when done right.
It’s true that they’ve lost their effectiveness significantly… In 1994, webmasters
could EXPECT 5% or more clickthru rates for semi-targeted banner ads! We
were in the infancy of marketing on the internet and back in those days we all
thought that Advertising wouldn’t go very far online! How naive we all were…
But in 2000, Harvard University did an in-depth experiment on web surfing with
the conclusion that we had trained ourselves to avoid looking at banner ads.
Specifically, the strip across the top 10% of the screen was virtually invisible to
us already.
Clickthru rates plummeted from 5% way down to 0.0005%, and I have no idea
where they are today. The same old banner ads simply won’t ever work again.
So, why did I rate them 3 out of 5 for quantity?
Advertisers have figured out how to make banner ads somewhat effective again.
They simply move them around on the page, make them into different shapes,
turn them vertical, or whatever else to vary them from one page to the next.
They look different, and generally webmasters know to only place very targeted
ads on their sites, because the more targeted the ads are to their content, the
better the clickthru rate will be.
The method that allows you to get access to this form of advertising for free is
called a Banner Exchange. Like a traffic exchange, these work by you
exchanging impressions with other webmasters.
All you have to make is a single banner, (obviously the more, the better) and
place it along with your website profile into one of the many Banner Exchange
services. The drawback is that you have to find a site to display other people’s
banners on your site… A catch that most sales websites can’t afford to live with.
If you can find room on your website for such a banner, these do move some
traffic around pretty well now that they’ve divided up all members sites into
categories… That way you’ll only show ads on your site from other websites in
your own general niche. And the more times you show that banner, the more
times yours will be seen.
Overall, it’s an average traffic generation method, nothing too powerful. Perhaps
you’ll have a use for this kind of traffic, but in most cases I’d say that you could
do much better.
If you’re interested, you can easily find a good exchange by googling: "Best
Banner Exchange." Often you’ll see Banner ad exchanges built into other
services mentioned here such as traffic bars and surf exchanges.
Classified Ads - (A directory of nothing but spam)
Much like a newspaper Classified Ad section, there are
hundreds if not thousands of places online you can submit a
“website promotional” classified Ad to promote your business.
Unfortunately, the format of these things simply invites severe spamming as a
few hundred webmasters out there will continuously spam each single Ad
millions of times, sometimes daily, to the same directory!
You may have never seen one of these things because they are hidden away
where human eyes would not likely go. They are most usually stumbled upon
from the other side, when some scam artist sells a newbie an “Ad Blasting” or
some similar ploy guaranteeing that the poor guy’s listing will be posted in
thousands of different places.
On the bright side, such a listing is placed in a category so that any resulting
traffic would be semi-targeted. Also, Ads are instantly posted to these automatic
boards, so any traffic would be instant as well.
But that’s where my enthusiasm ends. Since there are so many Ads coming in,
yours will only stay on the top page for a few seconds, if that long. To my
knowledge, no one has ever read one of those horrible, spammy ads and no one
in their right mind ever will.
Search Engines avoid these locations like the plague and being found in them
can actually HURT your Search Engine rankings! Quite likely, these listings will
likely do more harm for your site than good.
I highly recommend keeping your distance.
hundreds if not thousands of places online you can submit a
“website promotional” classified Ad to promote your business.
Unfortunately, the format of these things simply invites severe spamming as a
few hundred webmasters out there will continuously spam each single Ad
millions of times, sometimes daily, to the same directory!
You may have never seen one of these things because they are hidden away
where human eyes would not likely go. They are most usually stumbled upon
from the other side, when some scam artist sells a newbie an “Ad Blasting” or
some similar ploy guaranteeing that the poor guy’s listing will be posted in
thousands of different places.
On the bright side, such a listing is placed in a category so that any resulting
traffic would be semi-targeted. Also, Ads are instantly posted to these automatic
boards, so any traffic would be instant as well.
But that’s where my enthusiasm ends. Since there are so many Ads coming in,
yours will only stay on the top page for a few seconds, if that long. To my
knowledge, no one has ever read one of those horrible, spammy ads and no one
in their right mind ever will.
Search Engines avoid these locations like the plague and being found in them
can actually HURT your Search Engine rankings! Quite likely, these listings will
likely do more harm for your site than good.
I highly recommend keeping your distance.
Craigslist - (A Subset of Link Building)
Craigslist is a hugely popular classified Ad site (a true
exception to the other classified ads on the web) that started
out as a simple bulletin board to be shared between a few
friends in San Francisco. It has grown so large and so varied that it reached #24
in Alexa last year! (Currently # 46)
It achieved this by offering a no-frills simple classified-ad listing that was Specific
to your Metropolitan area. If you go and visit Craigslist.org right now, you’ll get
to choose your nearest big city… Naturally a lot of advertisers feel that it’s not
worth their time to place ads to one city at a time, so it really helps promote a
spam-free atmosphere.
Placing your classified ads on Craigslist actually works pretty well, all things
considered. You may have to place your ads in the top 5 or ten largest cities, all
by hand, one at a time, but it clearly had brought a steady albeit skimpy stream of
traffic that sticks around for weeks.
If you’re curious, go to the main page and click under the:
“Your City Craigslist” > “small biz ads” –This is the only clearly marked area
that you’re allowed to post Ads in, although you see them often in other areas as
well. Below is a list of the January 2007 top 20 most-trafficked subdomains at
Craigslist, according to Alexa.com.
• sfbay.craigslist.org - 14%
• newyork.craigslist.org - 10%
• losangeles.craigslist.org - 9%
• seattle.craigslist.org - 4%
• boston.craigslist.org - 3%
• sandiego.craigslist.org - 3%
• vancouver.craigslist.org - 3%
• orangecounty.craigslist.org - 3%
• chicago.craigslist.org - 3%
• portland.craigslist.org - 2%
• denver.craigslist.org - 2%
• washingtondc.craigslist.org - 2%
• phoenix.craigslist.org - 2%
• atlanta.craigslist.org - 2%
• lasvegas.craigslist.org - 2%
• toronto.craigslist.org - 2%
• minneapolis.craigslist.org - 2%
• dallas.craigslist.org - 2%
• sacramento.craigslist.org - 2%
• austin.craigslist.org - 1%
Craigslist is a hugely popular classified Ad site (a true
exception to the other classified ads on the web) that started
out as a simple bulletin board to be shared between a few
friends in San Francisco. It has grown so large and so varied that it reached #24
in Alexa last year! (Currently # 46)
It achieved this by offering a no-frills simple classified-ad listing that was Specific
to your Metropolitan area. If you go and visit Craigslist.org right now, you’ll get
to choose your nearest big city… Naturally a lot of advertisers feel that it’s not
worth their time to place ads to one city at a time, so it really helps promote a
spam-free atmosphere.
Placing your classified ads on Craigslist actually works pretty well, all things
considered. You may have to place your ads in the top 5 or ten largest cities, all
by hand, one at a time, but it clearly had brought a steady albeit skimpy stream of
traffic that sticks around for weeks.
If you’re curious, go to the main page and click under the:
“Your City Craigslist” > “small biz ads” –This is the only clearly marked area
that you’re allowed to post Ads in, although you see them often in other areas as
well. Below is a list of the January 2007 top 20 most-trafficked subdomains at
Craigslist, according to Alexa.com.
• sfbay.craigslist.org - 14%
• newyork.craigslist.org - 10%
• losangeles.craigslist.org - 9%
• seattle.craigslist.org - 4%
• boston.craigslist.org - 3%
• sandiego.craigslist.org - 3%
• vancouver.craigslist.org - 3%
• orangecounty.craigslist.org - 3%
• chicago.craigslist.org - 3%
• portland.craigslist.org - 2%
• denver.craigslist.org - 2%
• washingtondc.craigslist.org - 2%
• phoenix.craigslist.org - 2%
• atlanta.craigslist.org - 2%
• lasvegas.craigslist.org - 2%
• toronto.craigslist.org - 2%
• minneapolis.craigslist.org - 2%
• dallas.craigslist.org - 2%
• sacramento.craigslist.org - 2%
• austin.craigslist.org - 1%
Doorway Sites - (A subset of Link Building)
Old timers will remember this phrase with very negative
connotations. Around the year 2000, a “Doorway Site” meant
a “fake” site that looked just like the site you were going to,
which existed just to fool the Search Engines into thinking
that they are multiple sites with different keywords, yet humans wouldn’t know
that they were separate at all. (They could cover more keywords that way.)
That trick is so obvious to every Search Engine now that no one even attempts it
anymore. They’d get their IP address banned for sure.
Nowadays, a lot of Internet Marketers are reviving the phrase to mean a slightly
different, much more SE-friendly strategy of link building.
These new ‘Doorway Sites’ are usually just blogs or informational websites such
as an “AdSense Farm” site. However, its main purpose, whether it displays Ads
on it or not, is just to exist as an on-topic link to the owner’s primary website!
The fact is that websites are so cheap and easy to spit out these days, even with
well placed keywords and content, that it’s actually worth the time of a dedicated
webmaster trying to build lots of relevant, one-way links to make these websites
just for the linking value alone.
Obviously this is a long-term strategy that won’t be getting you any clicks or even
rank improvement this week. To do it right you’ll need to make this doorway site
with well-placed keywords, semi-fresh content, and submit it to all the link
directories before linking it to your primary website.
Still, if you’re in it for the long-haul, imagine what 50 or more of these pointing to
one site will do for it’s ranking, all targeting a different primary keyword on topic.
One serious concern is that Googlebot checks IP addresses. A few of these
websites sharing the same IP address at your server host is fine… But there is
an upper limit and Google isn’t telling us exactly what that limit is.
If you get serious about this technique, you may find yourself spending a lot of
money on hosting in order to purchase IP addresses on separate “class C
blocks,” which will fool any Search Engine into thinking that the separate sites
aren’t owned by the same person.
Another approach is to make your websites in lots of different free blogging or
free website platforms, like Blogger, Wordpress, Freewebs, etc… Naturally this is
much more time consuming because of the variation.
Keeping it a small operation, perhaps 10-50 or so sites pointing to one primary
website shouldn’t be a real concern at any rate. Just a lot of work.
connotations. Around the year 2000, a “Doorway Site” meant
a “fake” site that looked just like the site you were going to,
which existed just to fool the Search Engines into thinking
that they are multiple sites with different keywords, yet humans wouldn’t know
that they were separate at all. (They could cover more keywords that way.)
That trick is so obvious to every Search Engine now that no one even attempts it
anymore. They’d get their IP address banned for sure.
Nowadays, a lot of Internet Marketers are reviving the phrase to mean a slightly
different, much more SE-friendly strategy of link building.
These new ‘Doorway Sites’ are usually just blogs or informational websites such
as an “AdSense Farm” site. However, its main purpose, whether it displays Ads
on it or not, is just to exist as an on-topic link to the owner’s primary website!
The fact is that websites are so cheap and easy to spit out these days, even with
well placed keywords and content, that it’s actually worth the time of a dedicated
webmaster trying to build lots of relevant, one-way links to make these websites
just for the linking value alone.
Obviously this is a long-term strategy that won’t be getting you any clicks or even
rank improvement this week. To do it right you’ll need to make this doorway site
with well-placed keywords, semi-fresh content, and submit it to all the link
directories before linking it to your primary website.
Still, if you’re in it for the long-haul, imagine what 50 or more of these pointing to
one site will do for it’s ranking, all targeting a different primary keyword on topic.
One serious concern is that Googlebot checks IP addresses. A few of these
websites sharing the same IP address at your server host is fine… But there is
an upper limit and Google isn’t telling us exactly what that limit is.
If you get serious about this technique, you may find yourself spending a lot of
money on hosting in order to purchase IP addresses on separate “class C
blocks,” which will fool any Search Engine into thinking that the separate sites
aren’t owned by the same person.
Another approach is to make your websites in lots of different free blogging or
free website platforms, like Blogger, Wordpress, Freewebs, etc… Naturally this is
much more time consuming because of the variation.
Keeping it a small operation, perhaps 10-50 or so sites pointing to one primary
website shouldn’t be a real concern at any rate. Just a lot of work.
Directory Submissions - (Link Building)
Directory Submissions - (Link Building)
There is probably no better first marketing step for any
website at all than submitting it to the top 400 or so Link
Directories. As you can see from my rating, it’s not even
close to being your best method of traffic generation. However, if you care about
incoming links to your website, this is THE FOUNDATION that all other links will
build on, because Search Engines start in these places and find your website
through the links you place in them.
I’ve built over 300 different websites for all kinds of different purposes in my
career, but I have submitted all of them to the legitimate link directories without
fail. It’s a no-brainer that really should be thought of as necessary, despite the
piddling amount of traffic it brings.
There are probably more link directories out there than anyone could ever submit
to, but luckily it is only important to submit to the ones that have some
PageRank. Even still, the number of submissions you could wind up making for
each site will be between 400 and 500, so this is not a quick task to do. Without
software to keep up with all of them, and of course to help you paste your content
into all of those forms, you’d take way too long to finish a single site’s posting.
It used to cost a lot for software that would submit to all the best directories, (As I
know well, I have paid out the nose!) But luckily for you there is now a completely
Free software that will submit to all the best Directories. (It can be upgraded to do
them all, but the free selection is SO much better than doing it by hand.) It’s
simply called Directory Submitter, and it’s made by the same guy who did SEO
Elite, so you know it’s quality stuff. Download it ASAP and make it part of your
marketing regimen for every website or blog you start for the rest of your life.
There is probably no better first marketing step for any
website at all than submitting it to the top 400 or so Link
Directories. As you can see from my rating, it’s not even
close to being your best method of traffic generation. However, if you care about
incoming links to your website, this is THE FOUNDATION that all other links will
build on, because Search Engines start in these places and find your website
through the links you place in them.
I’ve built over 300 different websites for all kinds of different purposes in my
career, but I have submitted all of them to the legitimate link directories without
fail. It’s a no-brainer that really should be thought of as necessary, despite the
piddling amount of traffic it brings.
There are probably more link directories out there than anyone could ever submit
to, but luckily it is only important to submit to the ones that have some
PageRank. Even still, the number of submissions you could wind up making for
each site will be between 400 and 500, so this is not a quick task to do. Without
software to keep up with all of them, and of course to help you paste your content
into all of those forms, you’d take way too long to finish a single site’s posting.
It used to cost a lot for software that would submit to all the best directories, (As I
know well, I have paid out the nose!) But luckily for you there is now a completely
Free software that will submit to all the best Directories. (It can be upgraded to do
them all, but the free selection is SO much better than doing it by hand.) It’s
simply called Directory Submitter, and it’s made by the same guy who did SEO
Elite, so you know it’s quality stuff. Download it ASAP and make it part of your
marketing regimen for every website or blog you start for the rest of your life.
Desktop Direct Messaging - (List building)
A little like a Trafficbar, Desktop Messaging is a way to send
ads via an email-sized communication directly to the desktop
of people you’ve talked into loading the software program.
Although this sounds like an impossible way to build traffic, it does have the very
handy side-effect of being completely free of spam filters, so when using this as a
way to send newsletters to your list or downline, you get 100% delivery, instantly.
It’s more like a messenger service than an email program though, and convincing
a downline to sign up to hear your thoughts each week, at the cost of them
hearing 13 other’s thoughts as well, sounds like an impossible task. (You only
receive 1 message a week from each of the 14 people in your upline.)
The only popular choice is Desktop Lightning, none others have built up a
following large enough to consider.
It’s interesting, at any rate, so if you can use other tactics like safelists or traffic
exchanges to build up your Desktop Lightning downline, then perhaps you’ll find
a way for it to be useful.
Naturally, the only people to install this on their desktops will be other internet
marketers, so don’t even bother trying if you are marketing to any other niche at
all.
ads via an email-sized communication directly to the desktop
of people you’ve talked into loading the software program.
Although this sounds like an impossible way to build traffic, it does have the very
handy side-effect of being completely free of spam filters, so when using this as a
way to send newsletters to your list or downline, you get 100% delivery, instantly.
It’s more like a messenger service than an email program though, and convincing
a downline to sign up to hear your thoughts each week, at the cost of them
hearing 13 other’s thoughts as well, sounds like an impossible task. (You only
receive 1 message a week from each of the 14 people in your upline.)
The only popular choice is Desktop Lightning, none others have built up a
following large enough to consider.
It’s interesting, at any rate, so if you can use other tactics like safelists or traffic
exchanges to build up your Desktop Lightning downline, then perhaps you’ll find
a way for it to be useful.
Naturally, the only people to install this on their desktops will be other internet
marketers, so don’t even bother trying if you are marketing to any other niche at
all.
Digg
Digg.com is a Social Bookmarking tool with extraordinary power. (The best of all
social bookmarkers.) It’s completely free to use this to generate some of the
fastest and most serious traffic of all online, although your content needs to be
interesting. See “Social Bookmarking” for more about this highly recommended
Web 2.0 application.
social bookmarkers.) It’s completely free to use this to generate some of the
fastest and most serious traffic of all online, although your content needs to be
interesting. See “Social Bookmarking” for more about this highly recommended
Web 2.0 application.
eBay (A subset of List Building)
eBay? Free Advertising?
Ok, so technically an auction listings cost 35 cents… But one
sale can easily make you a profit, and you’re allowed to sell
nine of the same product in one auction at that price… So this is one exception
I’m going to keep in this book because it’s really BETTER than free, all things
considered.
So where does the Advertising part come in?
Simply place an information package of some kind, even if it’s just an article on
your niche, and sell that infoproduct in an extremely cheap auction listing. Most
people sell these things for 1 penny, although the difference between 1 cent and
35 cents really isn’t that much of a difference to the buyers looking for this
information.
Naturally there are no other costs like shipping or insurance, because delivery is
a simple digital download. Further advertising is up to you, and it is always a
matter of just giving eBay some additional fees to make your listing stand out
more. If your listing is profiting, try starting the next listing as a “Gallery item” for
another 35 cents, and go up from there until you’ve reached a point of maximum
returns.
Here’s the great part about this tactic: The winner of the listing’s email address is
automatically sent to you via email, through eBay itself. Sell a bunch of those info
packets, and you’ve built yourself one of your industry’s most targeted lists!
Don’t feel too left out if you haven’t mentally joined these two concepts together
before now. Not too many people have, unless they bought the secret from
someone on eBay themselves.
The fact is that eBay already has the lion’s share of traffic, and more importantly,
of people in the purchasing mindset. Compare this to Google’s Traffic, which is
composed of people in the “researching” mindset. It’s not hard to imagine why
serious marketers prefer eBay’s traffic to Google’s Traffic!
Advertising on eBay is as simple as being there in the first place, using a few
well-searched keywords. Finding those keywords isn’t too difficult either; all you
really have to do is search for expired listings and sort by the price. This way
you’ll easily see which auctions recently got the most money in your niche, and
then all you have to do is model your campaign like theirs, listing your product
under the same category!
Drawbacks?
Although the Delivery Time and the Quality of the traffic is world class, the
Quantity is not infinite… It depends on your niche, of course, but the competition
on eBay can be fierce as new auctions will be placed above older ones all the
time. Still, with people happy to search keywords you’ve still got a good chance
of being found even between the first day or the last few minutes of the auction.
Effectiveness in drawing a large amount of traffic all depends on how good your
auction’s sales copy is. Luckily, you can model your auction off others that have
done well in the past.
Make no mistake about it; selling infoproducts on eBay is a world-class listbuilding
strategy. That’s about all there is to it, but most people overlook this very
powerful way of building your list because it seems too awkward, or they don’t
want to take the time to put an info-packet together.
If you sell a product online, then you’ve got to face the fact eventually that this is
some of the most targeted, “buyer-frenzied” traffic that exists. If you’re not using
this tactic, then you’ll not only be depriving your business of a constant stream of
better-than-free advertising, but you’ll also be missing out on a large source of
clients that you aren’t likely to be able to reach otherwise.
The fact is that everybody eBays nowadays. That’s why I can use eBay as a
verb! In fact I’ve seen a statistic recently that showed $14 of every $100 spent
online, worldwide, is spent through eBay now, and this number is still growing! It
is clearly the single biggest mover of money on the planet.
People from ALL walks of life can be found there, right when they have their
credit cards in hand looking to spend… I don’t even know of another source of
traffic that comes close!
When used correctly, you can build up a niche market list on any topic with this
technique, and reach an unprecedented 50% or more of that market over time.
Ok, so technically an auction listings cost 35 cents… But one
sale can easily make you a profit, and you’re allowed to sell
nine of the same product in one auction at that price… So this is one exception
I’m going to keep in this book because it’s really BETTER than free, all things
considered.
So where does the Advertising part come in?
Simply place an information package of some kind, even if it’s just an article on
your niche, and sell that infoproduct in an extremely cheap auction listing. Most
people sell these things for 1 penny, although the difference between 1 cent and
35 cents really isn’t that much of a difference to the buyers looking for this
information.
Naturally there are no other costs like shipping or insurance, because delivery is
a simple digital download. Further advertising is up to you, and it is always a
matter of just giving eBay some additional fees to make your listing stand out
more. If your listing is profiting, try starting the next listing as a “Gallery item” for
another 35 cents, and go up from there until you’ve reached a point of maximum
returns.
Here’s the great part about this tactic: The winner of the listing’s email address is
automatically sent to you via email, through eBay itself. Sell a bunch of those info
packets, and you’ve built yourself one of your industry’s most targeted lists!
Don’t feel too left out if you haven’t mentally joined these two concepts together
before now. Not too many people have, unless they bought the secret from
someone on eBay themselves.
The fact is that eBay already has the lion’s share of traffic, and more importantly,
of people in the purchasing mindset. Compare this to Google’s Traffic, which is
composed of people in the “researching” mindset. It’s not hard to imagine why
serious marketers prefer eBay’s traffic to Google’s Traffic!
Advertising on eBay is as simple as being there in the first place, using a few
well-searched keywords. Finding those keywords isn’t too difficult either; all you
really have to do is search for expired listings and sort by the price. This way
you’ll easily see which auctions recently got the most money in your niche, and
then all you have to do is model your campaign like theirs, listing your product
under the same category!
Drawbacks?
Although the Delivery Time and the Quality of the traffic is world class, the
Quantity is not infinite… It depends on your niche, of course, but the competition
on eBay can be fierce as new auctions will be placed above older ones all the
time. Still, with people happy to search keywords you’ve still got a good chance
of being found even between the first day or the last few minutes of the auction.
Effectiveness in drawing a large amount of traffic all depends on how good your
auction’s sales copy is. Luckily, you can model your auction off others that have
done well in the past.
Make no mistake about it; selling infoproducts on eBay is a world-class listbuilding
strategy. That’s about all there is to it, but most people overlook this very
powerful way of building your list because it seems too awkward, or they don’t
want to take the time to put an info-packet together.
If you sell a product online, then you’ve got to face the fact eventually that this is
some of the most targeted, “buyer-frenzied” traffic that exists. If you’re not using
this tactic, then you’ll not only be depriving your business of a constant stream of
better-than-free advertising, but you’ll also be missing out on a large source of
clients that you aren’t likely to be able to reach otherwise.
The fact is that everybody eBays nowadays. That’s why I can use eBay as a
verb! In fact I’ve seen a statistic recently that showed $14 of every $100 spent
online, worldwide, is spent through eBay now, and this number is still growing! It
is clearly the single biggest mover of money on the planet.
People from ALL walks of life can be found there, right when they have their
credit cards in hand looking to spend… I don’t even know of another source of
traffic that comes close!
When used correctly, you can build up a niche market list on any topic with this
technique, and reach an unprecedented 50% or more of that market over time.
eBooks - (A subset of List Building)
So, you wondered why I didn’t try to sell all the valuable
information in this eBook, did you? The fact is that eBooks
almost can’t be sold anymore, because every marketer and
their uncle has penned at least one eBook lately and given it away!
Why would we do this? Well, it’s the same principle as Article Marketing, except
that it builds more brand recognition and is much more dynamic. For instance,
you’ve probably noticed an affiliate link or two throughout this PDF document.
Some authors write these eBook just as a way to spread their Affiliate links
alone. Some even pay a team of ghost-writers to crank out a bunch of eBooks for
them to do just that, on a larger scale!
The most common use of eBooks nowadays and one that still works wonderfully
for most niches outside of Internet Marketers is offering a free eBook in
exchange for your visitor’s eMail address. Like eBay, it’s a great source of
targeted traffic. That’s it - you basically just bribe people to get on your list.
There’s nothing wrong with this tactic, it works. It’s not like you’re misleading
anyone, either. Most of them came to your site to find more information, and
probably would have signed up for your newsletter anyway just to find what they
were looking for.
The third and lesser-known, but more effective method of using eBooks, comes
from combining them with Viral Marketing… Such as the product you are reading
right now.
Unless you got an advanced copy of this eBook, many of the Affiliate links you
saw here weren’t my own. My primary objective when writing this eBook was to
get visitors to my website and build up brand recognition for Surefire Success…
Keeping control of all the affiliate links in it would have been a nice stream of
income for me, but the book would not likely have gotten into your hands, as I
wouldn’t be offering an incentive to other marketers to pass this around. I explain
this tactic more in depth under “Viral Marketing.”
An obvious drawback is that it can be slow to get going. However, it doesn’t have
to be. If your book is really good and offers a great incentive, (like I hope this one
does) then more and more affiliates will send it out, and technically you could
build up a huge list in no time that way.
Using JV Partners (see “Joint Ventures”) is a great way to launch your eBook for
that purpose. If you can offer it to a bunch of big-list owners to send out to their
lists, their main incentive will be the revenue from your affiliate links in the
document they send.
Also, don’t be discouraged at all from making an ebook because it seems hard to
write or compile one. I understand that most people don’t have a PDF writer
software, so they think that making an eBook will cost them money or even be
something difficult to learn. –Nothing could be further from the truth though!
PDFs are so well integrated into the business world now, that there are dozens of
ways to make your MS-Word document into a PDF document, and it will look and
work just as good as it would if you composed it with expensive Adobe software.
I even made a film showing you just how to do it:
How to Convert an MS Word Doc Into a PDF for Free
I hope that helps… Now all you have to do is start writing.
information in this eBook, did you? The fact is that eBooks
almost can’t be sold anymore, because every marketer and
their uncle has penned at least one eBook lately and given it away!
Why would we do this? Well, it’s the same principle as Article Marketing, except
that it builds more brand recognition and is much more dynamic. For instance,
you’ve probably noticed an affiliate link or two throughout this PDF document.
Some authors write these eBook just as a way to spread their Affiliate links
alone. Some even pay a team of ghost-writers to crank out a bunch of eBooks for
them to do just that, on a larger scale!
The most common use of eBooks nowadays and one that still works wonderfully
for most niches outside of Internet Marketers is offering a free eBook in
exchange for your visitor’s eMail address. Like eBay, it’s a great source of
targeted traffic. That’s it - you basically just bribe people to get on your list.
There’s nothing wrong with this tactic, it works. It’s not like you’re misleading
anyone, either. Most of them came to your site to find more information, and
probably would have signed up for your newsletter anyway just to find what they
were looking for.
The third and lesser-known, but more effective method of using eBooks, comes
from combining them with Viral Marketing… Such as the product you are reading
right now.
Unless you got an advanced copy of this eBook, many of the Affiliate links you
saw here weren’t my own. My primary objective when writing this eBook was to
get visitors to my website and build up brand recognition for Surefire Success…
Keeping control of all the affiliate links in it would have been a nice stream of
income for me, but the book would not likely have gotten into your hands, as I
wouldn’t be offering an incentive to other marketers to pass this around. I explain
this tactic more in depth under “Viral Marketing.”
An obvious drawback is that it can be slow to get going. However, it doesn’t have
to be. If your book is really good and offers a great incentive, (like I hope this one
does) then more and more affiliates will send it out, and technically you could
build up a huge list in no time that way.
Using JV Partners (see “Joint Ventures”) is a great way to launch your eBook for
that purpose. If you can offer it to a bunch of big-list owners to send out to their
lists, their main incentive will be the revenue from your affiliate links in the
document they send.
Also, don’t be discouraged at all from making an ebook because it seems hard to
write or compile one. I understand that most people don’t have a PDF writer
software, so they think that making an eBook will cost them money or even be
something difficult to learn. –Nothing could be further from the truth though!
PDFs are so well integrated into the business world now, that there are dozens of
ways to make your MS-Word document into a PDF document, and it will look and
work just as good as it would if you composed it with expensive Adobe software.
I even made a film showing you just how to do it:
How to Convert an MS Word Doc Into a PDF for Free
I hope that helps… Now all you have to do is start writing.
eZines - (Your own Newsletter, or your “List”)
If you’ve been marketing online more than a minute, I’m sure
you’ve been bombarded with the phrase “the Money’s in the
List.” Well it’s 90% true. It doesn’t end there; you still have to
work at it. Keep giving to your list once you sign them up, much like a one-sided
relationship.
If you ask any of the subscribers to my own list, I hope that they tell you I’ve been
doing just that. So far, I haven’t had any more than one single unsubscribe, and I
believe it is because my newsletter offers something for everyone, not just a new
Advertisement each week. Anyone can send out a bunch of solo Ads from JV
Partners and the affiliate programs that they’re pitching, but I wouldn’t
recommend it if you’re interested in building a solid, trusting relationship with your
subscriber base.
There are hundreds of places online that harvest email addresses, usually by
some sort of co-registration, (where a person doesn’t even know he’s signing up
for the second newsletter simultaneously) and will be glad to sell me a whole
Solo Ad mailing allotment to that list of 200,000 or more for something like $50.
Sure, it sounds like a great deal, but what would it really get me? About 200,000
eMail boxes filled only with Ads that are no longer opened anymore.
Why should these people read such eMail? Would you watch a TV channel that
ONLY showed Ads?
The only way to make your own list profitable is to offer the same valuable
content that you would in a product or informational website. If you are just
looking for a quick product launch of one event, I don’t recommend an eZine for
you at all. Owning any eZine list that is worth its weight in kilobytes is a long term
process that requires plenty of upkeep. In that case, you should Joint Venture
with lots of other eZine owners
The rewards are astounding, however. This is the only traffic method in this
whole eBook that receives a perfect score. And yes, it is free to build and eMail
your list regularly; there are many software email utilities and even autoresponders
floating around for free. A good percentage of web host control
panels now have them built into your hosting controls.
Naturally the hard part is the time it takes to build up the list. I give it a 5 out of 5
for delivery speed however because once you send out your email to the whole
list, you can have thousands or even tens of thousands of people on your
website in minutes. Nothing else in the whole IM arena can claim to do that.
you’ve been bombarded with the phrase “the Money’s in the
List.” Well it’s 90% true. It doesn’t end there; you still have to
work at it. Keep giving to your list once you sign them up, much like a one-sided
relationship.
If you ask any of the subscribers to my own list, I hope that they tell you I’ve been
doing just that. So far, I haven’t had any more than one single unsubscribe, and I
believe it is because my newsletter offers something for everyone, not just a new
Advertisement each week. Anyone can send out a bunch of solo Ads from JV
Partners and the affiliate programs that they’re pitching, but I wouldn’t
recommend it if you’re interested in building a solid, trusting relationship with your
subscriber base.
There are hundreds of places online that harvest email addresses, usually by
some sort of co-registration, (where a person doesn’t even know he’s signing up
for the second newsletter simultaneously) and will be glad to sell me a whole
Solo Ad mailing allotment to that list of 200,000 or more for something like $50.
Sure, it sounds like a great deal, but what would it really get me? About 200,000
eMail boxes filled only with Ads that are no longer opened anymore.
Why should these people read such eMail? Would you watch a TV channel that
ONLY showed Ads?
The only way to make your own list profitable is to offer the same valuable
content that you would in a product or informational website. If you are just
looking for a quick product launch of one event, I don’t recommend an eZine for
you at all. Owning any eZine list that is worth its weight in kilobytes is a long term
process that requires plenty of upkeep. In that case, you should Joint Venture
with lots of other eZine owners
The rewards are astounding, however. This is the only traffic method in this
whole eBook that receives a perfect score. And yes, it is free to build and eMail
your list regularly; there are many software email utilities and even autoresponders
floating around for free. A good percentage of web host control
panels now have them built into your hosting controls.
Naturally the hard part is the time it takes to build up the list. I give it a 5 out of 5
for delivery speed however because once you send out your email to the whole
list, you can have thousands or even tens of thousands of people on your
website in minutes. Nothing else in the whole IM arena can claim to do that.
eZines you can advertise in Free
Easily confused with Safelists, there are many eZine services
that sell Solo Ad mailings to their big, loosely harvested lists,
and sometimes they’ll even offer a free emailing just to get
your business. Of course they want to sell you a much bigger eMailing down the
road.
It is common to see an ad from a company that looks like a legitimate eZine
“collector” company, offering a free Solo Ad submission to a list around the size
of 5,000 – 50,000 recipients. I haven’t tested too many of these because of the
hoops they make you jump through and the long lines you have to stand in.
In my experience, these companies have the power to collect and sort such a list
out of their main, untargeted list and use it as described above in a sort of “bait &
switch” routine.
I can’t verify if they all do business this way, but I have seen it happen more than
once. The free mailing will go fine but you’ve got to buy a second mailing… So
you choose a package, pay $67 or more for the mailing, and a month later when
it’s your time to be featured, the much larger list doesn’t convert nearly as well as
the little one did!
Let’s not overlook that you really have no way of knowing how many recipients
got the email, or if they were safelist boxes, completely untargeted, etc… So any
time you see the words “eMail your ad to 2,000,000 people for only $X,” just
remember that there are many more than 2 million safelist email boxes online!
The only way to take advantage of this technique is to keep using the “little lists,”
by jumping from service to service, never paying for a bigger mailing. However,
there is usually a few weeks or more of waiting in line to get through each time,
and from time to time an outright scam can occur.
One of the few times I attempted this I used PayPal to send the company $1 to
“hold my place in line.” They said I’d even get the dollar back so I said ok, not
even caring about the buck.
Three weeks later the 5,000 subscriber mailing went out, and I got a paltry 115
people to show up on my very closely targeted website. Naturally I wasn’t going
to sign up for a bigger package, so I didn’t contact them again, not caring about
the fate of my $1.
I won’t make that mistake again! Apparently their fine print said that the $1 was a
“down payment” for the bigger solo ad later, and if I took no action within 30
days, my default package was the $89 Solo Ad to their 150,000 general
subscriber list! My PayPal account was charged $88 a month later and I had no
clue what it was for!
Getting out of these kinds of situations, especially when dealing with companies
that don’t have a phone number, is just not worth anyone’s time. Making this
technique work requires a lot of searching and a thick skin against hassles.
If you want to try your luck, however, simply google the phrases “Free eZine
mailing” or “Free eZine Ad Blast.” You’ve been warned though. It’s a tough road.
If you are determined to use eZines for advertising (there are many advantages,
such as proven, targeted spenders) then I suggest paying for it. At least we now
have a very helpful service called Amigo that lets you pay per clickthrough, so
your ad budget is never wasted and can be monitored closely.
See “Safelists” and “Blasting” for more on this subject.
that sell Solo Ad mailings to their big, loosely harvested lists,
and sometimes they’ll even offer a free emailing just to get
your business. Of course they want to sell you a much bigger eMailing down the
road.
It is common to see an ad from a company that looks like a legitimate eZine
“collector” company, offering a free Solo Ad submission to a list around the size
of 5,000 – 50,000 recipients. I haven’t tested too many of these because of the
hoops they make you jump through and the long lines you have to stand in.
In my experience, these companies have the power to collect and sort such a list
out of their main, untargeted list and use it as described above in a sort of “bait &
switch” routine.
I can’t verify if they all do business this way, but I have seen it happen more than
once. The free mailing will go fine but you’ve got to buy a second mailing… So
you choose a package, pay $67 or more for the mailing, and a month later when
it’s your time to be featured, the much larger list doesn’t convert nearly as well as
the little one did!
Let’s not overlook that you really have no way of knowing how many recipients
got the email, or if they were safelist boxes, completely untargeted, etc… So any
time you see the words “eMail your ad to 2,000,000 people for only $X,” just
remember that there are many more than 2 million safelist email boxes online!
The only way to take advantage of this technique is to keep using the “little lists,”
by jumping from service to service, never paying for a bigger mailing. However,
there is usually a few weeks or more of waiting in line to get through each time,
and from time to time an outright scam can occur.
One of the few times I attempted this I used PayPal to send the company $1 to
“hold my place in line.” They said I’d even get the dollar back so I said ok, not
even caring about the buck.
Three weeks later the 5,000 subscriber mailing went out, and I got a paltry 115
people to show up on my very closely targeted website. Naturally I wasn’t going
to sign up for a bigger package, so I didn’t contact them again, not caring about
the fate of my $1.
I won’t make that mistake again! Apparently their fine print said that the $1 was a
“down payment” for the bigger solo ad later, and if I took no action within 30
days, my default package was the $89 Solo Ad to their 150,000 general
subscriber list! My PayPal account was charged $88 a month later and I had no
clue what it was for!
Getting out of these kinds of situations, especially when dealing with companies
that don’t have a phone number, is just not worth anyone’s time. Making this
technique work requires a lot of searching and a thick skin against hassles.
If you want to try your luck, however, simply google the phrases “Free eZine
mailing” or “Free eZine Ad Blast.” You’ve been warned though. It’s a tough road.
If you are determined to use eZines for advertising (there are many advantages,
such as proven, targeted spenders) then I suggest paying for it. At least we now
have a very helpful service called Amigo that lets you pay per clickthrough, so
your ad budget is never wasted and can be monitored closely.
See “Safelists” and “Blasting” for more on this subject.
FFAs or “Free For All” listings
Almost always a complete waste of time, FFAs simply let you
post your Ad in either a classified format or as a link in a link
directory. Search Engines avoid these locations like the
plague and being found in them can actually HURT your Search Engine
rankings! Almost always, these listings do more harm than good. Beware!
Also see “Classified Ads.”
post your Ad in either a classified format or as a link in a link
directory. Search Engines avoid these locations like the
plague and being found in them can actually HURT your Search Engine
rankings! Almost always, these listings do more harm than good. Beware!
Also see “Classified Ads.”
Forum Marketing - (A Subset of Link Building)
There are countless Forums online these days for all possible
niches. (And if you can’t find one in your niche, Eureka!
You’ve hit the jackpot! Start the first forum there and it’s like
inheriting an oil well.) Identifying all the popular forums on your market or niche is
a very important thing that all marketers should do for any online marketing
campaign. For the really big, active forums with over 500,000 posts, simply go
search for them by your keywords at http://www.big-boards.com.
Finding smaller forums is a little trickier. Since there are many different software
packages that forums are based on, there is no one good search command to
find them all, except for adding the word “forum” to your search query. Try
googling each of your top five keyword phrases, in quotes, with the word forum
slapped on the end, outside of the quotes.
Once you’ve found them, the big question becomes how you market to them
without becoming a “spammer.” You will rarely find a forum, unless it’s strictly a
“marketers’ forum” that allows you to post a blatant ad inside of them without it
being deleted.
What you’ve got to do is network a little. Answer any questions you have the
answer to first to build up a presence for yourself.
However, what you are really looking for on a forum is a question that someone
else asks that leaves room for you to answer, with your business being part of
the solution.
So if you sell sprockets, and you find a great engineering forum, starting a new
thread about your great sprockets or even offering information about how a great
new sprocket line could solve many of their engineering problems will quickly be
deleted, and it might even get your whole account booted!
On the other hand, if you take a somewhat passive role on ALL the Engineering
forums, and wait for someone to ask about a sprocket-related issue, you’ll be the
hero, not a spammer, for offering your educated advice.
The moral of this story is to only market on forums when it’s part of a solution to
someone else’s question. In those situations, you can market as much as you
want, and the outcome is a lasting link to your website tied to both name
recognition & expertise.
niches. (And if you can’t find one in your niche, Eureka!
You’ve hit the jackpot! Start the first forum there and it’s like
inheriting an oil well.) Identifying all the popular forums on your market or niche is
a very important thing that all marketers should do for any online marketing
campaign. For the really big, active forums with over 500,000 posts, simply go
search for them by your keywords at http://www.big-boards.com.
Finding smaller forums is a little trickier. Since there are many different software
packages that forums are based on, there is no one good search command to
find them all, except for adding the word “forum” to your search query. Try
googling each of your top five keyword phrases, in quotes, with the word forum
slapped on the end, outside of the quotes.
Once you’ve found them, the big question becomes how you market to them
without becoming a “spammer.” You will rarely find a forum, unless it’s strictly a
“marketers’ forum” that allows you to post a blatant ad inside of them without it
being deleted.
What you’ve got to do is network a little. Answer any questions you have the
answer to first to build up a presence for yourself.
However, what you are really looking for on a forum is a question that someone
else asks that leaves room for you to answer, with your business being part of
the solution.
So if you sell sprockets, and you find a great engineering forum, starting a new
thread about your great sprockets or even offering information about how a great
new sprocket line could solve many of their engineering problems will quickly be
deleted, and it might even get your whole account booted!
On the other hand, if you take a somewhat passive role on ALL the Engineering
forums, and wait for someone to ask about a sprocket-related issue, you’ll be the
hero, not a spammer, for offering your educated advice.
The moral of this story is to only market on forums when it’s part of a solution to
someone else’s question. In those situations, you can market as much as you
want, and the outcome is a lasting link to your website tied to both name
recognition & expertise.
Google AdWords - (Usually really expensive)
I felt it necessary to mention the Adwords program because
the quality of their Pay-Per-Click traffic is the benchmark for
Internet Marketers to measure targeted traffic with. Almost
nothing else can compete with AdWords as far as targeting, because they not
only serve the AdWord advertisement boxes on relevant, keyword-targeted
pages across the web, but in the Search Engine Result Pages as well.
eBay’s traffic is the notable competition. Although eBay is not as precisely
targeted as AdWords, nor can it bring as many visitors as quickly, eBay triumphs
in delivering visitors in a buying state of mind… And you can get those visitors for
free through eBay.
Expect to pay a very minimum of five cents per visitor through AdWords, but
usually more likely around $1 with more competitive keywords costing over $20!
The one bit of good news here on the freebie front is that there are a lot of
coupons floating around the net offering $50-$250 in AdWords clicks to new signups…
But those are rare nowadays as Google knows it’s got the market
cornered.
You never know, though. Run a search on “AdWords Coupon” from time to time
to see if they’ve released a new batch. (Perhaps you’ll want to search with
Yahoo! in this case…)
the quality of their Pay-Per-Click traffic is the benchmark for
Internet Marketers to measure targeted traffic with. Almost
nothing else can compete with AdWords as far as targeting, because they not
only serve the AdWord advertisement boxes on relevant, keyword-targeted
pages across the web, but in the Search Engine Result Pages as well.
eBay’s traffic is the notable competition. Although eBay is not as precisely
targeted as AdWords, nor can it bring as many visitors as quickly, eBay triumphs
in delivering visitors in a buying state of mind… And you can get those visitors for
free through eBay.
Expect to pay a very minimum of five cents per visitor through AdWords, but
usually more likely around $1 with more competitive keywords costing over $20!
The one bit of good news here on the freebie front is that there are a lot of
coupons floating around the net offering $50-$250 in AdWords clicks to new signups…
But those are rare nowadays as Google knows it’s got the market
cornered.
You never know, though. Run a search on “AdWords Coupon” from time to time
to see if they’ve released a new batch. (Perhaps you’ll want to search with
Yahoo! in this case…)
Joint Ventures
Pulling off a successful Joint Venture can be the very next
best thing to having your own highly-targeted eZine list. Of
course for it to be free, you’ve got to offer your JV partner
some sort of commission, like the full size of your cut or better, for them to send
out an Ad to their coveted list.
This is sometimes called “OPL” (Other People’s Lists) or “OPT” (Other People’s
Traffic.) In fact, this is the most common form of JV structure, a simple
commission split in return for a list “Solo Ad” or a recommendation.
There really is no set definition for the term Joint Venture, it simply means that
two or more marketers form a temporary collaboration to benefit them both.
Creativity can mold modern JVs into almost any shape or appearance.
Still, there are a few very well-known strategies for JVs. I already mentioned the
most popular one, list sharing, above. The simplest action that could be called a
JV is simply a swapping of links between two websites.
Other JV types could involve putting together your products as a package to sell,
and any profits and/or Opt-ins generated could be shared between the two.
However, probably the greatest JV strategy that has put a lot of super-affiliates in
the limelight is a Review-Affiliate-Testimonial JV, also known as a “RAT.”
RATs are great for up-and-coming marketers to get their foot in the affiliate door
while building up their name, brand, &/or face recognition. It also offers them the
benefit of securing a one-way link back to their main website.
To find a RAT opportunity, all one needs to find is a JV Launch where a marketer
is working up to a product launch, drumming up affiliate interest and talking to
JVs. If he or she is still working on the Ad Copy for the Sales page, they’ll very
likely need Testimonials from others in the field, just like you. (Assuming you
have your own industry-related website to link to.)
At this point, the Marketer will send you a ‘tester’ copy for review, assuming that
you’ll quickly get back to him or her with a glowing testimonial, including your
headshot, quote, and URL to link back to in the testimonial.
Number one ‘Super’ Affiliate Ewen Chia has probably done the most RATs of
any online marketer, as evidenced by his face appearing on such a large number
of sales pages across the web. He seems to be doing pretty well, (he’s arguably
the world’s most successful & sought-after super-affiliate) so I suspect that there
is quite a lot to be gained by “RATTing.”
It is also important to note that you’ll likely have some competition while
approaching the marketer for a RAT, so in such situations, he or she will either
want to treat you all as equal affiliates, or just go with the one or two affiliates
who have the biggest list.
So, where do you find Joint Venture partners? Well, there’s a whole bunch of
products dedicated to that problem, but there are also some free website forums
just for this purpose. Try these sites to get your feet wet, and from inside them
you can easily find the rest:
JV Notify Pro, one of the better free communities:
http://www.jvnotifypro.com
Joint Venture Alert - Free membership with instant notification toolbar, and
it offers very helpful tools as well. A great deal!
Joint Venture Network:
http://www.jointventurenetwork.net/community/
The Warrior’s Forum’s JV section:
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/default.asp?CAT_ID=2
Direct Matches, A powerful, up-and-coming Marketers networking platform:
http://www.directmatches.com
best thing to having your own highly-targeted eZine list. Of
course for it to be free, you’ve got to offer your JV partner
some sort of commission, like the full size of your cut or better, for them to send
out an Ad to their coveted list.
This is sometimes called “OPL” (Other People’s Lists) or “OPT” (Other People’s
Traffic.) In fact, this is the most common form of JV structure, a simple
commission split in return for a list “Solo Ad” or a recommendation.
There really is no set definition for the term Joint Venture, it simply means that
two or more marketers form a temporary collaboration to benefit them both.
Creativity can mold modern JVs into almost any shape or appearance.
Still, there are a few very well-known strategies for JVs. I already mentioned the
most popular one, list sharing, above. The simplest action that could be called a
JV is simply a swapping of links between two websites.
Other JV types could involve putting together your products as a package to sell,
and any profits and/or Opt-ins generated could be shared between the two.
However, probably the greatest JV strategy that has put a lot of super-affiliates in
the limelight is a Review-Affiliate-Testimonial JV, also known as a “RAT.”
RATs are great for up-and-coming marketers to get their foot in the affiliate door
while building up their name, brand, &/or face recognition. It also offers them the
benefit of securing a one-way link back to their main website.
To find a RAT opportunity, all one needs to find is a JV Launch where a marketer
is working up to a product launch, drumming up affiliate interest and talking to
JVs. If he or she is still working on the Ad Copy for the Sales page, they’ll very
likely need Testimonials from others in the field, just like you. (Assuming you
have your own industry-related website to link to.)
At this point, the Marketer will send you a ‘tester’ copy for review, assuming that
you’ll quickly get back to him or her with a glowing testimonial, including your
headshot, quote, and URL to link back to in the testimonial.
Number one ‘Super’ Affiliate Ewen Chia has probably done the most RATs of
any online marketer, as evidenced by his face appearing on such a large number
of sales pages across the web. He seems to be doing pretty well, (he’s arguably
the world’s most successful & sought-after super-affiliate) so I suspect that there
is quite a lot to be gained by “RATTing.”
It is also important to note that you’ll likely have some competition while
approaching the marketer for a RAT, so in such situations, he or she will either
want to treat you all as equal affiliates, or just go with the one or two affiliates
who have the biggest list.
So, where do you find Joint Venture partners? Well, there’s a whole bunch of
products dedicated to that problem, but there are also some free website forums
just for this purpose. Try these sites to get your feet wet, and from inside them
you can easily find the rest:
JV Notify Pro, one of the better free communities:
http://www.jvnotifypro.com
Joint Venture Alert - Free membership with instant notification toolbar, and
it offers very helpful tools as well. A great deal!
Joint Venture Network:
http://www.jointventurenetwork.net/community/
The Warrior’s Forum’s JV section:
http://www.warriorforum.com/forum/default.asp?CAT_ID=2
Direct Matches, A powerful, up-and-coming Marketers networking platform:
http://www.directmatches.com
Link Building
Link Building
The most time sonsuming form of work to do in order to get your site ranked well
by the Search Engines. Comes in many forms, but all take time to do right.
See “Articles,” “Blogs,” “Blog Comments,” “Doorway sites,” “Classified
Ads,” “Craigslist,” “Directory Submissions,” “Forums,” “Testimonials,”
“Social Bookmarking,” “Press Releases,” and “Link Swapping.”
The most time sonsuming form of work to do in order to get your site ranked well
by the Search Engines. Comes in many forms, but all take time to do right.
See “Articles,” “Blogs,” “Blog Comments,” “Doorway sites,” “Classified
Ads,” “Craigslist,” “Directory Submissions,” “Forums,” “Testimonials,”
“Social Bookmarking,” “Press Releases,” and “Link Swapping.”
Link Swapping - (A Subset of Link Building)
Link swapping used to be a simple concept that just meant
two webmasters could scratch each other’s back by placing a
link on their websites, pointing to each other’s site, for mutual
benefit in the search engine’s eyes.
This definition became inadequate when Google decided that this kind of
swapping, although not actually bad enough to deserve punishment, was only
done in fact to influence their rankings, and so they made some algorithm
changes that complicated things for us.
The premise is simple, mainly because Google and the other big Search Engines
see all incoming links to a website as a “vote” for that site’s popularity. (The
PageRank method.) Webmasters quickly adapted and put up a link directory on
each of their websites to automate the link-swapping of that site with other
webmasters. This method has largely lost its’ effectiveness, however.
Google has proclaimed that one-way links were MUCH more important, and only
then if they were for sites in the same niche or a closely-related topic.
If your website is about Penguins, then having some rude spammer come and
post his Viagra or Online Degree Program (or any other non-animal topics at all,
really) links in your directory will bring down the wrath of Googlebot on your site
in no time… Certainly before you get a chance to intervene and weed out the
offending links.
Overnight, millions of link directories became useless or even hurtful to their web
ranking because while trying to build them up as large as possible, webmasters
simply allowed links from other websites on topics other than their own to swap
links with them.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t use an automated link directory anymore, but if
you do, you’ll want to manually verify each posting to ensure every linkswap is on
topic.
If you’re still manually trading links with a few choice websites, especially the
most authoritative sites in your niche, or at least the ones with the highest
PageRank in your niche, and not using an automated link directory, you’ll be in
good shape.
Here’s a great, free link directory script that you can install to your own website,
however you really should be careful to limit your linkswapping to other sites in
you immediate market niche:
http://www.homebizfactory.com/Link_Trader_Pro.html
This method has its critics, however, and some webmasters won’t even use a
directory anymore because its obvious structure should be a real giveaway to
Googlebot about what its purpose is. These are usually the same people who
would say that you must link 3 or more sites in a circle, instead of just two.
However there has been no evidence that this works any better, as Googlebot
can just as easily follow three sites linked as it can two sites.
two webmasters could scratch each other’s back by placing a
link on their websites, pointing to each other’s site, for mutual
benefit in the search engine’s eyes.
This definition became inadequate when Google decided that this kind of
swapping, although not actually bad enough to deserve punishment, was only
done in fact to influence their rankings, and so they made some algorithm
changes that complicated things for us.
The premise is simple, mainly because Google and the other big Search Engines
see all incoming links to a website as a “vote” for that site’s popularity. (The
PageRank method.) Webmasters quickly adapted and put up a link directory on
each of their websites to automate the link-swapping of that site with other
webmasters. This method has largely lost its’ effectiveness, however.
Google has proclaimed that one-way links were MUCH more important, and only
then if they were for sites in the same niche or a closely-related topic.
If your website is about Penguins, then having some rude spammer come and
post his Viagra or Online Degree Program (or any other non-animal topics at all,
really) links in your directory will bring down the wrath of Googlebot on your site
in no time… Certainly before you get a chance to intervene and weed out the
offending links.
Overnight, millions of link directories became useless or even hurtful to their web
ranking because while trying to build them up as large as possible, webmasters
simply allowed links from other websites on topics other than their own to swap
links with them.
This doesn’t mean that you can’t use an automated link directory anymore, but if
you do, you’ll want to manually verify each posting to ensure every linkswap is on
topic.
If you’re still manually trading links with a few choice websites, especially the
most authoritative sites in your niche, or at least the ones with the highest
PageRank in your niche, and not using an automated link directory, you’ll be in
good shape.
Here’s a great, free link directory script that you can install to your own website,
however you really should be careful to limit your linkswapping to other sites in
you immediate market niche:
http://www.homebizfactory.com/Link_Trader_Pro.html
This method has its critics, however, and some webmasters won’t even use a
directory anymore because its obvious structure should be a real giveaway to
Googlebot about what its purpose is. These are usually the same people who
would say that you must link 3 or more sites in a circle, instead of just two.
However there has been no evidence that this works any better, as Googlebot
can just as easily follow three sites linked as it can two sites.
List Building Services
Online programs referred to as “list builders” are a modified
form of Safelists where you must build a downline and at the
same time only get emails from your own upline. They are
usually free to join but have 2 or three upgrade packages where the more you’re
paying for your monthly membership, the more emails you can send out.
One great thing about these services is that they are much more read than a
safelist. Anyone who signs up for a safelist is told from the start that they will get
“A lot” of mail daily, and must supply 2 email address, because they know that
you won’t often be looking inside one of them.
List builders are all about who’s in your upline and downline, so the email volume
is much smaller, say 5-10 emails a day from the worst ones. And, they don’t ask
for a second email address.
If you take the time to build up a downline (usually by referring 10 or so people
personally) you’ll be rewarded with a large supply of daily or weekly emailing
allotments for the rest of your life.
The main benefit to keep in mind is that all these list builders offer you increased
mailings (traffic in this case) for the more sign-ups you get underneath you. So,
the more you spread it around, the more mail-outs you get for life, and eventually
you'll have access to so many mail-outs that you’ll be able to plaster the planet in
your ads.
If you are a full-time internet marketer, this is something that I encourage you to
check into. I’ve had 1,500 member mailings where 50 people would clickthru
quite often. (That’s a 3.33% conversion, which is pretty normal, and compared to
Safelists with their 0.0001% conversion, it’s phenomenal.)
Of course if you don’t get any referrals, nor upgrade your account from the free
version, your mailing list will be hard to make large enough to be worth your time.
I’ve even gone so far as to figure out a very easy and powerful strategy to use
your list builders together in a series to obtain the ultimate traffic flow. You can
find it near the end of this book just before the conclusion, titled: “The List Builder
Traffic Strategy.”
The best three List builders are: List Joe, List dot com, & List lotto.
Unfortunately, the older ones like these don’t get as much publicity anymore like
the new ones, including the latest one, List Bandit… But after testing these new
ones out I find that they are completely rigged against you and waste more time
than not. Steer clear of List Bandit and many of the newer ones completely.
form of Safelists where you must build a downline and at the
same time only get emails from your own upline. They are
usually free to join but have 2 or three upgrade packages where the more you’re
paying for your monthly membership, the more emails you can send out.
One great thing about these services is that they are much more read than a
safelist. Anyone who signs up for a safelist is told from the start that they will get
“A lot” of mail daily, and must supply 2 email address, because they know that
you won’t often be looking inside one of them.
List builders are all about who’s in your upline and downline, so the email volume
is much smaller, say 5-10 emails a day from the worst ones. And, they don’t ask
for a second email address.
If you take the time to build up a downline (usually by referring 10 or so people
personally) you’ll be rewarded with a large supply of daily or weekly emailing
allotments for the rest of your life.
The main benefit to keep in mind is that all these list builders offer you increased
mailings (traffic in this case) for the more sign-ups you get underneath you. So,
the more you spread it around, the more mail-outs you get for life, and eventually
you'll have access to so many mail-outs that you’ll be able to plaster the planet in
your ads.
If you are a full-time internet marketer, this is something that I encourage you to
check into. I’ve had 1,500 member mailings where 50 people would clickthru
quite often. (That’s a 3.33% conversion, which is pretty normal, and compared to
Safelists with their 0.0001% conversion, it’s phenomenal.)
Of course if you don’t get any referrals, nor upgrade your account from the free
version, your mailing list will be hard to make large enough to be worth your time.
I’ve even gone so far as to figure out a very easy and powerful strategy to use
your list builders together in a series to obtain the ultimate traffic flow. You can
find it near the end of this book just before the conclusion, titled: “The List Builder
Traffic Strategy.”
The best three List builders are: List Joe, List dot com, & List lotto.
Unfortunately, the older ones like these don’t get as much publicity anymore like
the new ones, including the latest one, List Bandit… But after testing these new
ones out I find that they are completely rigged against you and waste more time
than not. Steer clear of List Bandit and many of the newer ones completely.
MSN AdCenter - (Also usually not free)
I once again hesitate to mention a big-name PPC Engine
because this is supposed to be a free resource report.
However I’ll make an exception because I think you’ll want
to pay the $5 they need for you to open up a new account with when I spill the
beans on AdCenter…
First of all, MSN launched AdCenter in 2006 and they’ve still got a long way to go
in order to catch up with AdWords… Or even Yahoo’s Search Marketing
program. MSN’s per-click prices are pretty low right now because of this, and it’s
common to get #1 or #2 for a keyword at or under $0.30 per click.
Even in a tough IM2IM niche like ‘Home Business,’ I’m still able to pull a few daily
visitors with just the minimum bid of 10 cents. Of course that price may change at
any time.
Secondly, and even more temptingly, (is that a word? It did not set my spell
checker off – oh well...) AdCenter has had coupons out since the beginning, and
these coupons have been getting BIGGER in size! They have recently been
handing out $200 coupons to new sign-ups which would be a shame for you to
miss out on.
I went so far as to attempt to secure some for everyone here, but they just won’t
hand out very many at a time. The next best thing I can do is tell you how to find
your own: Just Google “MSN AdCenter Coupons” and you’ll be sure to find plenty
of leads! (Hint: the $50 & $100 ones are all likely to be used up… Search for the
bigger ones!)
because this is supposed to be a free resource report.
However I’ll make an exception because I think you’ll want
to pay the $5 they need for you to open up a new account with when I spill the
beans on AdCenter…
First of all, MSN launched AdCenter in 2006 and they’ve still got a long way to go
in order to catch up with AdWords… Or even Yahoo’s Search Marketing
program. MSN’s per-click prices are pretty low right now because of this, and it’s
common to get #1 or #2 for a keyword at or under $0.30 per click.
Even in a tough IM2IM niche like ‘Home Business,’ I’m still able to pull a few daily
visitors with just the minimum bid of 10 cents. Of course that price may change at
any time.
Secondly, and even more temptingly, (is that a word? It did not set my spell
checker off – oh well...) AdCenter has had coupons out since the beginning, and
these coupons have been getting BIGGER in size! They have recently been
handing out $200 coupons to new sign-ups which would be a shame for you to
miss out on.
I went so far as to attempt to secure some for everyone here, but they just won’t
hand out very many at a time. The next best thing I can do is tell you how to find
your own: Just Google “MSN AdCenter Coupons” and you’ll be sure to find plenty
of leads! (Hint: the $50 & $100 ones are all likely to be used up… Search for the
bigger ones!)
MySpace
Marketing on the web’s #1 Social networking site is a lot like
how you remember High School; the rules are different, it’s all
about competing in a Popularity contest!
In fact, you may notice that it seems the majority of MySpace members are pretty
young… So why does everyone obsess about using MySpace to market with
these days? Simply because they’ve already got the traffic there.
MySpace.com is at this moment the world’s 6th most popular website according
to Alexa.com. YouTube.com and it had been closely competing for the #5 spot
for half a year until Microsoft’s ‘Live’ search got between them. (YouTube, which I
review later in this eBook, is even better for marketing purposes than MySpace.)
Still, getting a website all about you on the #6 website worldwide is an
opportunity you shouldn’t pass up.
Getting your own profile there is free, you can make it link to any off-site (no
illegal) websites that you’d like, and of course your profile page should include
some type of non-spammy-sounding content on your niche subject matter that
other people may want to link to.
Since it’s easy to linkswap (they call it ‘inviting friends’) with other MySpace
members, a full link campaign inside MySpace takes only minutes instead of
months. Of course not everyone there will accept the invitation.
You can search for link swap opportunities by simply popping your niche
keywords into a MySpace search box and you’ll get all the matching member
pages as results.
From there it’s just about having a nice page yourself that they’ll want to swap
links with (accepting the invitation) and if you get enough MySpace ‘friends,’ your
MySpace page can have a really impressive stream of traffic… Which of course
you’ll want to have linked to your own primary website.
Although you won’t get any traffic worth mentioning if you don’t make a nice page
and invite every friend in your niche there, one nice thing about it is that many
MySpace members surf member pages randomly, so you’re almost sure to get a
visit or two daily, even with a blank page.
It won’t be very targeted, however, so don’t count on it to bring you much reward.
Also, since it’s so much of a popularity contest, it can be difficult to convince
individual members into accepting your invitation.
Your best bet: Use a Popularity submission tool like Friend Laser. It’s not free,
but it can drastically improve your page views because it seeks out just the
‘profitable’ friends to submit add friend requests to… That way you don’t build a
list of thousands of friends there just to find that none of them have ever been
back to MySpace since the day they signed up. It also make sure you’re only
submitting comments on pages that have a lot of views, which is the hardest
thing about MySpace marketing.
Unfortunately there is no free way to do that part, so the best you can do without
any cash on MySpace is just to manually make sure that you submit to only
people who appear active, on topic, and have lots & lots of friends.
how you remember High School; the rules are different, it’s all
about competing in a Popularity contest!
In fact, you may notice that it seems the majority of MySpace members are pretty
young… So why does everyone obsess about using MySpace to market with
these days? Simply because they’ve already got the traffic there.
MySpace.com is at this moment the world’s 6th most popular website according
to Alexa.com. YouTube.com and it had been closely competing for the #5 spot
for half a year until Microsoft’s ‘Live’ search got between them. (YouTube, which I
review later in this eBook, is even better for marketing purposes than MySpace.)
Still, getting a website all about you on the #6 website worldwide is an
opportunity you shouldn’t pass up.
Getting your own profile there is free, you can make it link to any off-site (no
illegal) websites that you’d like, and of course your profile page should include
some type of non-spammy-sounding content on your niche subject matter that
other people may want to link to.
Since it’s easy to linkswap (they call it ‘inviting friends’) with other MySpace
members, a full link campaign inside MySpace takes only minutes instead of
months. Of course not everyone there will accept the invitation.
You can search for link swap opportunities by simply popping your niche
keywords into a MySpace search box and you’ll get all the matching member
pages as results.
From there it’s just about having a nice page yourself that they’ll want to swap
links with (accepting the invitation) and if you get enough MySpace ‘friends,’ your
MySpace page can have a really impressive stream of traffic… Which of course
you’ll want to have linked to your own primary website.
Although you won’t get any traffic worth mentioning if you don’t make a nice page
and invite every friend in your niche there, one nice thing about it is that many
MySpace members surf member pages randomly, so you’re almost sure to get a
visit or two daily, even with a blank page.
It won’t be very targeted, however, so don’t count on it to bring you much reward.
Also, since it’s so much of a popularity contest, it can be difficult to convince
individual members into accepting your invitation.
Your best bet: Use a Popularity submission tool like Friend Laser. It’s not free,
but it can drastically improve your page views because it seeks out just the
‘profitable’ friends to submit add friend requests to… That way you don’t build a
list of thousands of friends there just to find that none of them have ever been
back to MySpace since the day they signed up. It also make sure you’re only
submitting comments on pages that have a lot of views, which is the hardest
thing about MySpace marketing.
Unfortunately there is no free way to do that part, so the best you can do without
any cash on MySpace is just to manually make sure that you submit to only
people who appear active, on topic, and have lots & lots of friends.
Pay Per Click Freebies
Other than the big-name traffic like Google, MSN, and
Yahoo!s text-ad programs, there are endless competitors for
pay-per-click venues… More than you could imagine.
So many in fact, that yep, you guessed it, there are freebies here too for us to
take advantage of. How much? Well, how about $1,040 in PPC money, without
even showing a credit card? (With minimum bids as low as $0.005!)
These types of “Old School” PPC engines are the dinosaurs of the net. Most of
these companies you’re about to see are older than Google, and even older than
any kind of Search Engine Ranking! Still, this method of gathering all these free
targeted visitors to your website works great. It has been forgotten about and
then well hidden by the old-timer PPC fanatics until recently.
So, how does it work? Below is a chart of Pay-Per-Click search engines that are
currently giving away free sign-up bonuses. They don’t even want to see your
credit card, just sign up and the money will be waiting for you inside the account.
I have personally verified each and every one of these by hand in making this
report. To my knowledge there has never been a listing of them all in one place
like this before, at least not with the amounts listed.
Keep in mind that each of these services will only allow one sign-up bonus per
person, so make sure you are promoting the right program or combination of
programs before you make all of your bids active.
So here are your 100,983 Clickthrus, sorted by traffic they send, most to least:
Yahoo!s text-ad programs, there are endless competitors for
pay-per-click venues… More than you could imagine.
So many in fact, that yep, you guessed it, there are freebies here too for us to
take advantage of. How much? Well, how about $1,040 in PPC money, without
even showing a credit card? (With minimum bids as low as $0.005!)
These types of “Old School” PPC engines are the dinosaurs of the net. Most of
these companies you’re about to see are older than Google, and even older than
any kind of Search Engine Ranking! Still, this method of gathering all these free
targeted visitors to your website works great. It has been forgotten about and
then well hidden by the old-timer PPC fanatics until recently.
So, how does it work? Below is a chart of Pay-Per-Click search engines that are
currently giving away free sign-up bonuses. They don’t even want to see your
credit card, just sign up and the money will be waiting for you inside the account.
I have personally verified each and every one of these by hand in making this
report. To my knowledge there has never been a listing of them all in one place
like this before, at least not with the amounts listed.
Keep in mind that each of these services will only allow one sign-up bonus per
person, so make sure you are promoting the right program or combination of
programs before you make all of your bids active.
So here are your 100,983 Clickthrus, sorted by traffic they send, most to least:
The HBF PPC Freebie Database
Company Name $ Bonus Min Bid Clickthrus
Search Post $ 550.00 $0.01 55000
End Find $ 100.00 $0.01 10000
Surf The Web $ 75.00 $0.01 7500
LinkAThon $ 50.00 $0.01 5000
Meteor Surf $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Search Mega $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Seek Hawk $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Seekster $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Sci Seek $ 24.00 $0.01 2400
E Search Zone $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Free Explore $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Jiffy Seek $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Kwick Search $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Link Assist $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Search Raider $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Spider Jump $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
The Best Find $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Harry Knows $ 25.00 $0.05 500
Meg Peg $ 5.00 $0.01 500
Search it Fast $ 5.00 $0.01 500
Alternative Search Engine $ 10.00 $0.03 333
Leap Surf $ 5.00 $0.02 250
MegaCrawl $ 2.00 $0.01 200
Find Big $ 2.00 $0.01 200
The Dallas Explorer $ 10.00 $0.05 200
DWI Page Inc. $ 1.00 $0.005 200
Mammoth Search $ 10.00 $0.10 100
Search Pros $ 1.00 $0.01 100
$ 1,040.00 100,983
As you can see there are quite a few of these dinos still running... For every one
giving away a freebie like this, there are easily 2 others that don’t!
I doubt that some of those very generous listings at the top, such as
SearchPost’s $550, will last forever, so at least sign up for your account and grab
your bonuses before they change their policies.
It should go without saying that the faster you want your traffic to arrive,
(accomplished with higher bidding) the fewer of those 100,983 visitors you will
ever see. That’s just how PPC works. But don’t worry about having to pay too
much for your highly competitive keywords, these guys don’t seem to compete
on the same market with Google and Yahoo at all, so getting a couple of targeted
clicks a day from this list should be expected even at the minimum bid!
(Well, perhaps not for gambling, porn, viagra, or life insurance niches…)
The numbers in this chart were compiled by hand by on New Years Eve 2006,
and updated again in June 2007, but since this is a free-floating document, I
have no control over when you receive this file or when these search engines
change their policies. Any updates to this chart will have to be made on the
referring page of my website.
Drawbacks?
Well, you will have to put in a lot of keywords to get any steady traffic out of it. My
home business niche has the very most heavily competed set of keywords there,
so I opted to spend 1 cent across the board for each of 80 keywords related to
Home Business. My results have been a steady trickle, as I usually come up in
any search result as #2 to #4… So my website will ultimately receive 10-50
visitors a day from this source.
But that’s not using very many keywords for my niche; I just haven’t had time to
go find them all. Once I do I should be able to get 10 times than many daily
visitors from these free sources.
Search Post $ 550.00 $0.01 55000
End Find $ 100.00 $0.01 10000
Surf The Web $ 75.00 $0.01 7500
LinkAThon $ 50.00 $0.01 5000
Meteor Surf $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Search Mega $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Seek Hawk $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Seekster $ 25.00 $0.01 2500
Sci Seek $ 24.00 $0.01 2400
E Search Zone $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Free Explore $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Jiffy Seek $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Kwick Search $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Link Assist $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Search Raider $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Spider Jump $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
The Best Find $ 10.00 $0.01 1000
Harry Knows $ 25.00 $0.05 500
Meg Peg $ 5.00 $0.01 500
Search it Fast $ 5.00 $0.01 500
Alternative Search Engine $ 10.00 $0.03 333
Leap Surf $ 5.00 $0.02 250
MegaCrawl $ 2.00 $0.01 200
Find Big $ 2.00 $0.01 200
The Dallas Explorer $ 10.00 $0.05 200
DWI Page Inc. $ 1.00 $0.005 200
Mammoth Search $ 10.00 $0.10 100
Search Pros $ 1.00 $0.01 100
$ 1,040.00 100,983
As you can see there are quite a few of these dinos still running... For every one
giving away a freebie like this, there are easily 2 others that don’t!
I doubt that some of those very generous listings at the top, such as
SearchPost’s $550, will last forever, so at least sign up for your account and grab
your bonuses before they change their policies.
It should go without saying that the faster you want your traffic to arrive,
(accomplished with higher bidding) the fewer of those 100,983 visitors you will
ever see. That’s just how PPC works. But don’t worry about having to pay too
much for your highly competitive keywords, these guys don’t seem to compete
on the same market with Google and Yahoo at all, so getting a couple of targeted
clicks a day from this list should be expected even at the minimum bid!
(Well, perhaps not for gambling, porn, viagra, or life insurance niches…)
The numbers in this chart were compiled by hand by on New Years Eve 2006,
and updated again in June 2007, but since this is a free-floating document, I
have no control over when you receive this file or when these search engines
change their policies. Any updates to this chart will have to be made on the
referring page of my website.
Drawbacks?
Well, you will have to put in a lot of keywords to get any steady traffic out of it. My
home business niche has the very most heavily competed set of keywords there,
so I opted to spend 1 cent across the board for each of 80 keywords related to
Home Business. My results have been a steady trickle, as I usually come up in
any search result as #2 to #4… So my website will ultimately receive 10-50
visitors a day from this source.
But that’s not using very many keywords for my niche; I just haven’t had time to
go find them all. Once I do I should be able to get 10 times than many daily
visitors from these free sources.
PodCasting
There are free places online for people to actually download
MP3s on any subject. Naturally, you can also upload them for
free.
Many people are audio-centric and prefer to learn by listening on their iPods,
usually so they can multitask or not be bored during a commute. Giving them free
content is an excellent way for your name and relation to their favorite subject
matter to be presented.
Much like how an article works, effective PodCasting depends on your content
being interesting enough for them to want to download it, but at the same time,
you must include your sales message and of course end it with a “Call to Action”
that motivates the listener into following up in some way such as visiting your
website.
It’s true that this rarely results in many links back to your site, and if your content
is interesting enough, the best you can hope for is for fans to pass them around
to each other by word of mouth… Certainly no benefit for link-building.
Still, there is a lot to be said for Brand Recognition. If you are marketing solely by
advertising through PPC and SEO, then the fact of the matter is that you won’t be
reaching a good portion of people out there that respond solely or much better to
another form of contact.
Whereas you might not have ever reached the “Generation Y” crowd using
traditional methods at all, something like PodCasting or YouTubing would get
your foot in the door, and your Brand Name would be in a new niche. From there,
the Gen Y individuals would look for the rest of your work by themselves if you’ve
done your job right.
To get started in PodCasting, all you need is a Microphone on your computer
(sometimes you can even use headphones plugged into the “Mic” input) and
some free software that allows you to save & convert your voice into MP3 format.
From what I’ve heard from many pros on this matter, there is nothing better than
a free software called Audacity. It even comes in Mac and Linux flavors, too.
Simply take an article or some interesting copy you’ve written and read it into
your computer’s mic while running this software. Practice your speech first, work
the bugs out. Once finished, you simply need to name the file with some good
keywords that are likely to get searched in your niche, and upload it to all the
best free download sites.
There are literally hundreds of Podcast Directories out there now, with the most
popular one being http://www.podcast.net.
Don’t forget to offer your cast from your website, Squidoo lens, blog, or MySpace
pages as well. Perhaps as a bonus for signing up to your newsletter or even just
as a simple link on your home page.
Multiple media formats containing your wisdom build professionalism. This is a
great way to develop your diverse brand on your website.
MP3s on any subject. Naturally, you can also upload them for
free.
Many people are audio-centric and prefer to learn by listening on their iPods,
usually so they can multitask or not be bored during a commute. Giving them free
content is an excellent way for your name and relation to their favorite subject
matter to be presented.
Much like how an article works, effective PodCasting depends on your content
being interesting enough for them to want to download it, but at the same time,
you must include your sales message and of course end it with a “Call to Action”
that motivates the listener into following up in some way such as visiting your
website.
It’s true that this rarely results in many links back to your site, and if your content
is interesting enough, the best you can hope for is for fans to pass them around
to each other by word of mouth… Certainly no benefit for link-building.
Still, there is a lot to be said for Brand Recognition. If you are marketing solely by
advertising through PPC and SEO, then the fact of the matter is that you won’t be
reaching a good portion of people out there that respond solely or much better to
another form of contact.
Whereas you might not have ever reached the “Generation Y” crowd using
traditional methods at all, something like PodCasting or YouTubing would get
your foot in the door, and your Brand Name would be in a new niche. From there,
the Gen Y individuals would look for the rest of your work by themselves if you’ve
done your job right.
To get started in PodCasting, all you need is a Microphone on your computer
(sometimes you can even use headphones plugged into the “Mic” input) and
some free software that allows you to save & convert your voice into MP3 format.
From what I’ve heard from many pros on this matter, there is nothing better than
a free software called Audacity. It even comes in Mac and Linux flavors, too.
Simply take an article or some interesting copy you’ve written and read it into
your computer’s mic while running this software. Practice your speech first, work
the bugs out. Once finished, you simply need to name the file with some good
keywords that are likely to get searched in your niche, and upload it to all the
best free download sites.
There are literally hundreds of Podcast Directories out there now, with the most
popular one being http://www.podcast.net.
Don’t forget to offer your cast from your website, Squidoo lens, blog, or MySpace
pages as well. Perhaps as a bonus for signing up to your newsletter or even just
as a simple link on your home page.
Multiple media formats containing your wisdom build professionalism. This is a
great way to develop your diverse brand on your website.
Press Releases – (A subset of Link Building)
Much like Article Marketing, writing and submitting press
releases can be an incredibly effective way to get attention to
your website or cause. However, not just any informative
article will do for a press release; these are meant to go to the News agencies of
the world… So your submission has to be at least a little newsworthy & timesensitive.
Many businesses apply this tactic by hyping up their product launches, writing a
press release about the release of their upcoming product that is factual but
implies that the launch is quite a newsworthy event where they are located.
The more newsworthy your ‘news’ is, obviously, the more news agencies will pick
it up. The more of that pick it up and run your story, the more attention and name
recognition you’ll get. All news outlets have websites these days, so any
published story should deliver a high PageRank link back to your site.
Ideally, you want a story that will get picked up by ABC & CNN, so you’ll get
millions of backlinks and receive 10,000 visitors every hour for weeks…
Of course I’ve never met a marketer who’s pulled off that trick yet, so back in the
real world what you’re shooting for is mention in the local papers and at least one
big-city newspaper. That’s enough to bring some great exposure to your site.
Instead of submitting your release to Article Directories, you’ll be submitting it to
press services like PRweb.com, which is the biggest and best of the bunch.
They don’t make you pay for their distribution, but if you’re trying to get your
message out overseas or for the most massive distribution pushes, there are
fees that they charge. (I’ve honestly never had to investigate that option.) You
can also make a “Contribution” at PRWeb that highlights your release in a special
section above the other listings, just like an eBay featured item… This just gets
your release read more by those who browse manually… The official press looks
at everything anyway.
The biggest turn-off that discourages marketers from writing a press release is
that it seems too difficult to make your story sound newsworthy… Especially
when your news is nothing more than a product launch.
Before you let that thought defeat yo, go to PRWeb.com and read some of the
stories there that have been pushed lately. Most of these stories are all just
hyped-up everyday happenings. Let me give you a great example out of today’s
headlines I just quickly found there:
“Google killed SEO with their filters, now the SEO Industry responds with
undetectable links.
(PRWEB) January 21, 2007 -- The search engine optimization industry has been
hit hard by Google's increasingly complex algorithmic filters, which can often
times determine whether a link is a paid one or not. Now with the launch of V7N
Contextual (http://contextual.v7n.com), the SEO industry is responding with
undetectable paid links.
V7N Contextual is a new service launched by John Scott of the V7 Network,
which aims to give the SEO industry an edge over the Google filters and other
tactics recently employed to devalue and detect paid links, and thwart the efforts
of those trying to increase traffic to their website. V7N Contextual provides you
with the perfect link - one that is highly relevant, well-placed, permanent,
affordable, and completely undetectable as a paid link by both humans and
algorithmic filtering.”
In case you missed it, all that’s really going on here is that a company called V7N
has just ‘launched’ a service that provides a link-source cloaking of some kind…
Hardly CNN headline news, but they’ve phrased it to sound Earth-shattering, and
the end result will be that relevant SEO news websites and newsletters will all
consider this story to run in their next edition.
It will likely get out nationwide, but the nature of the news business is that it will
have to compete with the other news in that industry at the time.
If it’s a slow enough news day, this story could be really effective!
releases can be an incredibly effective way to get attention to
your website or cause. However, not just any informative
article will do for a press release; these are meant to go to the News agencies of
the world… So your submission has to be at least a little newsworthy & timesensitive.
Many businesses apply this tactic by hyping up their product launches, writing a
press release about the release of their upcoming product that is factual but
implies that the launch is quite a newsworthy event where they are located.
The more newsworthy your ‘news’ is, obviously, the more news agencies will pick
it up. The more of that pick it up and run your story, the more attention and name
recognition you’ll get. All news outlets have websites these days, so any
published story should deliver a high PageRank link back to your site.
Ideally, you want a story that will get picked up by ABC & CNN, so you’ll get
millions of backlinks and receive 10,000 visitors every hour for weeks…
Of course I’ve never met a marketer who’s pulled off that trick yet, so back in the
real world what you’re shooting for is mention in the local papers and at least one
big-city newspaper. That’s enough to bring some great exposure to your site.
Instead of submitting your release to Article Directories, you’ll be submitting it to
press services like PRweb.com, which is the biggest and best of the bunch.
They don’t make you pay for their distribution, but if you’re trying to get your
message out overseas or for the most massive distribution pushes, there are
fees that they charge. (I’ve honestly never had to investigate that option.) You
can also make a “Contribution” at PRWeb that highlights your release in a special
section above the other listings, just like an eBay featured item… This just gets
your release read more by those who browse manually… The official press looks
at everything anyway.
The biggest turn-off that discourages marketers from writing a press release is
that it seems too difficult to make your story sound newsworthy… Especially
when your news is nothing more than a product launch.
Before you let that thought defeat yo, go to PRWeb.com and read some of the
stories there that have been pushed lately. Most of these stories are all just
hyped-up everyday happenings. Let me give you a great example out of today’s
headlines I just quickly found there:
“Google killed SEO with their filters, now the SEO Industry responds with
undetectable links.
(PRWEB) January 21, 2007 -- The search engine optimization industry has been
hit hard by Google's increasingly complex algorithmic filters, which can often
times determine whether a link is a paid one or not. Now with the launch of V7N
Contextual (http://contextual.v7n.com), the SEO industry is responding with
undetectable paid links.
V7N Contextual is a new service launched by John Scott of the V7 Network,
which aims to give the SEO industry an edge over the Google filters and other
tactics recently employed to devalue and detect paid links, and thwart the efforts
of those trying to increase traffic to their website. V7N Contextual provides you
with the perfect link - one that is highly relevant, well-placed, permanent,
affordable, and completely undetectable as a paid link by both humans and
algorithmic filtering.”
In case you missed it, all that’s really going on here is that a company called V7N
has just ‘launched’ a service that provides a link-source cloaking of some kind…
Hardly CNN headline news, but they’ve phrased it to sound Earth-shattering, and
the end result will be that relevant SEO news websites and newsletters will all
consider this story to run in their next edition.
It will likely get out nationwide, but the nature of the news business is that it will
have to compete with the other news in that industry at the time.
If it’s a slow enough news day, this story could be really effective!
RSS – (Syndicated Content)
There are actually many great uses for RSS, which stands for
“Really Simple Syndication.” Website Publishers & especially
Blog owners should use RSS feeds in their pages to give
fresh, on-topic content to their readers each day without having to lift a finger.
Alternatively, they can offer their own RSS feed to other webmasters so that
those other sites can publish their site content elsewhere (with a link back to their
site, naturally.)
Your visitors will like having the fresh industry news there at a glance. I know that
I certainly appreciate my Yahoo! news start page portal, which is nothing but 50
RSS Feeds all crammed together.
For a few years now we’ve been able to show RSS feeds from our own sites,
plugging in various RSS Feeds to our web pages to constantly update
themselves, so our websites are always new and up-to-date looking for our
visitors. Here are two great resources to start learning how to do so:
How to Make & Display syndicated content
Wikipedia’s guide to RSS usage (in depth)
Alternatively, any webmaster or Blog runner that puts out a fair amount of content
(weekly posts or more frequently) can ‘syndicate’ it with RSS by simply creating
an XML feed file and posting it on one of the many varies RSS directories.
(http://www.syndic8.com is one of the largest, but again there are hundreds of
these directories, and many are themed.)
It’s important to note that there is no point building an entire site out of RSS
Feeds, because there would be no original content on your site. With no original
content, Search Engines like Google won’t see anything on your site worth
pointing to. RSS Feeds technically don’t belong to your site; they only belong to
the originator of the feed. All the rest of the people who display that feed are
using scraps of duplicate content, which Google doesn’t count towards your
page’s worth. But don’t worry, there is a big upside to RSS publishing; these
feeds still have keywords in them to match to contextual-matching programs like
AdSense, so RSS Feeds can help bring up your AdSense click value if used
properly. This means that feeds are great tools for AdSense Publishers, as long
as they don’t try to make the feeds into the majority of that site’s content.
“Really Simple Syndication.” Website Publishers & especially
Blog owners should use RSS feeds in their pages to give
fresh, on-topic content to their readers each day without having to lift a finger.
Alternatively, they can offer their own RSS feed to other webmasters so that
those other sites can publish their site content elsewhere (with a link back to their
site, naturally.)
Your visitors will like having the fresh industry news there at a glance. I know that
I certainly appreciate my Yahoo! news start page portal, which is nothing but 50
RSS Feeds all crammed together.
For a few years now we’ve been able to show RSS feeds from our own sites,
plugging in various RSS Feeds to our web pages to constantly update
themselves, so our websites are always new and up-to-date looking for our
visitors. Here are two great resources to start learning how to do so:
How to Make & Display syndicated content
Wikipedia’s guide to RSS usage (in depth)
Alternatively, any webmaster or Blog runner that puts out a fair amount of content
(weekly posts or more frequently) can ‘syndicate’ it with RSS by simply creating
an XML feed file and posting it on one of the many varies RSS directories.
(http://www.syndic8.com is one of the largest, but again there are hundreds of
these directories, and many are themed.)
It’s important to note that there is no point building an entire site out of RSS
Feeds, because there would be no original content on your site. With no original
content, Search Engines like Google won’t see anything on your site worth
pointing to. RSS Feeds technically don’t belong to your site; they only belong to
the originator of the feed. All the rest of the people who display that feed are
using scraps of duplicate content, which Google doesn’t count towards your
page’s worth. But don’t worry, there is a big upside to RSS publishing; these
feeds still have keywords in them to match to contextual-matching programs like
AdSense, so RSS Feeds can help bring up your AdSense click value if used
properly. This means that feeds are great tools for AdSense Publishers, as long
as they don’t try to make the feeds into the majority of that site’s content.
Safelists
An often dismissed way of advertising online is by using a
Safelist. It’s named that because you have to agree not to
report the flood of emails you get as spam… So the emails
you’re agreeing to use is therefore “Safe” from spam accusations, no matter how
many come in each day. I normally get a few hundred emails daily just from the
three accounts I mention below… Way more than I or anyone else is planning to
read through.
Safelist’s major problem, which everyone agrees is substantial, is that no one
really reads these emails. Conversion rates (people actually clicking a link in one
of the emails) are down in the toilet around 0.0001%.
So why do we still use these things? Sheer bulk. If you can write (or borrow) a
catchy headline that could get your email opened by someone who just skims
headlines alone, then even new free members can send out their solo ad to a
massive enough list to get some form of response. It’s very much like having
your own list, although it would be the equivalent of having a list that people
didn’t have to opt-in to, because so few will read it.
Like Traffic Bars and Exchanges, this tactic excels in the IM2IM niche because
everyone else who subscribes to a safelist is an Internet Marketer too. The three
biggest & best Safelists I’ve found for general use are:
Mad Vlad
AdTactics
Easy List
They are more responsive than most large lists, and also let you build credits by
clicking on links inside certain emails. However, if you really want to get serious
about this and investigate Safelists in depth, check out Traffic Hoopla’s
directory of safelists.
Since so many people are afraid of the tech curve involved with safelists, I took
the liberty of making a very detailed film to show you just how to set up and use
safelists effectively, while keeping it all free:
How to Advertise for Free with Safelists
Safelist. It’s named that because you have to agree not to
report the flood of emails you get as spam… So the emails
you’re agreeing to use is therefore “Safe” from spam accusations, no matter how
many come in each day. I normally get a few hundred emails daily just from the
three accounts I mention below… Way more than I or anyone else is planning to
read through.
Safelist’s major problem, which everyone agrees is substantial, is that no one
really reads these emails. Conversion rates (people actually clicking a link in one
of the emails) are down in the toilet around 0.0001%.
So why do we still use these things? Sheer bulk. If you can write (or borrow) a
catchy headline that could get your email opened by someone who just skims
headlines alone, then even new free members can send out their solo ad to a
massive enough list to get some form of response. It’s very much like having
your own list, although it would be the equivalent of having a list that people
didn’t have to opt-in to, because so few will read it.
Like Traffic Bars and Exchanges, this tactic excels in the IM2IM niche because
everyone else who subscribes to a safelist is an Internet Marketer too. The three
biggest & best Safelists I’ve found for general use are:
Mad Vlad
AdTactics
Easy List
They are more responsive than most large lists, and also let you build credits by
clicking on links inside certain emails. However, if you really want to get serious
about this and investigate Safelists in depth, check out Traffic Hoopla’s
directory of safelists.
Since so many people are afraid of the tech curve involved with safelists, I took
the liberty of making a very detailed film to show you just how to set up and use
safelists effectively, while keeping it all free:
How to Advertise for Free with Safelists
SEO - (Search Engine Optimization)
Search Engine Optimization is big business. The number of
companies out there providing SEO services is quite
staggering, and it’s growing every day. Does that mean it’s
too difficult to do all by yourself?
Not at all. It’s very involved, and it will take a little time and ongoing effort, but it’s
not rocket science, and you can even do everything you need to organically Rank
#1 in all major search engines by yourself, all for free.
When I opened my SEO Services business in 2004 I only had experience
working with my own websites before that point, and I learned VERY quickly one
last, very important thing about SEO… It’s personal.
If you pay a big company to optimize your website for you, as opposed to you
learning how and doing the optimization yourself, then you’ll never be able to
rank as highly. Another company cannot have the very discreet knowledge of
your businesses’ keywords and market that you had to learn the hard way.
You can’t just write some keywords down on a list and give it to them, either. You
have to be the one continually choosing your website’s keywords and putting
them in your site where you see fit. Any other method will either make your site
be someone else’s work, not matching your industry, or simply ineffective.
(Usually all three.)
The good news is that you taking on the role of SEOer of your own site means
that you won’t have to pay a penny for SEO services at all. As my ratings
suggest, it’s not a very quick way to bring in traffic, but scoring very highly for
your keywords in the Google, Yahoo!, and MSN search engine ranking pages
(SERPs) is an incredibly effective way of bringing in traffic. Possibly the best of
all ways, because it is the highest possible quality, and if you can dominate
enough keywords for your niche, the highest possible quantity as well!
On- site Search Engine Optimization breaks down into 5 categories.
We won’t be including link building in with these five, but it is a very important
ongoing method you must follow up with... There are many entries throughout
this Encyclopedia on that subject.
People who don’t understand SEO just aren’t aware that it’s all about the
Keywords. Choose the right ones, and all of the ones, for your niche, and then
use them everywhere you can on your site. That’s really all there is to SEO, but
there are infinite variations to the process. Let’s hit the major areas by category.
companies out there providing SEO services is quite
staggering, and it’s growing every day. Does that mean it’s
too difficult to do all by yourself?
Not at all. It’s very involved, and it will take a little time and ongoing effort, but it’s
not rocket science, and you can even do everything you need to organically Rank
#1 in all major search engines by yourself, all for free.
When I opened my SEO Services business in 2004 I only had experience
working with my own websites before that point, and I learned VERY quickly one
last, very important thing about SEO… It’s personal.
If you pay a big company to optimize your website for you, as opposed to you
learning how and doing the optimization yourself, then you’ll never be able to
rank as highly. Another company cannot have the very discreet knowledge of
your businesses’ keywords and market that you had to learn the hard way.
You can’t just write some keywords down on a list and give it to them, either. You
have to be the one continually choosing your website’s keywords and putting
them in your site where you see fit. Any other method will either make your site
be someone else’s work, not matching your industry, or simply ineffective.
(Usually all three.)
The good news is that you taking on the role of SEOer of your own site means
that you won’t have to pay a penny for SEO services at all. As my ratings
suggest, it’s not a very quick way to bring in traffic, but scoring very highly for
your keywords in the Google, Yahoo!, and MSN search engine ranking pages
(SERPs) is an incredibly effective way of bringing in traffic. Possibly the best of
all ways, because it is the highest possible quality, and if you can dominate
enough keywords for your niche, the highest possible quantity as well!
On- site Search Engine Optimization breaks down into 5 categories.
We won’t be including link building in with these five, but it is a very important
ongoing method you must follow up with... There are many entries throughout
this Encyclopedia on that subject.
People who don’t understand SEO just aren’t aware that it’s all about the
Keywords. Choose the right ones, and all of the ones, for your niche, and then
use them everywhere you can on your site. That’s really all there is to SEO, but
there are infinite variations to the process. Let’s hit the major areas by category.
Keyword Selection
Choosing the Right keywords to target your intended audience with is more than
vital, it’s the whole ball game. The best way to do this is by using a large-scale
keyword generation software & services such as Wordtracker or Keyword Elite.
However, if you take the time to do it right, you can find all the same keywords
yourself, albeit more slowly, by using an excellent free web-based tool offered by
Digital Point Solutions, simply called the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. It
actually queries both Yahoo’s (Overture) data as well as Google’s AdWords
keyword data, for each and every keyword search you run. Better yet, it let’s you
drill down to be as specific as you want.
The only thing this doesn’t tell you is how much people are willing to pay for each
term in PPC engines like AdWords and Y!SM. This is valuable data I suggest you
use for in-depth campaigns, especially for AdSense Publishers, however at this
point it’s not necessary. SEOing your website is strictly the art of choosing the
MOST RELEVANT keywords to your desired audience. All else needs to be
forgotten at this stage.
Build up as big a list as possible, keeping all keywords on your list relevant. I
suggest using a spreadsheet like MS-Excel to store them, so you can sort them
by demand as well.
The way you get lots of people to your site is by choosing the highest-demand
keywords on that list and using them in your site often. After you’ve built your
whole list, sort by demand, and use those with the biggest numbers the most
across your website.
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but you can easily see the pattern
here. For those perfectionists out there, I’ve perfected the process instructions on
my old SEO website:
vital, it’s the whole ball game. The best way to do this is by using a large-scale
keyword generation software & services such as Wordtracker or Keyword Elite.
However, if you take the time to do it right, you can find all the same keywords
yourself, albeit more slowly, by using an excellent free web-based tool offered by
Digital Point Solutions, simply called the Free Keyword Suggestion Tool. It
actually queries both Yahoo’s (Overture) data as well as Google’s AdWords
keyword data, for each and every keyword search you run. Better yet, it let’s you
drill down to be as specific as you want.
The only thing this doesn’t tell you is how much people are willing to pay for each
term in PPC engines like AdWords and Y!SM. This is valuable data I suggest you
use for in-depth campaigns, especially for AdSense Publishers, however at this
point it’s not necessary. SEOing your website is strictly the art of choosing the
MOST RELEVANT keywords to your desired audience. All else needs to be
forgotten at this stage.
Build up as big a list as possible, keeping all keywords on your list relevant. I
suggest using a spreadsheet like MS-Excel to store them, so you can sort them
by demand as well.
The way you get lots of people to your site is by choosing the highest-demand
keywords on that list and using them in your site often. After you’ve built your
whole list, sort by demand, and use those with the biggest numbers the most
across your website.
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, but you can easily see the pattern
here. For those perfectionists out there, I’ve perfected the process instructions on
my old SEO website:
Keyword Density
This term refers to the number of times you use your keywords throughout a
page or a site. If you had a 200 word page that you’re trying to optimize for the
word “peanut butter,” but only said this phrase once throughout the whole page,
you’re not letting Googlebot and it’s spider pals know what you’re talking about at
all…
Alternatively, if 50 of those 200 words (25%) are the keywords themselves, then
you’re really going to be spamming the search engines, as Googlebot will see
right through what you’re trying to do and penalize you for it. Even worse, people
reading such copy would think that you’re not even a native speaker of your
language, and leave the page immediately!
The best course of action would be to aim between 0.5% and 5% of the content
on a page. Any more would sound artificial; any less would be too vague. The
trick is to never let it influence your copy’s effectiveness.
This doesn’t take into account the other places you can put your keywords, such
as the name of the page, the title, in HTML comment tags, as names for the
photos it links to, and of course in the Meta Tags in your HTML code. They’re all
wide-open for you to shove
page or a site. If you had a 200 word page that you’re trying to optimize for the
word “peanut butter,” but only said this phrase once throughout the whole page,
you’re not letting Googlebot and it’s spider pals know what you’re talking about at
all…
Alternatively, if 50 of those 200 words (25%) are the keywords themselves, then
you’re really going to be spamming the search engines, as Googlebot will see
right through what you’re trying to do and penalize you for it. Even worse, people
reading such copy would think that you’re not even a native speaker of your
language, and leave the page immediately!
The best course of action would be to aim between 0.5% and 5% of the content
on a page. Any more would sound artificial; any less would be too vague. The
trick is to never let it influence your copy’s effectiveness.
This doesn’t take into account the other places you can put your keywords, such
as the name of the page, the title, in HTML comment tags, as names for the
photos it links to, and of course in the Meta Tags in your HTML code. They’re all
wide-open for you to shove
META Tags
The most important place on a web page to put your keywords, beside the Title
on the page, is in your page’s META tags. In your html page codes’ heading
section, they look like this:
meta name="description" content="A description of your website here."
meta name="keywords" content="Your five, best keyword, phrases here,
separated, by commas"
meta name="author" content="Your name here"
meta http-equiv="title" content="Page title repeated here"
meta name="copyright" content="Your copyright info here"
There are many other META tags as well, but these are pretty universal, and
really only the top two here, Description & Keywords are vital.
A major mistake most web authors do is to make their META tag block once, and
then just post the same block on every page of their site. Each page on your site
should be targeted individually, and contain the keywords from the meta tags in
the body copy as well.
To put it another way, your page on Peanut Butter Cookies must have that
keyword phrase on it, in the Meta Tag as well as the content, and not the same 5
keywords on your main Peanut Butter web site home page… Remember, Google
and the other big SEs judge each page one by one for for their results, not whole
websites.
on the page, is in your page’s META tags. In your html page codes’ heading
section, they look like this:
meta name="description" content="A description of your website here."
meta name="keywords" content="Your five, best keyword, phrases here,
separated, by commas"
meta name="author" content="Your name here"
meta http-equiv="title" content="Page title repeated here"
meta name="copyright" content="Your copyright info here"
There are many other META tags as well, but these are pretty universal, and
really only the top two here, Description & Keywords are vital.
A major mistake most web authors do is to make their META tag block once, and
then just post the same block on every page of their site. Each page on your site
should be targeted individually, and contain the keywords from the meta tags in
the body copy as well.
To put it another way, your page on Peanut Butter Cookies must have that
keyword phrase on it, in the Meta Tag as well as the content, and not the same 5
keywords on your main Peanut Butter web site home page… Remember, Google
and the other big SEs judge each page one by one for for their results, not whole
websites.
Site Flow
The Flow of a website in SEO terms refers to the order in which a Search Engine
Spider like Googlebot will read a site and even page while indexing. (In sales
websites, there is another “Flow” process, which is totally separate from this
one.)
To optimize your website for the search engines, you have to try to read the
website code in the same order that a spider does, not just how it appears to
humans. There are many variables to this, including instructions for the spiders in
your Robots.txt file, inside the META “Index” tag, the order of which your links
appear on a web page, the order of all links in your sitemap file, and even the
order that the content occurs within the html code. Collectively, we call all of
these “Spider guiders.”
What this mini-science comes down to is the fact that you must show the search
engines exactly what you want to be highly ranked for, and hide as much else as
Spider like Googlebot will read a site and even page while indexing. (In sales
websites, there is another “Flow” process, which is totally separate from this
one.)
To optimize your website for the search engines, you have to try to read the
website code in the same order that a spider does, not just how it appears to
humans. There are many variables to this, including instructions for the spiders in
your Robots.txt file, inside the META “Index” tag, the order of which your links
appear on a web page, the order of all links in your sitemap file, and even the
order that the content occurs within the html code. Collectively, we call all of
these “Spider guiders.”
What this mini-science comes down to is the fact that you must show the search
engines exactly what you want to be highly ranked for, and hide as much else as
SiteMaps
Both Google and Yahoo! let you write a “map” of your website and submit it to
them, so their spiders will know in advance exactly what to go index and how
often. This has nothing to do with your website’s “Sitemap” page, those are for a
human being’s eyes, although technically those make it a little easier on the
spiders as well.
Google’s spider map is commonly a file named “sitemap.xml” that must be
placed on the main web directory of your server host. Google demands that it be
written in the XML language, which looks a lot like HTML except for a few other
commands. Don’t worry, you won’t have to write a single line of code for this.
There’s an excellent free tool coming up in a minute to write these for you.
Once you’ve got your file written, you’ve got to tell Google that it’s there, so you
can get Googlebot to come out and spider your website as soon as possible.
Without doing this, you have no control at all when your website will be first
indexed.
Where do you do this? Simply log into your Google account, (the same account
for Gmail, Analytics, AdWords, AdSense, or any other of Google’s services) and
click on “My Account,” then “Webmaster Tools.” From that page you’ll be able to
add websites and watch their progress.
Yahoo!’s Sitemap is different. It’s just a Text file (.TXT) that is nothing but a list of
URLs on your domain. If you list an URL there, it will index that page. If not, it
won’t. I love the simplicity of their method. They call it a “Feed” however, and you
have to submit that too.
Simply go to the main page of Yahoo.com, click at the bottom where it says
“Suggest a Site.” Choose the top option of “Suggest a Site for free,” and the page
will then take you to an account login screen if you’re not already logged in. Do
so, and then the next screen will be a website URL suggestion form. The account
“Feed” it is looking for is the Urllist.txt file that you have to make. It can be added
there at the end of the URL to your website in their form, and Yahoo! will start
spidering your site immediately as well.
So where do you get your Sitemap.xml and Urllist.txt files made? There are
hundreds of places online that offer the service of writing these files for you. Until
recently, all the free versions were very limited, only allowing 50 to100 links on
your site, or not allowing certain time variables. Lately there’s been an addition
that has no such limits, making all the rest of these obsolete:
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
Click on the ‘webmaster tool’ box on this page and it will open up a Java
application. (Yes, you need free Sun Java installed first.) Play with this app until
you feel like you’ve included everything on your site that you want Google and
Yahoo! to see, and hidden away everything else. It can then output the
sitemap.xml and urllist.txt files for you, all for free.
Upload those to the main folder of your server host and tell Big G and Y! where
they are as fast as you can.
All the rest of SEOing your website has to do with link building, but there are
some other details that can help as well. I also recommend a great program
called WebCEO that helps automate all of this work from one suite of tools, and
they even have a free version as well. It even gives you reports of work left to do
and campaign effectiveness.
them, so their spiders will know in advance exactly what to go index and how
often. This has nothing to do with your website’s “Sitemap” page, those are for a
human being’s eyes, although technically those make it a little easier on the
spiders as well.
Google’s spider map is commonly a file named “sitemap.xml” that must be
placed on the main web directory of your server host. Google demands that it be
written in the XML language, which looks a lot like HTML except for a few other
commands. Don’t worry, you won’t have to write a single line of code for this.
There’s an excellent free tool coming up in a minute to write these for you.
Once you’ve got your file written, you’ve got to tell Google that it’s there, so you
can get Googlebot to come out and spider your website as soon as possible.
Without doing this, you have no control at all when your website will be first
indexed.
Where do you do this? Simply log into your Google account, (the same account
for Gmail, Analytics, AdWords, AdSense, or any other of Google’s services) and
click on “My Account,” then “Webmaster Tools.” From that page you’ll be able to
add websites and watch their progress.
Yahoo!’s Sitemap is different. It’s just a Text file (.TXT) that is nothing but a list of
URLs on your domain. If you list an URL there, it will index that page. If not, it
won’t. I love the simplicity of their method. They call it a “Feed” however, and you
have to submit that too.
Simply go to the main page of Yahoo.com, click at the bottom where it says
“Suggest a Site.” Choose the top option of “Suggest a Site for free,” and the page
will then take you to an account login screen if you’re not already logged in. Do
so, and then the next screen will be a website URL suggestion form. The account
“Feed” it is looking for is the Urllist.txt file that you have to make. It can be added
there at the end of the URL to your website in their form, and Yahoo! will start
spidering your site immediately as well.
So where do you get your Sitemap.xml and Urllist.txt files made? There are
hundreds of places online that offer the service of writing these files for you. Until
recently, all the free versions were very limited, only allowing 50 to100 links on
your site, or not allowing certain time variables. Lately there’s been an addition
that has no such limits, making all the rest of these obsolete:
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp
Click on the ‘webmaster tool’ box on this page and it will open up a Java
application. (Yes, you need free Sun Java installed first.) Play with this app until
you feel like you’ve included everything on your site that you want Google and
Yahoo! to see, and hidden away everything else. It can then output the
sitemap.xml and urllist.txt files for you, all for free.
Upload those to the main folder of your server host and tell Big G and Y! where
they are as fast as you can.
All the rest of SEOing your website has to do with link building, but there are
some other details that can help as well. I also recommend a great program
called WebCEO that helps automate all of this work from one suite of tools, and
they even have a free version as well. It even gives you reports of work left to do
and campaign effectiveness.
Social Bookmarking
Digg, Technorati, Reddit, Del.icio.us, Fark, Furl, even
Netscape. Web 2.0’s largest trend has created over 1,000 of
this new breed of “Tagged News sites.” On them we mere
humans share our online bookmarks with each other, and on the latest
incarnations, we vote them up and down against each others to point out which
ones are the most interesting or useful.
These tools are great, and their power is staggering at times… But all they do is
essentially just use humans to duplicate Google’s work to the same end!
Why would we go through such trouble? Because computer algorithms still just
don’t “know” their resources the way humans do. Having another person select a
website and “tag” it as relevant to your keyword is much more intuitive for us to
find resources with. It has its problems too, mainly when combining keywords,
but overall it’s becoming an extremely popular way for people to find other
websites.
This of course means that you, too, need to be Tagging your website in many
Social Bookmarking tools for others to find.
Essentially the way these things work is that you set up an account with each of
the ones you want to use and “Tag” any website or blog entry instead of
bookmarking it the traditional way. Those tags could be kept just for personal use
(Who in their right mind would want to do that…?) but as a default they are
shared on that bookmarking website for others who search for the term you
tagged it with.
With most Social Bookmarking tools, such as Del.icio.us, (we call this group the
“Taggers”) the websites that have been tagged the most for a certain keyword
come up the highest on the list when that keyword is searched. It’s actually a
very simple & elegant system.
The newer breed of SB tools, such as Digg.com, uses an additional Voting
capacity for people simply viewing the index page to vote up or down any news
items they want to. (Naturally, these are referred to as the “Voters.”)
From a marketing standpoint, however, this can all be chaotic! First of all there
are simply too many of these sites… Submitting to Google and Yahoo! is one
thing, but could you imagine opening an account in all 1000 of these things and
hitting the “tag” button for all of them? How about providing a review in each of
them?
Second, people still go to google.com to search unless you make it easier for
them to search a Tag elsewhere. It’s still not quite worth our time.
Finally, the problem it has with multiple keywords (Search engines handle
keyword phrases as a single query… Bookmarking sites handle each word as a
query and add them together) leaves a lot up to interpretation. The end result is
that you need to be supplying even MORE keywords to a bookmarking site than
you would to a search engine.
One thing you’ve got working for you is that you really don’t need to submit to
them all. (Whew!) Once you choose some good keywords for your article
(Remember, we use bookmarking tools per article or blog posting, not per whole
website) you simply need to post it in the best bookmarking tool sites for your
niche topic.
For example, in the Internet Marketing world, the best one is PlugIM
(www.plugim.com) which will only accept internet marketing-related posts. That
isn’t to say that I should be submitting my articles to Digg.com too, because Digg
has a marketing subsection… But I’d never submit it to a social bookmarking site
like Newsvine, for instance, because they are only interested in the most
newsworthy news stories, like what President Bush is doing to make a fool of
himself this week.
So, once you start exploring the SB tools for your niche market, you’ll quickly
learn the best ones for you and use the same ones over and over again forever.
Surely, you ask, someone has tried to automate the process… Perhaps another
submission software?
But of course! You didn’t think I’d forget to tell you the shortcut on this one, did
you?
Well you’re in luck, because there are THREE shortcuts for Social Bookmark
Marketing, and two of them are free!
The first is not a submitter at all, but it helps webmasters (and of course blog
owners) get their content submitted by others much easier. It’s called the
Socializer, and it’s basically just a page that is updated for you with all of the
most well-known SB tools on it. It even passes the title and URL information
through for you… But it’s not something you can use to do mass submissions
with yourself.
The second tool is quite frankly awesome for a free product. I can think of no
reason everyone shouldn’t be using this tool daily. (Even those who pay for the
third tool!) It is a service called OnlyWire that keeps your account information
and passes your submission to NINETEEN different SB tools with one single
submission. That’s 19 links to your site or blog for every time you use it, all for
free. (Quite possibly the best free marketing tool online!)
OnlyWire’s only downfall is that it doesn’t appear to work with Voter sites,
discluding Digg, Reddit, and many of my favorites… But it does have a few big
names on it such as Del.icio.us. Perhaps in the future they’ll find a way to add a
lot more sites and then shoehorn the Voters in too.
Also, keep an eye on OnlyWire in the future; I expect great things from it. Think
of the power it would have if it manages to talk all social bookmarking tools into
cooperating… I guess only time will tell.
So how about for the really aggressive Social Bookmark submitters out there?
You didn’t think I’d leave you out, did you? Web2Submitter was designed just
for you. In very much the same fashion that you use Article Submitter and
Directory submitter, Web2Submitter lets you submit your posting to all of the
Social Bookmark tools out there as automated as can be. For the small price you
have to pay for it, this is easily one of the few tools out there that has a cost to
performance ratio in the top 1% of anything you can do online!
There is a great film walking you through the whole usage of Web2Submitter on
that page, so go check it out if for no other reason than just to learn what a wellexecuted
Social Bookmarking Marketing campaign looks like.
Quite seriously, just using this tool for an hour on one blog posting can result in
many dozens or even a hundred new quality incoming links to your blog and a 3-
5 day increase of traffic that you couldn’t afford to pay for otherwise… Even if you
took out a new mortgage on your house!
So in summation, Social Bookmarking is quite possibly the very best thing you
can be doing to market your website online. Certainly there will be exceptions,
and it works much better for Blogs that have frequent postings than it could for a
static website. Even still, it’s a free source of traffic that has been known on many
occasions to send blog & website owners even more traffic than Google ever
could on its’ best day… So the bottom line is that Social Bookmarking should be
one of the top sources, if not the primary source of traffic you use for your free
advertising campaign.
Netscape. Web 2.0’s largest trend has created over 1,000 of
this new breed of “Tagged News sites.” On them we mere
humans share our online bookmarks with each other, and on the latest
incarnations, we vote them up and down against each others to point out which
ones are the most interesting or useful.
These tools are great, and their power is staggering at times… But all they do is
essentially just use humans to duplicate Google’s work to the same end!
Why would we go through such trouble? Because computer algorithms still just
don’t “know” their resources the way humans do. Having another person select a
website and “tag” it as relevant to your keyword is much more intuitive for us to
find resources with. It has its problems too, mainly when combining keywords,
but overall it’s becoming an extremely popular way for people to find other
websites.
This of course means that you, too, need to be Tagging your website in many
Social Bookmarking tools for others to find.
Essentially the way these things work is that you set up an account with each of
the ones you want to use and “Tag” any website or blog entry instead of
bookmarking it the traditional way. Those tags could be kept just for personal use
(Who in their right mind would want to do that…?) but as a default they are
shared on that bookmarking website for others who search for the term you
tagged it with.
With most Social Bookmarking tools, such as Del.icio.us, (we call this group the
“Taggers”) the websites that have been tagged the most for a certain keyword
come up the highest on the list when that keyword is searched. It’s actually a
very simple & elegant system.
The newer breed of SB tools, such as Digg.com, uses an additional Voting
capacity for people simply viewing the index page to vote up or down any news
items they want to. (Naturally, these are referred to as the “Voters.”)
From a marketing standpoint, however, this can all be chaotic! First of all there
are simply too many of these sites… Submitting to Google and Yahoo! is one
thing, but could you imagine opening an account in all 1000 of these things and
hitting the “tag” button for all of them? How about providing a review in each of
them?
Second, people still go to google.com to search unless you make it easier for
them to search a Tag elsewhere. It’s still not quite worth our time.
Finally, the problem it has with multiple keywords (Search engines handle
keyword phrases as a single query… Bookmarking sites handle each word as a
query and add them together) leaves a lot up to interpretation. The end result is
that you need to be supplying even MORE keywords to a bookmarking site than
you would to a search engine.
One thing you’ve got working for you is that you really don’t need to submit to
them all. (Whew!) Once you choose some good keywords for your article
(Remember, we use bookmarking tools per article or blog posting, not per whole
website) you simply need to post it in the best bookmarking tool sites for your
niche topic.
For example, in the Internet Marketing world, the best one is PlugIM
(www.plugim.com) which will only accept internet marketing-related posts. That
isn’t to say that I should be submitting my articles to Digg.com too, because Digg
has a marketing subsection… But I’d never submit it to a social bookmarking site
like Newsvine, for instance, because they are only interested in the most
newsworthy news stories, like what President Bush is doing to make a fool of
himself this week.
So, once you start exploring the SB tools for your niche market, you’ll quickly
learn the best ones for you and use the same ones over and over again forever.
Surely, you ask, someone has tried to automate the process… Perhaps another
submission software?
But of course! You didn’t think I’d forget to tell you the shortcut on this one, did
you?
Well you’re in luck, because there are THREE shortcuts for Social Bookmark
Marketing, and two of them are free!
The first is not a submitter at all, but it helps webmasters (and of course blog
owners) get their content submitted by others much easier. It’s called the
Socializer, and it’s basically just a page that is updated for you with all of the
most well-known SB tools on it. It even passes the title and URL information
through for you… But it’s not something you can use to do mass submissions
with yourself.
The second tool is quite frankly awesome for a free product. I can think of no
reason everyone shouldn’t be using this tool daily. (Even those who pay for the
third tool!) It is a service called OnlyWire that keeps your account information
and passes your submission to NINETEEN different SB tools with one single
submission. That’s 19 links to your site or blog for every time you use it, all for
free. (Quite possibly the best free marketing tool online!)
OnlyWire’s only downfall is that it doesn’t appear to work with Voter sites,
discluding Digg, Reddit, and many of my favorites… But it does have a few big
names on it such as Del.icio.us. Perhaps in the future they’ll find a way to add a
lot more sites and then shoehorn the Voters in too.
Also, keep an eye on OnlyWire in the future; I expect great things from it. Think
of the power it would have if it manages to talk all social bookmarking tools into
cooperating… I guess only time will tell.
So how about for the really aggressive Social Bookmark submitters out there?
You didn’t think I’d leave you out, did you? Web2Submitter was designed just
for you. In very much the same fashion that you use Article Submitter and
Directory submitter, Web2Submitter lets you submit your posting to all of the
Social Bookmark tools out there as automated as can be. For the small price you
have to pay for it, this is easily one of the few tools out there that has a cost to
performance ratio in the top 1% of anything you can do online!
There is a great film walking you through the whole usage of Web2Submitter on
that page, so go check it out if for no other reason than just to learn what a wellexecuted
Social Bookmarking Marketing campaign looks like.
Quite seriously, just using this tool for an hour on one blog posting can result in
many dozens or even a hundred new quality incoming links to your blog and a 3-
5 day increase of traffic that you couldn’t afford to pay for otherwise… Even if you
took out a new mortgage on your house!
So in summation, Social Bookmarking is quite possibly the very best thing you
can be doing to market your website online. Certainly there will be exceptions,
and it works much better for Blogs that have frequent postings than it could for a
static website. Even still, it’s a free source of traffic that has been known on many
occasions to send blog & website owners even more traffic than Google ever
could on its’ best day… So the bottom line is that Social Bookmarking should be
one of the top sources, if not the primary source of traffic you use for your free
advertising campaign.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)