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WHAT ACTUALLY IS INTERNET MARKETING?
At its simplest, it's setting up a series of "shops" online to sell products via websites. It's all about persuading people to visit your site(s) and then to buy products, be they physical or downloadable products.
WHY A "SERIES" OF SHOPS?
The key to success is putting multiple income streams into operation. Your "gift" website, for example, may do well at Christmas, but not in the summer. The opposite may be true with your camping niche site! Fashions come and go; your competitors may fail or overtake you. The most successful internet marketers have anywhere from 50-200 separate websites covering often a very wide range of niches.
DO I HAVE TO OWN THE PRODUCTS SOLD?
No, the products you sell don’t even have to be your own. You can be an "affiliate" of many organisations so if a customer clicks through your site to buy an item from them, you still receive a percentage of the full cost. It’s best of course to eventually have your own products to sell as you’ll make more cash that way.
WHAT KIND OF PRODUCTS CAN BE SOLD?
There are two types – downloadable items such as e-books or software; these would be downloaded direct from your site or via established affiliate systems such as Clickbank.
Then there are physical items; you could be an affiliate of, say, Amazon so you could create a site about items about your favourite hobby or niche...fishing rods, astronomical telescopes, cooking utensils...whatever! You'd attract visitors to your site, and when people click through to the main Amazon site, anything they buy on that visit gets you a percentage of the sale. Anything…not just the item they clicked on via your site.
Join up to Amazon.co.uk Associates (UK) here
Join up to Amazon.com Associates (North America) here
SO, FOR PHYSICAL GOODS, DO I HAVE TO ACTUALLY STOCK THEM?
No, you simply link the buyer to the merchant’s site. Your job is then done.
The goods get sent direct and the customer deals directly with them – you get a percentage at the end of the month.
The only problem with being a physical item affiliate is that you have to watch where you get visitors from and ensure they go to the appropriate site. Many items for example on the Amazon.com site, aimed at the North America market – or has electronic equipment only compatible with North America are simply not available to be purchased in Europe, and vice versa. If you’re UK based, for example, you may need to have two “sister” sites created, where you need to get geographical targeted traffic to the USA/Canada site and to the UK site, Amazon.co.uk separately. Perfectly possible!
If you'd like to go down the physical product route rather than the well-trodden download path, we can heartily recommend a comprehensive course put together by the excellent Dan Brock. Don't get put off by the name, The Deadbeat Super Affiliate Course. Dan is an honest, hard working guy but amusingly makes out he lazes around all day to make his fortune! He is a true expert in Amazon and other physical product affiliate selling. Check out his course here.
CAN I BUY PHYSICAL GOODS MYSELF THROUGH MY SITES TO GET EFFECTIVE DISCOUNT?
Of course! The amazing thing is that ANYTHING bought on a visit, say to Amazon that was sent via a link from your site counts towards your commission. Say you need a new computer; you go to your own site on the internet, click on any of your affiliate links to get you into Amazon. Search for what you want and buy it; you will get the commission at the end of the month. Effectively, you've got an Amazon "discount card"! Perfectly legal and ethical. Read the small print on the Amazon Associates site and you'll see that the more items you sell (of any value) the more commission you'll make in various "bands".
AS WELL AS AMAZON, WHO ELSE IN THE PHYSICAL PRODUCTS WORLD CAN I BE AN AFFILIATE FOR?
In Europe, check out Affiliate Window. For free you can enrol and apply to be an affiliate for a range of high profile UK suppliers such as John Lewis, Marks and Spencers, Boots and PC World. They'll give you links and banners as well as animated adverts to place on your sites.
Enrol with Affiliate Window here.
In North America, a good place to look at is Link Share with suppliers such as Walmart and Office Depot.
OK, SO HOW CAN I START?
First, you need to find a series of “niches”. Why? Well, the broader the appeal of your websites, the more competition you’ll have and it’ll be harder to target customers. You could set up online your own version of big traders, but you won’t succeed unless you have enormous resources.
So, you need to sell products in underserved niche areas where customers are desperately “hungry”. It could be a hobby where people are passionate and therefore will spend money without too much persuasion, or the niche could be a problem area where there are things to be solved. Ideally, although it’s not essential, you need to find areas that you are personally interested in, so you can be more involved yourself, and you don’t need to hire in external experts or writers.
Here are some examples of niche sites:
Hobby niche site: http://www.astronomicalsavings.com
This site sells astronomical equipment to amateur astronomers with links to Amazon as well as other merchants. Note how it gives information and advice and doesn’t just “sell”. There is a separate page with plenty of astronomy articles simply copied and pasted from article sites such as http://www.ezinearticles.com. This is perfectly legal and ethical as long as the link to the author is attached when you paste it to your site. The more text your site has (that regularly gets added to) the better so that search engines will rank it higher.
Problem niche site: http://www.practicalstressbusters.com
This website is aimed at people who suffer with stress problems. Note that the address of the home page of the site is an example of a “Squeeze Page”. It gives some information, but visitors are encouraged to give their e-mail address to gain access to the main site. More on "Squeeze Pages” later!
Problem niche site: http://www.theamazingworldofgifts.com
Yes, finding gifts for difficult people IS a problem! This site gives suggestions in many different “people” categories and results are listed in order of the best selling products on Amazon. Note the style of the click buttons here. These graphics and the text including the prices will be given to you via Amazon – some HTML code that you simply copy and paste into your website. This then not just sends the customer to the right page with your personal affiliate code (so you’ll get paid) but the link even automatically updates the prices on your site as they change! Note that this North America-facing site has a sister site for the UK as well - very important for physical products.
Niche product: http://www.satnavheaven.org
This site offers independent advice on choosing GPS or Sat Nav devices for the motorist. It features the main manufacturers and the best selling devices. This site has plenty of videos, all provided free by the manufacturers! If you choose a niche where videos about the products already exist on, say, YouTube, you can insert the links to the videos into your own site easily and legally. Note they chose “.org” as it makes for a more independent, trusted “organisation”.
Multi niche site: http://www.amazingreports.org/
This site cleverly takes some quite old public domain or PLR e-books. They can’t be sold at full original price of, say $37, so this is a bargain basement site where everything is now £1! PLR by the way, means Private Label Rights. It's a license where author sell most or all of the intellectual property rights to their work. The thinking is that lots of a little is better than a few sales of a larger price.
SO HOW CAN I CHECK IF MY CHOSEN NEW NICHE(S) WILL BE SUCCESSFUL AND MAKE MONEY?
There are plenty of ways so suss out the potential customers out there.
The easiest way is to pretend you are a customer. What would YOU type into Google, Yahoo, Bing and so on? Then look at the results.
Say you want to sell golf gadgets. Maybe you’d type simply “golf gadgets”. The results would show you your competitors. Is anyone really serving your customers?
The problem is that you won’t be able to think of every variant of the so called “keyword”. Some people might type into Google “gadgets for golf”, or “technology to help golf”, or maybe something more specific...”golf electronic range finders”. So what can you do?
Luckily Google has a keyword finder here. This is offered to Google’s Adwords customers so they can see what related keyword searches ads would appear on.
There is also a suite of software packages called Auto Traffic Xploit which includes a keyword generator which even tells you available appropriate domain names and even if they are available. A useful package.
HOW DO I GET A WEBSITE ONLINE?
Very simply, a website is created on your computer using one of a number of programs. (mentioned later)
Then all the text, pictures, videos and links are all uploaded to a server, which could be anywhere on the planet. Then your site is online!
First of all, you need to select and buy a “domain name”. This is the “www” address you’d need to promote to the planet. You may have heard of "URL". This is the Universal Resource Locator.
You'll need to fill in endless forms when promoting your site that asks for this "URL". You need to remember not to type "mywebsite.com" but always the full path: http://www.mywebsite.com - this is very important.
To make your URL more search engine friendly, you need to choose a domain name that’s relevant and descriptive to what you’re selling, so for the above example http://www.golfgadgets.com would be fine, if it were available. It's important to make your domain name "say what it does on the tin".
WHAT IF MY CHOSEN DOMAIN NAME IS NOT AVAILABLE?
If a URL address you want is not available, you can use hyphens such as http://www.golf-gadgets.com. The use of hyphens doesn't now affect search engines, and if people click links you're sending them or on directory pages, it's fine. Problems occur when you use press or magazine adverts and people type in the domain name without hyphens and get your rival! It's awkward to say the name with hyphens in on radio commercials as well.
We also suggest that you only stick to the main domain extensions of.com .net or .org - the latter being a good one if you're making out to be an independent "organisation" to be trusted.
If you're targeting one country, say the UK, it's important to plump for a .co.uk domain extension. People in your own country trust the country extension more than ".com" which may feature products not available to be shipped to their country.
If you are really desperate for a particular URL, and you know it's not actually being used, you can often find out who owns a domain by visiting http://who.is/ then open negotiations with them! You can also find some unusual domains for sale at sites like http://www.buydomains.com or http://www.domains.com However, if you know yours is available at a "one-stop shop" such as mentioned in the next section, it's better to buy domains and hosting from one place to save messing about with DNS server numbers and different annual payments.
WHERE DO I BUY DOMAINS & HOSTING FROM?
You need to find a good reliable Internet Service Provider. In the UK, the best we have encountered is www.eukhost.com. It has fast, reliable servers in Leeds, 24 hour support with little waiting time, and very inexpensive packages. Outside the UK, we’d certainly recommend www. Hostgator.com. It’s a very, very respected ISP with plenty of satisfied customers, good support guys and low prices.
So what do you need from your Internet Service Provider? Simply buy from them a domain for a year (if it’s successful you can always extend it) and then associate this domain with “hosting” – space on their server. No, it's not practical to have the website stored on your home or office computer, even if you're prepared to have it switched on 24/7!
We suggest for simple sites a shared “cpanel” hosting package will be fine. “cpanel” means “Control Panel”. When you buy the package you’ll get an e-mail from the ISP with your Control Panel log in where you can change anything you like via this control panel; create e-mail addresses, forwarders, (so anyone e-mailing info@yournewwebsite.com, say could be re-directed to another e-mail address of your choice) or create ftp folders and so on.
“Shared” hosting means your data will be on the same ip (Internet Protocol) address as other people, but this won’t matter in the early stages of your career. The main advantage of sharing is that costs are cut dramatically. For a year you should be looking at about £15 for your domain and £50 for your cpanel shared hosting. Pretty good value considering the profits you’re about to earn!
WHAT WEBSITE CREATION SOFTWARE DO I NEED?
First - if you’re not artistic, you must surely know someone who is.
Sit down with them and surf various websites and decide together the future “look” of your new site. Why do you like some sites and not others? Who are you aiming at? What would appeal to them? You will probably find that the sites you like are ones with big bold obvious navigation, clear headings and text and appropriate, attractive pictures.
After you've done some surfing, on paper, work out what should go where on each page of your site. Where would the headings go? What about the pictures, main text and links? It’s always best to do a very rough layout before constructing the elements on the computer screen.
Do you need a logo for your company or system? Check out the free design services offered by http://www.freelogoservices.com
If you are selling an e-book, or DVD series, you need the "packshot" to look professional. This company, http://www.topecovers.com/ offer a pro service at low cost if you need it.
But what about the site itself? There are free website templates available, here at http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com but you'll still need an HTML editor programme to customise the template you want for your own site.
If you’re not technical, it can be tempting to simply call up a web designer to do everything for you.
This is not a good idea as:
- Pro designers will cost you money & time – learn to do it yourself!
- You won’t need just one site, you’ll eventually need many, compounding the above point!
- You will want to make many, many tweaks to your sites. You can do things easily yourself at any time, even at 3am. Your web designer won’t want to know!
If you really, really are technophobic, there are some very easy “instant” web building systems out there. The best one is www.weebly.com However, you’ll have the straight jacket of templates, and creating the pages in "blocks" you can't customise. You simply won’t have the flexibility that a professional internet marketer needs, certainly not when you expand.
One of the main software programs used by professionals is Adobe Dreamweaver.
If you're in the UK, get Adobe Dreamweaver at discount from here.
If you're in North America, get Dreamweaver here.
Adobe's Dreamweaver is expensive and takes quite a learning curve to understand. Many of the features you won’t need for years if you’re starting out as an internet marketer. However if you are very serious and are a natural designer, it really, really is the best.
However, we recommend steering clear of Abobe's own manuals which are quite confusing and miss out bits which to them seems obvious. You can't beat Dave McFarlane's book in the "Missing Manual" series to learn all you need about Dreamweaver.
If you like working with Microsoft products, they have a web creation program called Expression. It's not a bad program, it's based on their early "FrontPage" product, but it's not really a big seller in the professional world of web design and hence support isn't that good in the forum communities.
If you're in the UK, get Microsoft Expression here.
If you're in North America, get Microsoft Expression here.
SO WHAT'S YOUR RECOMMENDED WEB DESIGN SOFTWARE THAT GIVES YOU FEATURES & IS EASY TO USE?
We think the very best website creation software out there that offers a lot of useful features at a low price and is easy to understand for new web designers is actually from Serif, and it's called WebPlus X4.
You can buy it direct from Serif; or you can actually get better discount through these links:
Serif Web Plus X4 for UK customers
Serif Web Plus X4 for North America customers
For a reasonable amount, you get a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) programme that has an easy way to put in keywords and site descriptions that will show up favourably to search engines, it has easy import of pictures which you can re-size simply, you can embed You Tube videos into your site as well.
It also has an easy way of importing HTML code. Don’t worry about this; on many occasions you’ll be presented with a whole chunk of code and by placing the code into your site on a certain part of your page, can create a number of things.
As mentioned before, if you become an Amazon affiliate, for example, for each product you are advertising, they’ll give you some code that once you have imported onto your page will look nonsense. However, go into “preview” mode and the code magically becomes an interactive Amazon button with picture and live updated price!
Other code you may like to import could be a neat fly-out button so visitors can tweet your site or tell friends of Facebook or Stumble Upon.
You can get that very handy button here for free:
Get HTML code for the "Add To Any" button - customised for your own site!
In fact, here’s the “Add To Any” button we’ve embedded into THIS page. Put your mouse over it and Tweet your friends about this great site you’ve found! Thanks!
The Starter Guide to Internet Marketing
Here’s a short promo video showing some of the many features of the Serif WebPlus X4 software we recommend as a low cost but high featured program.
Serif WebPlusX4 even has a comprehensive shopping cart wizard. With this you can set up links so customers can click from your site to PayPal, and on successful payment be returned to a page of your choice; a “thank you” or download page. Easy.
One tip, close the first two “register now” screens on opening the program. The only reason Serif want you to call them to “register” the product is so they have your phone number to bug the hell out of you to purchase more software you may not really need. If you need any support, simply register at the Serif WebPlus forum, and you’ll find an enormous community of users sharing information and tips. There is an X5 version just launched, we haven’t reviewed this yet.
AREN'T THERE FREE WEB DESIGN PROGRAMS I CAN USE?
Yes, there is a free software called Wordpress. This was designed to be a blogging site software, and it’s fine for this but it’s not perfect for internet marketers as you again don’t get the flexibility in design (Wordpress sites look very much the same) or linkability. It’s not exactly the easiest program to understand either.
There is another free program called KompoZer which is absolutely excellent at creating sites or editing existing sites you may buy from others, such as parts of PLR packages. KompoZer isn’t easy to put keywords or metatags into though (essential to get search engines to find your site). To do this you need to click into the HTML code view which can freak you out if you’re not used to web designing.
There's a basic guide to get started with KompoZer here!
SO WHAT OTHER SOFTWARE PROGRAMS WILL I NEED?
Once you create your site, you’ll then publish it to a "disk folder" on your computer (If you’re using the Serif system). If you’re using something like KompoZer, then make sure all your assets such as pictures are in the same folder.
How do you get your site on the server you have “hired”? We suggest using the very easy to understand free software called Filezilla.
A guide of what to do with Filezilla here.
You’ll also need Photoshop. This is essential; buy the cut down “Elements” if budgets are tight, but you absolutely simply have to have Photoshop to create all the design sections and elements of your sites, virtual packaging and e-mail inserts. It’s the industry standard and most of the help programs, forums and tips on graphics use it. The wannabe programs are OK, but you really can’t beat the real thing!
Photoshop Elements for North America
HOW DO I GET PAYMENTS?
Unless you have an account already, you must get a PayPal account.
When you set one up, you'll have to jump through some security hoops, but it's for your own good - afterwards, all the integration between your sites and affiliate networks are made much easier. On the PayPal site you can also create "Buy Now" buttons. You customise the button and also (once you have upgraded your account for free to a business one) you can state where you want your customer to go once they have paid to download files or take training, etc.
Some networks such as Amazon Associates and Affiliate Window pay your commissions into a bank account; it's whatever you prefer.
We suggest you have a dedicated account for internet marketing as it makes it much easier for your accountant to work out your return every year.
HOW ELSE CAN I GET MONEY?
When people advertise using Google, as well as the ads being shown on the search engine's pages, their ads can also be put on people's sites, and they get paid for people clicking them.
This is called the Google Adsense programme. They don't send you graphic files for the ads, they give you some HTML code that you embed. The ads magically appear on your site in the "hole" you put them in! There's a great pdf guide to the details of Adsense and how to make lots of cash called Adsense Pirate!
The main disadvantage of this system is that you don't know who will be advertising on your site. You may get an advert for an arch rival appearing. Yes, you may get the 40 cents or whatever for the "click" but you actually lose the sale your visitor was looking for!
The other problem is that you can mess up the design of your site with too many banner ads of dubious design quality. If however you have a mostly informational site, you can monetize it with Adsense ads easily and the ads won't clash with your sales. If you're interested in checking it out, sign up with Google Adsense here.
I've put the code to an Adsense ad - or ad block below here. However, as I've mentioned, I've no idea what it's advertising. When you come back tomorrow, it may well have changed! You're welcome to click on it if you like and I'll get 40 cents! Thanks!
HOW DO I GET VISITORS TO MY SITE?
This is such a huge subject, but here are the basics...
BASIC SEO
Search Engine Optimisation or “SEO” is the art of creating and constantly maintaining a site so that it ranks highly on search engines. Google, Yahoo and Bing are the main ones.
If you have a site on “Golf Gadgets, say, you'll want your own site to show up at least on the first page of your search engine when anyone puts the term “Golf Gadgets” in. That’s why you need the right keywords in the hidden areas of your site as well as in the text on the pages.
Search engines also like content; good, original content that gets added to constantly. Put on a new article or page at least every week so the search engines think “Mmm, this site is a good active site that is being added to with original content; I shall rank it higher!”
If you’d like to get your site tested for free by Google, by using the Google website optimizer, click here.
Here's another excellent resource to check your site out: http://www.scrubtheweb.com
For a very comprehensive and excellent SEO e-book, click here: The Magic SEO Book. A word of warning before you click, you'll have to endure an appalling hype-filled sales page. Please ignore this!
he SEO book itself when you get it is extremely good and has a load of ethical and effective advanced techniques to dramatically improve your website listings. There are plenty of positive and genuine reviews of this product. You could (if you wanted to) start your own SEO business just by reading and implementing these systems alone.
SEARCH ENGINE & DIRECTORY SUBMISSION
You need to submit your site to the main three search engines and get the site listed in directories as well.
Here's a good free submission site: http://www.addurlengine.com
Or you can submit your new site manually here:
Submit your site URL to Google
Submit your site URL to Microsoft Bing
There are services that offer these submission services, but why waste your cash when these 3 cover 90% of the market?
Plus if you do it yourself, at least you know it’s done right!
To check if the search engines have indexed your site all right, there's a useful tool on this site:
ARTICLES
Article writing is a very effective way to promote your sites. If you’re an expert in your “niche”, you should be able to write regular articles of about 500 words on a wide variety of subjects.
You won’t get paid to do this, but once you submit your work to a wide variety of the best visited article sites, you'll have valuable “backlinks” to your sites in what’s called the resource box at the end of your article.
Even if a reader of your article doesn’t actively click on the link to your site from the article site, the search engines will still "see" the backlinks and rate your site higher.
So how do you write articles that are engaging and get people to click on your links? We recommend this low cost training program with a pdf e-book, pre-written template articles and videos: The Beginner's Guide to Writing Articles. If you're a little more confident with writing, check out The Amazing Article Formula here. This is an in-depth resource that looks at how to write effective articles and the best way to submit them to get maximum benefit to your sites.
Another advanced article writing training course and system is Articology. Check them out and determine which would suit you best.
Many advertised “get rich” systems actually are nothing more than bulk article submitter software. You simply write one article and once you have registered at each of the article sites in the database, click one button and they get submitted. This is where the “click one button to get rich” line comes from in the ubiquitous crazy sales pitches!
There is a problem here by doing this mass submission, though. Search engines such as Google hate duplicate content. You really need to create different articles for each article site. But that would take ages!
There is a “cheat” way round that can fool the search engines. This is the use of professional “spinning” software. You load in your article and then the software suggests changing some words for others; “big” to “large” and “enormous”, “fast” to “rapid” and “speedy” and so on.
Then the software cleverly “spins” your article so it gets every permutation of words throughout. You effectively get hundreds of different “versions” of your article! We’ve tried loads of spinning software systems, here one we recommend that doesn't just "spin" but submits as well:
The Magic Article Re-Writer and Submitter
If you don’t want to use spinning software, we suggest at least changing the title of the “same” article to each article directory. Click here for a list of some of the most visited article sites you can submit to.
If you want a really easy way to submit to article & press release sites, a more sophisticated software system has been developed by programmer & marketer Phil Mansour and it's called Free Money Formula. A horrible name that smacks of hype and scam, but as well as the training and bonus resources, you get what is actually a very solid suite of software that uses automatic article submissions -with a built in spinner - to generate large amounts of traffic to your sites via reputable backlinks.
The Free Money Formula software even finds the best selling affiliate products to promote as well, without needing a website. Plus there are some advanced techniques such as automatically being able to Tweet and Digg all your links. More details of the new version of this system here.
Now if you really haven't the time or interest to learn any new system, maybe you simply want to pay a professional organisation to take care of your article submissions for you and optimise everything.
In this case we recommend an established organisation called Distribute Your Articles. They do exactly that. They distribute your articles.
They go to high traffic niche content sites and blogs, and you become a guest blogger on among 10,000 sites they have established over the years.
Check out Distribute Your Articles and see the offers they now have; for the time and hassle you'll save it could be a very sound business decision for you.
FORUMS
If you’re an expert in your niche – or are pretending to be (!) – then trawl the relevant forums and offer useful advice to problems. Simply Google "your niche name Forums" Most forums will let you put your site link in your “info box” or you can casually mention it in the copy.
If you do this - a tip here, don’t put in “www.” or “http//” as the forum software will sense you’re trying to sneak in your URL (web address) and ban you. If people have any sense they will find you if you put in simply “theworldsbestgolftips.com” or whatever.
Make sure you offer solid advice and get welcomed by the community over weeks or months before selling to them.
E-MAIL MARKETING
This is where you get a list of like-minded people who your site and niche would appeal to. But you can't simply spam everyone from your Outlook account or whatever!
You once needed to have an expensive rolling contract with a dedicated e-mail marketing company. But now with the Sendblaster system, you can get the same results and functionalities avoiding expensive outside organizations and web based services and managing your own email marketing using desktop software - legally and easily for a one-off nominal cost. Yes, there are no subscriptions! You download the software, set it up and off you go. We recommend you check out the folk at Sendblaster. They're based in Spain, but their services cover the world. Click here for more information on Sendblaster.
FACEBOOK & TWITTER
Obviously huge social networks are ones you can take advantage of. But it’s not as simple as getting loads of your friends and then selling hard to them all. This is a huge subject but Adeel Chowdhry and Bobby Walker's system called Facebook Hyper Traffic offers a very useful way for internet marketers to get to use the power of Facebook to make very substantial amounts of money. Check this system out here.
If you're into Twitter, the best training program we've found is called Zero Down Blueprint. Ignore all the hype on the sales page, it actually is a well put together method of maximizing the sales potential of using Twitter. Check the system out here.
Don't forget to promote via the other social network sites like Bebo, Flickr, Friendster, LinkedIn, Myspace, Memory Lane, (formally Classmates), Badoo.
BACKLINK PLACEMENT
If the search engines such as Google find a site that has lots of links pointing to it, it thinks "Mmm, this site must be important - we'd better rank it higher"
The Google robots also like it when these so called "backlinks" grow regularly and steadily over time, as if real people are finding your amazing new site and are telling their pals about it.
So how can we fool the robots when we need your new site promoted right now? Enter the Backlink Experts - there are companies set up who do nothing but create backlinks on all sorts of sites to your own. There's no way you would ever find the time to manually do backlinking yourself when you have to eat, sleep and more importantly, make loads of money!
The disadvantages? It costs money. You'll also probably get most of your links on some low ranking pages of some low ranking sites in some obscure location in the world. Also most backlink companies shove all your backlinks out in one go to save them hassle. Google
then gets suspicious as it's not "organic growth" and ranks you even lower!
However, now, there's an answer. Programmer Mike Williams has come up with some incredibly useful software called Emerald 11 that will automatically do reciprocal "deals" with blogs around the world. They'll give you back links and you do the same back to them. The software is called Emerald 11 and it's a low cost automated solution to an age old problem.
It's important to follow the set up instructions. A word of warning, the sales video and pitch is another one of those ridiculous, over the top and stupid ones! Most sensible people will click off in seconds, which is a shame as it's very worthwhile.
Check out Emerald 11 automatic backlink software here.
INSTANT TRAFFIC
All these techniques may take weeks to take effect to get visitors to your site; but, of course it’ll be worth it! However, what if you want people coming today?
For $5 you could take a punt with one of the many people offering traffic generation services on http://www.fiverr.com Search using "traffic", "visitors" or look at the social network categories.
For $5 these people will give you often a large amount of visitors to your site or post your offers to their large list of followers on Twitter, Facebook or whatever. Whether the visitors they give you will stay and buy is another matter, though.
Looking for something more professional and more targeted to your niche audience? We recommend this excellent, professional service called Better Visitors.
Their traffic consists of real targeted people, not bots and you can choose visitors from the U.K., Canada, the United States or the entire world - you choose.
The great unique benefit of choosing Better Visitors is that you can choose from 170 categories. Choose Health and Diet, Web Design, Skateboards, Fishing, Astronomy -- they all work equally well!
Have a look at Better Visitor's site here. Don't be scared that part of the offer is that you need to sign up to a monthly subscription. You can easily transfer your credit onto another site and niche at any time, or you can cancel completely at any time as well.
We've used Better Visitors for many of our projects and the traffic generated is excellent - large numbers and good quality - the visitors WANT to sign up to your squeeze page, buy and will return!
We suggest that you check out what Better Visitors have to offer here.
But what about traditional web advertising programs?
To advertise with Google's AdWords, click here
To advertise with Microsoft's Bing & Yahoo click here
To advertise with CPV (Click Per View) click here
To advertise with LookSmart click here
To advertise with AdSide, click here
PPC or Pay Per Click is where you create adverts, either “display” ads you’d create in Photoshop, or text adverts. Once you create you advert, you’d put in keywords so that the ads would only appear on relevant pages.
For example, if you take an advertising campaign with Google’s Adwords, and you create ads for your “Golf Gadgets” site, they’ll appear on the Google search page when people look for similar items. Only if they click on your ad will you be charged.
You “bid” for how much you want to spend on each click. But once the person “clicks”, how do you know they’ll actually buy anything? You don’t. That’s why you need to write a very compelling Squeeze Page or home page so people will be intrigued, stay, subscribe and buy!
You are much more likely to be successful if you get your ad in front of people “zoned in” to your niche. That’s where keywords come in.
However, to get in front of an even more targeted audience, Facebook advertising is incredible. When people sign up to Facebook they disclose all their secrets! If you want to target for example just 25-35 year old single women who like bee keeping, as well as adore Michael Buble, you can do this on Facebook.
Create your ad both the text and the 110 x 80 pixel picture and select the categories you want and your advert will only appear on the Facebook pages of those people with those attributes. You can pay for “CPM” impressions – that means Cost Per Mille – or cost per thousand of pages your ad will appear on. However, it’s usually far better to opt for CPC or Cost Per Click – you only pay when someone actually clicks on your advert.
PHYSICAL ADVERTISING
Why not consider advertising in niche magazines to get your message out? A small ad with just your URL and a teaser line is sometimes all you need. Maybe a "list and mail shot" method is best if you feel that people in your niche would be more responsive to that method. You can even get a vinyl bumper sticker for your car, advertising your main website! Click here for the Stickair.com site that makes great bumper stickers!
LIST BUILDING
We’ve left the most important bit till last. Yes, you may been able to generate much traffic to your site, and even lots of active buyers, but what about next month or next year?
If you’re serious about really building your business and making lots of money, you need REPEAT customers. You need to grow a list of loyal clients who will buy related items and products from you over many years.
List building is essential, absolutely, 100% essential. We cannot stress this enough! Otherwise all your hard work getting that first tranche of buying customers will be wasted.
More details about list building are in the “bible” which hopefully you will have a copy of by now, “Everything you wanted to know about Internet Marketing” obtained on the Product Reviews page, and there is also a very comprehensive video and podcast training set we recommend, called the Blueprint List Building course.
The basics are simply...
1) You direct new potential customers not to your main site home page, but to a “Squeeze Page.” Don’t worry, you won’t need another site; simply make the existing “home” page or the one with the file name “index” to be this new Squeeze Page.
2) Offer the visitors a free genuinely useful and valuable report and access to your main site if they enter their e-mail address and name.
3) Their details then goes into your Autoresponder – a piece of sophisticated software that sends out personalised e-mails automatically.
4) The visitor immediately gets access to the site, to the new "home" page that actually is an internal one. They get the downloaded e-book gift and you in return - if they "double opt-in" (by replying to the automatic e-mail they will have been sent - a legal requirement) you'll have their details to send them useful newsletters and news of new products you can offer.
SO WHAT IS AN AUTORESPONDER?
The Autoresponder is an essential part of the internet marketer’s armoury. The absolutely best system and one that takes the least time to get your head around is by Aweber. Click for details here. The system offers attractive and colourful Squeeze Page forms for you to include in your websites, and also an easy to understand system of sending out personalised e-mails at any time you like. There is a nominal monthly subscription which can be cancelled anytime.
BE GOOD TO YOUR LIST
Once you have a list of hopefully thousands of potential or buying customers, it is very important not to upset them in any way and force them to unsubscribe to your list. Don’t ever pester them, don’t over sell, but DO send valuable news, information and offers. This is why it’s useful to have a personal interest in the niche, so it’s not a chore to write regular articles or to keep your eyes and eyes open to find information in the niche’s world that your list may be interested in.
From time to time, why not get your customer list to tell YOU what they want? You can set up surveys at sites like Survey Monkey.
Remember, people buy from people they like, know and trust. Everyone that bought the initial item may not buy the next one you offer them, but certainly you WILL interest many in purchasing further and more expensive items in the niche. The more loyal customers will also tell their like-minded friends about your site.
Good luck with everything!
