One of the most popular campaign killers is in the ‘copy cat’ routine.

This happens when a new email marketer (and it’s also happened with
seasoned marketers), decide to promote a recent product launch and
rather than create their own promotional material, or take a more
personal approach when addressing their subscriber base, they simply
copy and paste existing promotional material offered by the product
developer.

If you’re involved in internet marketing you’ve probably experienced
this first hand. All of a sudden, on product launch day, you receive
15 emails from 15 different email marketers all containing the exact
same content!

There is no easier way to destroy your credibility and put yourself
at risk of losing subscribers than by doing this. So whenever you
plan to promote a third party product (of any kind), always write the
promotional material yourself.

I can’t stress enough how important it is to make your promotion
unique and targeted directly to your list. Don’t become a copy cat,
it will kill your business.

Two of the biggest traffic boosters amongst social media websites are Digg and StumbleUpon. When used properly they can have a huge impact on your traffic .

Let’s start off with using Digg to drive traffic to your website.

Digg works by allowing users giving a thumbs up ‘dig’ or a thumbs down to whatever they read online. It’s pretty much a way to rate different pages on the web so that the best stories get the most attention.
With Digg there is a lot of importance attached to getting on the front page. If you can manage to get a story on to the home page of Digg, then you can expect to receive thousands of extra visitors to your site.

To get started you will need to submit your story to Digg, and then encourage other people to vote for it. You will need a good number of votes to have any chance of making it to the home page and picking up the thousands of extra visitors.

If you can get someone else to submit the story, or if it happens naturally, that is so much better, and will give you a much higher chance of getting the votes you need.

If you want to give your story the best possible chance of being voted for, you need to attract the reader’s attention quickly. This means that it’s important to have an interesting headline and description. Remember, there are plenty of competing articles, and the reader can’t read them all. Give them a compelling reason to read yours.

It also makes a difference if your content is fresh and relevant. If you are writing on topics which are current and hot right now, your chances of getting votes increases enormously. Remember that readers are more likely to vote for something which is of genuine use to them, so if you can produce an article with genuinely helpful information in it, you will certainly gain votes.

On Digg.com, you start contributing as soon as you sign up. This is a great way for you to get information about your site out there. Many site end up being linked by other people, and you will find that this improves your link building status; your links will not only be out there, they will also be contributing to your Google search engine rankings.

Now… lets talk about how to use StumbleUpon to generate traffic

(continue reading…)

You probably already know this, but there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do all of the
things you need to do to create a successful online business.

You don’t see CEO’s of successful companies doing everything themselves do you? So if you
want to create your own successful business, then why should you be doing it all yourself.

If you want to make a lot of money with your online business you just cannot do everything yourself.

To put it simply, the secret to building great wealth is to leverage your time.

And the best way for you to leverage your time is to (where possible) hire qualified people
to do many of the daily tasks necessary to operate a profitable online business.

For example, most people don’t like to write or they just don’t know how to write effectively.

But guess what? You don’t have to!

There are plenty of great writers out there who could research any subject you give them
with the view of creating articles, full blown training manuals or simple 5-page reports.

And content doesn’t just have to be written text!

You could hire an expert to create video content for you.
It could be live action video or screen capture video using Camtasia.

If you want to interview an expert in a particular niche you could hire someone to
conduct the entire interview for you and then have someone else convert the
interview into an MP3 file so you can add it to your site.

You could then hire a freelancer to transcribe the audio into a PDF file for you.

Before you know it you could have an entire series of videos, audio interviews
and transcripts that you could sell as an entire course or use as an upsell to an existing product.

And all you basically did was pay for it.

Do you see how leveraging can explode your business?
And the best way for you to leverage your time is to (where possible) hire qualified people
to do many of the daily tasks necessary to operate a profitable online business.

By now, you understand that there are countless ways to drive traffic to a site. But even though there are a lot of strategies, none of them can guarantee you results overnight. Driving traffic to a site is still the hardest job there is when it comes to maintaining a website.

Traffic can be obtained by advertising and promotion. But do you know that you can get people to visit your website just by creating a newsletter?

People surf the Internet for various reasons.
But more than anything, they are online because they want to gain some information about something.
Some people want to research more about a product before buying.
Others are looking for suggestions from other users.
And there are those who surf the Internet just to gain knowledge.

Therefore, if your site has good content, there is a great  chances that you will get a good number of unique visitors from time to time.
But what if your website is not an information portal and is actually an e-commerce site?
Adding too many articles to it may be a problem because you already have loads of pictures and images to put up.

Well,  the solution is quite simple. All you really have to do is to create a regular newsletter about your products and relevant information about them.
Newsletters could provide you with both repeat and unique visitors on a regular basis.
Just make sure that you have some juicy headlines and eye-catching offers included in your newsletters.
And your visitors will visit you every now and then, check your new and old products, and stay until they are ready to buy your products.

To be successful in making newsletters drive traffic to your site, you have to maintain an active list of email addresses of people to whom you can send your newsletters. The list doesn’t have to include thousands of email addresses at once, if you don’t have that yet. What’s more important is that you’ll build your list with target subscribers.

(continue reading…)

Articles are a very popular and easy way of getting
traffic to your blog or website. Articles are popular
because Search Engines, website owners and ezine
publishers love fresh, quality content.

A good article that informs the reader about a certain
topic qualifies as fresh, quality content. Therefore if you
can create quality articles you can get backlinks and
traffic to your website.

If you are a blog owner, creating quality articles for
submission to the major article directories is very easy
because your blog will already be filled with quality content.

All you really need to do is take the content from your
blog and package it into 350-500 word articles complete
with a catchy headline.

This should realistically only take you a few minutes and
once you have an article put together you will then want to
submit the article to a few major article directories.

If you’ve ever written an article, you’ve probably felt overwhelmed by a blank sensation -
not knowing where to start.

…I’ll bet you have!

This is one of the biggest reasons why most people simply don’t write articles.
They just simply don’t know where to start.

If you’ve been in this situation, here’s a checklist that should help you eliminate
some of the most common problems in writing articles so that you can ramp up
your online business to the next level.

1. Have a specific purpose in mind.

Always have a specific purpose in mind before you begin
writing. You should be crystal clear about what you are
hoping to accomplish by writing your article. Is it an
article solving a problem for your customers, to attract
prospects and build your list, to improve your link
popularity for your website or to make a sale?

2. Know your target audience.

Before writing an article, conduct research on your target
audience. What pain or problem do they face or try to avoid?

3. Develop a detailed outline that stress the benefits.

Now that you have a purpose and a target, organize your
article so that scanning it quickly will show immediately
to your reader how they will benefit from it and what are
the most important points.

4. Stop your reader in his tracks with your title.

Your title should grab the reader’s attention and ‘force’
him to read your first paragraph. Using your most important
benefit usually does it. Your title should also contain
keywords that are highly related to your content.

(continue reading…)

Did you know that it’s much easier to earn a profit from a person that is
already interested in what you have to offer?

Chances are, if someone has already signed up or “opted in” to receive
information from you, then they are willing to take a look at products
and programs that you tell them about.

So, if you want to make any type of steady income online, the first thing you
will need to do is create a mailing list of subscribers.

Keep in mind the bigger your list is, the more profitable it will become,
but for the purposes of this post, beginning a list and getting a couple
hundred subscribers will do just fine and help you begin earning some
extra cash.

There are several ways to quickly build a list of subscribers. I’m going to
list a few ways to start below.

And remember if you have any questions you can contact me at any time.

Here we go…

1. You will want to place a sign up form for your list on your website, blog,
and even your “About Me” Page on your favorite social or auction website,
like My Space or Ebay.

If you need help doing this it is best to check with your autoresponder service
as they should have complete instructions. If you don’t have an autoresponder
don’t worry we will go over them later on.

2. There are specific list building programs, such as Listopt.com and Listdotcom.com
that you can use if you are prepared to put in the work of building a down line of subscribers.
These can be very good.

3. You can do a joint venture. Once you have a list and you are looking to get more
subscribers then you can get in touch with the owner of a similar list or ezine and make
arrangements to recommend each other to your lists.

Keep in mind that most people don’t just sign up to just one list so it could
be a great arrangement for both of you. (continue reading…)

Using e-books, short reports or e-courses is a  great way to build your list. As an example, you can use  these  as an “incentive” for joining your affiliate program, as a “thank you” for visiting your web site or as a “bonus” when someone purchases a product or service from you.

A lot of online businesses use them, but often not to their full potential! It never ceases to amaze me how much better their results could be if only they considered more carefully what it is they are trying to achieve.

Make sure that you don’t make either of these two  BIG mistakes next time you decide to give away  an e-book or report.

You might think it’s simple stuff but you’d be  surprised how often these two mistakes are committed – ESPECIALLY the second one!

Mistake #1:

You upload an ebook or report to your web site and publish the download link without capturing a name or an email address! (Isn’t the main point of the exercise to build your list?) Why would you give something away without at least trying to capture an email address so that you can followup with them at a later date?

Instead of uploading your items to your server and  just publishing the download link, take a little bit more time to set things up properly. Set yourself  up a mini-site where you can direct people to and for providing you with their name and email address  they can have the download link sent directly to their email address. That way, anyone entering in false information will not get the download so you’ll have a better chance of building a higher quality list.

Now you not only have a person to market to, you also know they’re interested in your product or service.
Presto! Your list just grew.

Mistake #2:

You just don’t take the time to customize eBooks and report with your own links inserted into them.
The thing is….if you’re giving away an eBook with someone else’s links in it then all your marketing is paying off all right….for the person whose links are in the e-book!

Why would you do that?

You are working for them instead of helping yourself.

Sure it’s often the quicker option to just slap up someone else’s e-book onto a download page but with all the Private Label stuff available for next to nothing these days, why wouldn’t you spend an hour or two putting together  something that will make you some BIG backend income in the months and even years to come?

When people visit your website chances are very likely that most of them will leave within the first ten seconds, never to return again.

The worst part about this is they leave without buying anything. They don’t even take the time to leave you a name, number or email address, so you have no idea how to reach them again.

I’m going to go over some simple tips that you can use to get people to come back to your website repeatedly.

Update the pages on your website frequently.

Stagnant sites are dropped by some search engines. You can even put a date counter on the page to show when it was last updated.

Offer additional value on your website.

For affiliates and partners you can place links to their sites and products and ask them to do the same for you. You can also advertise their books or videos, if these products relate to your industry and are not in competition with your own product.

Allow visitors to ‘opt in’ to get special offers.

Place a link on your site to invite visitors to ‘opt in’ to get a monthly newsletter, or valuable coupons, or special discounts, etc.

Book Mark this site script.

Add a link to your primary page with a script ‘Book Mark or Add this site to your Favorites’.

Show this to a friend script.

Add a link ‘Recommend this site to a Friend’ so that the visitor can email your website link, with a pre written title, “Thought you might be interested in this”, just by clicking on it.

(continue reading…)