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Posts Tagged ‘affiliates’

More and More people are lured into affiliate marketing and you might be one of them. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the most effective means of generating a full-time income through the Internet. It’s a fair deal between the merchandiser and his affiliates as both benefit from each sale materialized. Like in other kinds of business, a great deal of the profits in affiliate marketing depends on the affiliate’s advertising, promoting and selling strategies. Everyday, as affiliate marketing industry expands, competition heightens as well so an affiliate marketer must be creative enough to employ unique and effective ways to convince potential buyers to purchase or avail of the products and services offered.

Compared to traditional advertising practices, affiliate programs are more effective, risk-free and cost-efficient. But why do many people still fail in affiliate marketing? There are a lot of reasons and a lot of areas in the program to look into. The most critical aspect in the affiliate program is advertising. Many affiliate marketers fail in this aspect because they lack hard work, which is the most important thing in affiliate marketing and in all other kinds of business as well. Although it pays to be lucky, you cannot merely rely on it. Affiliate marketing isn’t as simple as directing customers to the business site. If you want to earn big, of course, you have to invest time and great amount of hard work in promoting the products. As earlier mentioned, the competition is very high and customers nowadays are very wise, too. After all, who doesn’t want to get the best purchase&ndashthat is, to pay less and get more in terms of quantity and quality.

Lack of preparation is also a reason why one fails in affiliate marketing, whether he is a merchandiser or an affiliate. Part of the preparation is researching. On the part of the merchant, he has to be highly selective in choosing the right affiliate websites for his affiliate program. In order to be sure he has the best choices, he must have exhausted his means in looking for highly interested affiliates whose sites are sure fit to his products and services. The affiliate site’s visitors must match his targeted customers. On the other hand, the affiliate marketer must likewise research on the good-paying merchandisers before he signs up for an affiliate program. He must ensure that the merchants’ products and services match his interests so he can give his full attention and dedication to the program. He can get valuable information by joining affiliate forums, comparing different affiliate programs and reading articles on affiliate marketing where he can get tips from experienced affiliate marketers on how to choose the best merchants and products with high conversion rate.

The website is a very important tool in the whole affiliate program. As an affiliate marketer, you should plan how your site is going to be, from domain name to the design, the lay-out, the content, and ads. Some users are particular about what they see at first glance and thus when they find your site ugly, they won’t read through the content even if your site has many things to say and offer. On the other hand, there those who want information more than anything else. Affiliate marketers with “rich-content” web sites are usually the ones who prosper in this business because the content improves traffic to the site. Websites with high quality contents&ndashwith relevant keywords and more importantly, right information about the product and not empty hyped-up advertisements&ndashallow you to earn big in affiliate marketing even when you’re asleep. If you won’t be able to sustain the interest of your site visitor, you won’t be able to lead him to the merchants’ site. No click-through means no sale and thus, no income on your part.

Selecting a top level domain name is also crucial to the success of the affiliate program. Lots of affiliate sites don’t appear in the search engine results because they are deemed by affiliate managers as personal sites. Major search engines and directories would think of your site as transient ones and thus, they won’t list it in the directory. Before you decide on the domain name, know first what you are going to promote. Many fail because their sites are not appropriately named, so even when they feature the exact products the customer is looking for, the customer might think the site is not relevant and thus, won’t enter the site.

Above all, an affiliate marketer must be willing to learn more. Certainly, there are still a lot of things to learn and so an affiliate marketer must continue to educate himself so he can improve his marketing strategies. Many fail because they don’t grow in the business and they are merely concerned about earning big quickly. If you want long-term and highly satisfactory results, take time to learn the ins and outs of the business. Continue to improve your knowledge especially with the basics in affiliate marketing ranging from advertising to programming, web page development, and search engine optimization techniques. Likewise, study the needs and wants of your site users and how different merchandisers compete with each other.

Keep on trying; don’t get disappointed if your first attempts did not pay off. Thousands are attracted by the possibility of generating skyrocketing incomes through affiliate marketing and so they sign up in any affiliate program without carefully understanding every aspect of the business. When they don’t get instant results, they quit and sign up for another program and repeat the process of just copying links and referring them to others. When you sign up for an affiliate program, don’t expect to get rich in an instant. Work on your advertising strategies and be patient. You’ll never know how much you can get if you don’t persevere.

Super-Affiliate’s!

What are they?

Do you see this term often online and end up confused to what it means and the purpose they serve online?

It sounded really mysterious to me when I first came across the term which peeked my curiosity and led me to research the term further to find out exactly what the term meant and more importantly what there roll was in the Internet marketing world.

The information I discovered was Astonishing!

What I’m about to reveal to you in this article will blow your mind and hopefully take away the mystery and answer the questions you once had about what a ‘Super-Affiliate’ is and why they ARE your…

…”Ticket To Online Success!”

Let’s first take away the mystery behind what a ‘Super-Affiliate’ is so that you’ll have a clear picture inside your head of how they’ll benefit your online business for years to come.

A ‘Super-Affiliate’ is simply either or both a High Traffic website and/or a eZine/Newsletter owner with a HUGE targeted opt-in mailing list that are able to sell more in a given day then you could in a month.

As you will learn, the internet is nothing more then a numbers game and the super-affiliate’s are simply the one’s who have already put in the time and have the highest numbers when it comes to ‘Website Traffic’ and targeted ‘Opt-In’ mailing lists.

Are you starting to see the BIG picture yet?

Now, lets move on and break this down a little with some rough numbers so you’ll be able to have better idea of what to look for when it comes to locating an ‘Super-Affiliate’ via search engines and/or eZine/Newsletter directories.

Let’s first start with the Search Engines.

When your searching the web for super-affiliate’s with high traffic website’s this is the general guide line I use to gauge there importance.

But, in order for me to do a proper traffic analysis of there website I need to use a special webmaster toolbar offered through Alexa.com.

This toolbar is essential and a must have when it comes to locating super-affiliate’s and the reason why is because it reveals the ‘Traffic Ranking’ for that particular website you are viewing making it easier for you to tell the difference between the super-affiliate’s and the other website’s that are just getting by.

Here’s the link to where you can download your own free Alexa toolbar if you choose:

- download.alexa.com/

Now… for the numbers.

When I’m searching for an super-affiliate related to my Product, Service and/or any of the affiliate programs I am promoting via the search engines and I happen to come across a website that has a traffic ranking of 50,000 or lower using the Alexa toolbar to gauge the TR then these are the website’s where the super-affiliate’s reside and are the one’s I will want to contact with a business proposition.

As a general rule using website analysis, the lower the TR, the BETTER.

Why?

Because it means that particular website is receiving Lots… and Lots of traffic which is just what you’re looking for.

Now… that’s the general idea behind locating super-affiliate’s through website analysis and the search engines.

This next part I’m going to show you where to locate the super-affiliate’s with HUGE targeted mailing lists.

This is where you stand to benefit the most and could in turn make a substantial amount of money within the next 24 hours of your business proposition if accepted by the list owner.

The best places to locate an ‘Super-Affiliate’ with a HUGE mailing list are through eZine/Newsletter directories. I’ve listed a few of the Top directories below to save you the hassle of having to search for them yourself.

- Ezine Universe

.ezine-universe.com

- Ezine Hub

.ezinehub.com

- Go-Ezines

.go-ezines.com

- Netter Web

.netterweb.com

- Ezine Search

.ezinesearch.com

These directories databases are searchable and are full of thousands of ezine/newsletters with list sizes that range from 1000 subscribers to 250,000 subscribers and up.

It’s pretty easy to figure out who the super-affiliate’s are going to be here.

The Bigger the list size, the BETTER.

But… as a general rule I would have to say that any ezine/newsletter owner with a list size of 75,000 or more subscribers I would consider an ‘Super-Affiliate’.

Remember, this is just a general guide line.

Don’t discard the list owners with smaller lists. The more eZine/Newsletter owners you contact the greater your chances are of SUCCESS!

Now that you know what a super-affiliate is and how to find them Both on the Web and through ezine/newsletter directories your probably wondering how…

… “They’re Your TICKET To Online Success!”

Well, its actually quite simple.

If you own your own Product and/or offer a Service, and this will even work if your an affiliate to someone else’s program, all you have to do is simply locate and approach related website and/or ezine/newsletter owners with a JV(Joint Venture) and/or business proposition offering them a reasonable share(percentage) of the profits if they were to accept your business proposal.

That’s It!

And the best part about this approach is that you don’t even have to spend a penny on advertising and the traffic you’ll receive will be ‘Laser Targeted’ making your chances of SUCCESS that much Greater.

I really hope this article opened your eye’s up and cleared up any unanswered questions you once had about what a ‘Super-Affiliate’ was, what there roll is in the Internet marketing world and more importantly… How you can locate them via the Web.

What I’m about to reveal to you in this article will literally change the Way you do your online marketing for years to come and will add many Benefits to You and your online promotions ‘Effortlessly’.

This secret(A.K.A. — Secret FUEL) that I’m going to talk about is so Powerful that it will…

– give You and your business ‘Instant Credibility’…

– Boost your websites ‘Link Popularity’ and ‘Search

Engine’ ranking…

– send you FREE ‘Laser Targeted’ traffic with ready to

Buy customers…

– help you build ‘Targeted’ opt-in mailing lists…

…and these are just some of the Benefits you’ll receive, But, in my mind, these are the most important.

Now, before I dive right into it I first want to do a little bit of a history lesson about WHY the Internet was born and more importantly, its Sole purpose so you’ll have a clear picture inside your head about WHY this ‘Secret FUEL’ that I’m about to reveal to you is so important to your online business.

So… lets get started by finding out when the ‘Internet’ was conceived.

The Internet was born on October 29, 1969. This date is significant because it was the 1st time in history that a computer talked to another computer via a router over a network.

So that roughly makes the Internet about 35 years old.

Now that we know when the Internet was born, what we need to know now is what was its Sole purpose?

The World Wide Web(Internet) is simply a… ‘Wide-Area Hypermedia Information Retrieval System’ aiming to give users(You) universal access to a large universe of Documents and/or Information.

So, with that said, basically the Internet is nothing more than a sophisticated communication device that gives us (You) the ability to Exchange and/or search for…

… !!INFORMATION!!

I guess thats a good reason WHY they call it… “The Information Super Highway”.

So… now that we’ve had that little history lesson I’m sure you probably have a good idea about what the ‘Secret FUEL’ is that I’m about to REVEAL to you.

BUT, if you don’t, don’t cheat and skip to the end.

Now, its pretty obvious that the Internet is merely a tool by which we use to locate related information that we query through the use of Search Engines by using related keywords or keyword phrases that we choose.

The question is, where does the ‘Secret FUEL’ fit into this equation?

You’ll be surprised with my answer because the ‘Secret FUEL’ that I’m about to tell you about is everywhere on the Web and people just like you and I are Hunting for IT as we speak.

So, I guess Now would be a good time to reveal to you…

…”The Secret FUEL That POWERS The Internet”.

Are you ready?

The ‘Secret FUEL’ that POWERS the Internet is simply…

… !!CONTENT!!

Just think about it for a minute and ask yourself this question… what’s the Main reason why You go online?

I can guarantee the majority of you answered… to find Information related to and/or about… whatever your query was.

Information is delivered through ‘Content’. Content is what FUEL’s the Internet, which means, You should be contributing by way of writing Informative articles related to your business.

Now, some of you are probably saying to yourself, I don’t know how to write articles let alone have anything to write about and will writing articles really Benefit my business in the long run?

Well, if you don’t know how to write articles… Start. I didn’t either in the beginning, but I learned and so can you.

It’s simply a learning process.

Now, how will writing articles benefit You and your business?

I outlined them earlier in my article, but will list the four main Benefit’s and the Why’s in point form below.

1)

How does it…

– give You and your business ‘Instant Credibility’?

Answer: By writing about your Product or Service you’re able to convey to your potential customer the Benefits and Solutions your Product and/or Service will solve giving you Instant Credibility and a reason for them to look into what you have to offer further.

2)

How does it…

– Boost your websites ‘Link Popularity’ and ‘Search

Engine’ ranking?

Answer: When you write your article you are able to leave a ‘Resource Box’(a brief description about You and/or your business with your URL included at the end). Now, when you submit your article to Article Directories or other website’s directories and website’s across the web and they add it to there directories you’ll get a ‘Link’ pointing back to your site.

Major search engines like Google and Yahoo! for example use ‘Link Popularity’ to gauge a website’s Importance and Ranking.

This is also a great strategy to use to get High PR websites to link back to you without even doing a ‘Link Exchange’. This is just what you want.

3)

How does it…

– send you FREE ‘Laser Targeted’ traffic with ready to

Buy customers?

Answer: When website owners are looking for fresh related content for either their website and/or newsletter and they happen to choose your article, they’ll have to publish your article with your ‘Resource Box’ included with all your website and contact information.

Just think how much ‘Laser Targeted’ traffic you’d get if your article is posted on a HIGH traffic website and/or in a newsletter with a HUGE subscriber base thats related to your niche.

Now, do you see where the ‘Laser Targeted’ traffic will come from.

4)

How does it…

– help you build ‘Targeted’ opt-in mailing lists?

Answer: Again, when website owners are looking for fresh related content for either their website and/or newsletter they will have to publish your article with your ‘Resource Box’ included with all your website and contact information.

So, when they visit your website through the information within your ‘Resource Box’ you’ll then have a chance to capture there Name and Email Address by offering them something of Value for FREE through either a ‘Pop-Up’ or ‘Exit Pop-Up’ and/or ‘Web Form’ on your website.

By doing this simple step you’ll be able to build your own ‘Targeted’ opt-in mailing list that you can hit up with other back-end offers anytime you wish at absolutely NO COST to You.

Now, do you see Why ‘CONTENT’ is so Powerful and how it FUEL’s the Internet?

Do you honestly think your business could Benefit from what I have revealed to you within this article?

I can almost Guarantee you probably answered… YES.

With that said, writing articles and submitting them to online publications is, in my mind, one of the most Effective ways to get Free Advertising and Publicity for your business for years to come.

Your web site is just like your business, in fact it is an extension of your business in some cases and it IS your business in others. Your advertising campaign must address each of these methods to the best and fullest extent possible given your advertising budget.

Let’s take a look at how you can use these different advertising methods to your best advantage:

Using Articles to market your web site

Short articles are a great way to generate traffic to your website. Articles can be used to keep the material fresh on the site so that your customers keep coming back, they can also be used to ‘advertise’ your site on web sites owned by others. Placing your article on article submission sites allows others to download it and use your article in their newsletters and on their web sites. Of course there are links in the article that point to your site for more information or other reviews etc. These links are great as they help increase your standings in the search engines.

The articles can be about any topic and you will find there are hundreds of article submission sites available to place your articles on. Most are free as they need fresh information so that their customers keep coming back as well. Iwantabusiness.biz is a new article submission site that I have started to give you an idea of what one is like. Feel free to post your articles on this site if they pertain to small business or home based businesses.

Using Affiliates to market your web site

Affiliate programs can add thousands of independent sales people to help market your products and services.

Over the years I have been involved with many businesses, and one of the things I remember from my Amway days was that as an individual, I could only do so much. I have 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year in which I can work. I will hit a maximum point of sales that I can handle by myself. After that I’m done. The only way to do more is to automate and have others duplicate what I do. The same is true on the web. We need to automate and duplicate what we do so we can have others expand our sales for us. The first part of this equation is duplication. We can have others follow what we do and sell our products and services for us and pay them a portion of the profits. This is different than having employees. Employees have no requirement to sell. They are overhead that must be paid regardless of sales. That is NOT what you want for a new business. Keep your hard earned cash for other things. What we need is someone that is willing to do the work for part of the profits. This is where affiliate programs come in to our formula for success. Affiliates are basically a partnership between web sites to advertise and promote products, services, or information for a share of the profits. When someone they refer to you buys, you pay them a percentage of the sales. Result? More traffic, more sales and less time required by you to find the customers as someone else does it for you.

What else can a good affiliate program do for you?

• How about driving more traffic to your site!

• Build brand awareness as more people visit your site from the hundreds or thousands of affiliates that are advertising for you.

• Obtaining qualified leads that you can follow-up on to increase or up sell to.

• Increasing the links to your site which will increase the ranking of your site on the search engines resulting in more traffic and more sales.

There are all kinds of affiliate programs. Some programs charge to be a member and some do not. Some are web based and some are software programs that you load on your computer to set up and track the sales and affiliate yourself. Which one you use is up to you. Here are a few that I have found.

Affiliate Net – This is one of the more affordable server side affiliate programs. With this software there are no monthly fees only a one time software charge. At the time of this writing this package sold from $49.95 to $99.95. Referral Software – This package is also server side although more expensive, it has many more features and is worth while to consider if you are serious about earning a lot of money with your Internet business. At the time of this writing this package sold for $299.00.

Click Bank – This is a web based affiliate program. By signing up on their web site you have access to over 100,000 affiliates. There are monthly and set up fees.

clixGalore Affiliate Networks – This is a web based affiliate program. There are monthly and set up fees.

I highly recommend affiliate programs. For the reasons listed above. Remember they will help drive traffic to your site, which means more sales and you can use the affiliate programs to offer others services and make the commission once you are done with the client. This could be a good business all by its self.

Using Auctions to market your web site

Ok, you have a product or service you want to sell; you need to let people know about that product or service and you don’t have much money to spend. Imagine a place that gets over 3 million customers that are ready, able, willing and looking to buy everyday. It is a Super Mall!

Ask any business person what they would pay to be in a mall that got 3 million visitors a day. You can see the dollar signs light up in their eyes… both in terms of cost and sales potential. Remember my goal from earlier in the course when we talked about business planning? I need to have 4200 visitors a month come to my web site in order to sell 420 copies according to my business plan. Well E-Bay gets 3 million visitors a day! Do you think that might be a place that I would want to advertise my books or my web site? You bet! In fact I have sold quite a few of my other books on E-Bay as well as bottles, baseball cards, clothing, computers, software, training, video and much more. So can you.

Let’s take my Weekend Chef’s guides and see how I can sell them on E-Bay, Yahoo Auctions, or MSN Auctions. First I need an account. This is simple, but does vary based on who you are signing up with. Follow the instructions (at the end of this page is an excellent course on how to really make money on auctions, but this will get you started). Once you have an account, we now need to place something for sale. Think of the auction site as your web site As such we need to create a web page that offers you product/service for sale. I use a software package call Auction Wizard 2000. They have an excellent program that allows you to try it for 60 days before you have to register. It is so easy to use as well. Using Auction Wizard, I can create an auction page and automatically post it and repost as needed to any of the supported auctions. No special knowledge of html is required. Simple fill in the blanks and add any pictures or graphics and I’m done. It also will track the sales, send emails to successful bidders, track inventory and so much more. If you are thinking of doing auctions, this is one piece of software to take a hard look at.

Back to selling my guides and building my business. Within the auction listing, I can place a link to my site, offer a free download of some chapters of the book, of course, I will need your email before you can download. Remember, I need to keep you coming back. Be careful here, E-Bay does not like you selling outside of their auction so make sure the visitor is not allowed to buy from your site at that link. Well, now we have given something away for free (a chapter of the book), we have the visitors email address, and we hopefully will get a bid on the product/service. If not, we have the email to follow up. What has it cost us? Each item up for auction on E-Bay cost …. are you ready for this 30 cents to list it plus a small percentage of the selling cost. If I list my Weekend Chef’s Guide to Sushi on E-Bay with a starting price of say $1 it will cost me a total of about 30 cents for the week. 30 cents to reach millions of potential customers a day. If I sell the book, I will have recovered my 30 cents and started building my customer email list as well.

Now I could write a whole web site on using auctions, but this page is just how to use auctions to market your business. You can sell items and make a profit or you can just list items and build a customer database to market to later. Either way Auctions make a great way to market your business.

I have on my website a couple more tips on using auctions as well at rd-webhosting.com or visit my eBay store for other eBooks that are available from time to time.

Using Auto responders to market your web site

Depending on the products, services or information you are selling auto responders may be able to automate a good portion of your web site business. An auto responder is a piece of software that checks email for certain words or phrases and responds according to your wishes. For example, you may have received a newsletter by sending an email to me with Subscribe as the subject. My auto responder sees that email come in and has a set of actions defined that when the subject has subscribe in it that it will email back to you our newsletter. Another thing that the auto responders can do is following up with your customers at predetermined times with a predetermined letter. This is good for driving traffic to your site after they have visited and left their email address such as to subscribe to a newsletter or download a free chapter of an e-book or other information you have made available. For my training business I send up to 4 different emails to each person that request my guide to increase their income. Each email introduces them to other benefits and services that are available. Some of the emails will offer a discount or free training class as an incentive to sign up for a class. All of it done without me having to get involved.

Auto responders can be installed on your computer or used via the Internet. Some are free and others you have to pay either by the email address or based on the number of responses you want to program it to respond to. Here are some links to auto responders on the web as well as a software package with a trial version you can use yourself.

Promasoft: This is the one we use with our servers. I highly recommend. They have a trial version that is a full version. It places a header in the outgoing email, so you will want to register once you have it up and running. I think it is a great program.

GetResponse: This is also a great program, although, this one is a subscription service. It can be a less expensive way to try out an auto responder. They do offer a free account as well.

This is part one of a multi-part series of Marketing you web site. In the next section we will cover marketing you web site using banner ads and classified ads .

Want to make some serious money online? Don’t know what it is that you want to promote? Learn what a “niche” market is, and how to select the one that is right for you.

A “niche” market is a group of people with a common interest, hobby, desire, or need. You want to find a “hot” niche and develop ideas to market to that niche. You don’t want to try to sell an idea to just anyone, so you have to find people interested in your product already. You want to seek out the most popular markets, and make sure there is a large online community that is interested in your niche. Because you want to make money online, you need to target these people in your tactics to drive traffic to your site.

Some pretty popular types if niches include, hobbies, health, fitness, self-help, and money making sites. But one should consider their own passion when deciding which niche it is that they want their site to cater to.

Once you have found the niche market that you are interested in, you need to figure out what would be valuable to the people in that niche market. Maybe you could provide a product, or a service. If it is indeed a valuable service or product, the word of mouth advertising will far outweigh any advertising that you could go out and buy.

Just like it is easy to find groups of people that have a common interest, it is even easier to target them. You can even target individual people on the internet, based on their needs or desires. One can even send them a message at the exact same time that they are looking for the solution that you just happened to be providing. It is more simple than you can imagine to do this, especially with the tools and resources available on the web today.

After you have found an idea that caters to your niche market, you need to make sure that the idea is a good one, by using an inventory engine, such as the one recommended by my mentors. You just enter a keyword, or keywords, and the engine will show you how many times that keyword or keywords were searched for. You can then compare one keyword to another, and get an idea of how popular different markets are. You should do this to make sure that you are developing something that people want. You can also use this information to decide if maybe you want to branch out to other niches, widening your circle of potential clients.

For more detailed information about niche markets, and a step by step guide to finding a good one, use the links found on my own website, at the address below. Register, and I will send you incredible reports, and other cool stuff! Or just click on the links to go directly to these sites dedicated to financial success, as well as personal success! Take action! Go there NOW!

Microsoft windows opened up a new world for me. From a Computer Layman to an expert in most things . took me about 10 years. Not bad for someone who works long hours in an offline business with little time on the computer. I have tried most things such as marketing affiliate programs, mlm,list management and have had some success selling on e-bay. One thing that has always eluded me was to be able to create a Great website using the right tools and knowledge.

I created a website about 5 years ago and had problems with hyperlinks,banners and website file association.. There were many things i wanted to do with this site but lacked the right knowldge and guidance to do it.

I eventually gave up and went back to the hard slog of working my offline business. Recently i found the right information on a site which i consider to be good value for money(it costs nothing at all for this knoweldge) When you learn this knowledge you will know how to create an idea,and market it.

They also show you how to create a mean website! Most of the information i have accessed over the years seemed to take a lot for granted that you have a working knowledge of web files,know how to upload your your files using a ftp client to a host webserver.

This was always very confusing to me. I have finally found the place that helps you to create a website step by step without confusion. The teachings on this website are massive and show you the basic structure of building a website . It is like finding all the pieces of a jigsaw and putting them all together with ease. All the concepts of this course while individually dont mean much by themself, once you put them all together they pack a punch so powerfull that you cant wait for the next lesson.

I could never work out why my images would not upload to my site, so easy now yet then could not see what i did wrong. So to summarize the information provided here is absolutely free and the wealth of information covers every thing from marketing, finding a niche market, to creating your own website.

chris merrill

Free for everyone and hours of video tuition

.newprofitsecrets.com

It never ceases to amaze me how often new webmasters set about their online business at the start without actually having clearly defined strategies on how to market and promote the website and the product.

Now this article is for internet marketing newbies, so the strategies for website promotion are fairly basic therefore experienced internet marketers are under no compulsion to proceed.

If you are a newbie, however, please pay attention as these website promotional strategies are what you will need to employ over and over again every time you have a new product to promote. Apply these basic techniques and the bedrock of success is laid for you.

Remember, no traffic, no sales.

Free listings in Search Engines: Everyone loves to get something for free. The same applies to free traffic.

Consider building a keyword list related to your product before you build your website. This way, you write your website content crafting in those keywords for which the site needs to be optimised. Don’t overdo it though as the search engines are becoming too smart and may think you are attempting to trick them. The more pages you have, the easier it is to have your site optimised for your chosen keywords.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Here the search engines list your site based on your bid for a particular keyword(s). Your position in the search listing strongly depends on how much you are prepared to pay for those keywords and the bidding price is also dependent on the popularity and competitiveness of your niche. This Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are the ones you see on the right side of your screen in the search results in, for instance, Google and Yahoo who now own Overture.

It’s always a good idea to know your website statistics especially conversion rates to determine how much you will be prepared to pay for those keywords &ndash what I call your bid price affordability. This way you don’t operate your PPC Campaign at a loss.

Know Your Numbers!

Ezine Advertising: You search for popular ezines (these are electronic magazines or newsletters) in Google or Yahoo by entering Keywords ‘ezines directory’.

Visit these directories and look out for ezines that fit your products and also the subscription base of those ezines. You then choose to place Solo ads, Sponsor ads or Classified ads on ezines of your choice at an agreed price. The choice of which type of Ad and what ezine(s) to place your Ad would depend on your personal preference and your budget as well.

Linking Your Website: You need to set out linking strategies that can boost your business in two ways. First is that the more links you have, the more the search engines will rank your site and consequently your position in the organic search engines. Secondly, you get traffic deservedly from your link partners website. I’m sure you will welcome targeted free traffic from any source.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate program are a great source of free traffic and income at no cost to your good self. Affiliates are business partners who sign up to sell your product for an agreed commission. You can make a fortune on the internet from a great product if you have tons of affiliates working for themselves and you. An affiliate software is necessary to track your affiliate sales, visitors. Don’t forget to provide your affiliate with marketing tools and training materials to assist them.

Offline Advertising: This is quite often ignored. Just because your business is online does not mean you cannot generate traffic offline. You will be surprised at how potent this weapon can be. Write Press Releases about your product, Product review etc and send it to editors of newspapers and magazine. The one I love most is what we refer to as web ad. Here you use classified ads in newspapers and magazines to drive traffic to your site.

These are basic strategies you must have mapped out before commencing work on your website. This way you can start marketing the very day your website goes live.

Always think marketing first.