The basics in writing the article are much the same, no matter where you use it. It should be written to make the best use of keywords without being obvious. Information is what the reader wants so don’t just write one big commercial. Readers have gone to your article because they want to learn something. If they do, they are more likely to click on your site to see what else you have to offer. Gradually you can steer them towards your promotions or products.

The writer needs to be sure there are no grammatical errors. Break it into manageable paragraphs and keep the line length about 60-65 characters so the reader doesn’t have to use his mouse to see your writing.

Another area is who writes the article. Some people can publish them very easily but others either don’t have the time or don’t feel comfortable enough to do their own. Research is important here, including trying out someone who offers to write them for you. Try him out and if he performs to your satisfaction you can continue with him. Eventually a hesitant author may decide to try it himself, as he gets more experienced with his marketing skills. A good place to get recommendations is on a forum.

Where are articles placed? One of the most obvious is article directories because they will submit them to hundreds of sites. The author’s link is then sent out with the articles and hopefully many readers will click on it to find out more about this author, especially if the subject is in his area of marketing.

Your own website is a great venue for your articles. A good example would be to put the article on affiliate marketing on a web page. Then links on that page can offer the reader a route to one or more of your affiliate sites. Or write one on the benefits of using autoresponders and have a link to one or two.

Make sure that your articles not only use keywords that relate to whatever subject about which you are writing, but remember that content is king. Commercials are fine but save them for your blog or a broadcast to your subscriber list. Well-written articles can help you build an opt-in list. Your readers will be anxious to read more of your material and we all know that subscriber lists lead to income opportunities. Your site’s reputation will increase as well. Soon some of your subscribers may recommend your site to others.

Be sure to stick to subjects that either pertain to your type of business or if you are promoting affiliate products and sites, aim your subject to whatever you are promoting. Not an ad, maybe more information on the general subject of that product. For example, if the product is a vitamin, write an article on the need to supplement your nutrition.

A good way to advertise articles is to set up each article on a web page and then make a master list on a separate page with a link to the article. Using an autoresponder for the same method is good too. Then take out an ad, either paid or unpaid, and advertise the master list.

Articles obviously can be used in various places and with a little imagination your business will greatly profit from them.

As you have already written the articles, it requires very little work on your part to develop something that will bring in traffic (and sales) for years to come. Compiling the articles into a single document is relatively easy although you may need to do some work in re-branding and making it aesthetically pleasing. In addition, there may be some effort required in adding viral elements. Many authors are not so subtle and put in blatant advertisements. You may get more success by adding some value to the reader and disguising the marketing component. A popular technique is to add a review of several products in the particular niche. You will need to include your own affiliate links, but to make them less obvious you should consider cloaking them.

Distribution can be done in many ways. If the resulting publication is of high quality you could consider selling it. In order to make it viral you would need to include reprint rights. Not only do you get sales from the book (which is practically written already), you get others spreading it around on your behalf.

If you really want the material to spread you should consider giving it away and encourage others to do the same (with the proviso that the material is not changed in any way). You can advertise your giveaway in forums and in list emails. One area that can be very useful but is often neglected is on the download page of any related products you sell. People love to be provided with unadvertised bonuses. Because it is on the download page, it is seen as a part of the actual order and most people will download it.

A viral marketing campaign costs a lot less to implement than traditional advertising. It needs to be remembered that viral marketing is just one component of your marketing repertoire. It should be linked with other strategies such as setting up squeeze pages to collect opt-ins. When combined with other essential business building strategies it can help to generate traffic to your web site, build a huge and solid customer base, add to your sales and contribute towards your success.

Once you decide to use articles to help promote your business, keep a notebook with you and start jotting down ideas as they occur. If you don’t you will find that you forget your great ideas just a few minutes later. Don’t think that you will remember, your ideas will likely be lost to you forever.

Once you start listing what you know that other people would like to know, you will begin to realize that you have expertise that is worth sharing.

Everybody is an expert at something. You are the expert on your business; it’s your area of expertise, and you know a lot about it.

If you are stuck for how to get started with writing articles to promote your business try answering these questions.

What questions are you always being asked?

Write out your answers for the most frequently asked questions and you will have the foundation for many articles.

Begin by writing out the question, then write a few lines that sum up your answer. Once you’ve done that you can expand on your points. Add in an example, or a relevant quote and you will have a good enough article.

What do people want to know the most?

Once you identify the most searched for information, use the internet to research further facts and figures and you will have the material for a series of articles around that theme. It is always easier to write a series of articles; once you get started, the words will begin to flow, and you will find that you get ideas for more articles as you write.

Are there foundational processes that you could write a how to guide for?

A how to article is probably the easiest article to write. You could begin by creating a working title and deciding what your reader will be equipped to do when they finish reading your article.

Next, simply list the steps in order and then flesh out each of those steps with the details.

Do you begin to see how easy this is? The only thing that can stop you from getting started with writing articles is thinking that you can’t do it.

Article marketing works. Now that you know how easy it is and that you can do it, what is stopping you getting started on drafting your first article?

You can write articles. Use simple language, just write as you talk and let the words flow. Don’t censor as you write, you can make changes later. Now, go and write some articles and see for yourself just how easy this can be. The rewards are worth the effort.

]]> http://infogogetter.com/article-marketing/use-article-marketing-to-promote-your-business/feed 0 http://infogogetter.com/article-marketing/track-your-article-for-maximum-results http://infogogetter.com/article-marketing/track-your-article-for-maximum-results#comments Tue, 27 Oct 2009 12:00:00 +0000 admin http://infogogetter.com/plr/track-your-article-for-maximum-results The main reason that many authors write and publish articles is to draw attention to a product or service that they are selling. Known as article marketing, this is one of the few remaining methods of free advertising that are still highly effective.

An article is usually composed of around 500 or so words, on a single topic that will be of interest to your target market. A resource box is included at the end of the article. This contains your bio plus details of the product or service that the article is promoting.

Writing an article doesn’t have to be hard work. All that is required is to carry out your research, then write the article summarizing your research in your own words.

Having completed your article, your next task is to get it publicized. Submitting your article to selected article directories normally carries this out. These serve the purpose of introducing the article gatherer to the article writer. If a publisher sees your article and wants to include it on their website or in their newsletter, this is allowed on the condition that the resource box is also included. This way, the publisher gains valuable content and the writer gains publicity. Everyone is happy!

So, is that the end of your task as an article author, or is there more that you can do to improve the results from your article writing?

If you have submitted your article to more than one article directory, how will you know which directory your website visitors have come from? How will you know if you are wasting your time submitting to hundreds of article directories, when the results may only be coming from a handful of them? You need to be able to track the results of each and every article submission that you make in order to find the answers to these questions.

Web hits and keyword ranking are useful stats to have, but you also need to track the number of pages indexed and the number of back links each article has obtained. These stats are also available to you, but only at the expense of a lot of time or five levels deep into some SE software.

With time being the valuable commodity that it is these days, we all need to spend as little of it as possible carrying out mundane tasks. I ask you, which is more likely to be the more profitable for you – time spent checking stats, or time spent writing another article? Exactly!

It is only by tracking the results of your marketing that you can determine the steps you need to take in order to see your website rise in the search engine rankings. If you are not already tracking your results, then it is high time you started. Simply submitting one article after another and hoping for the best just doesn’t cut the mustard these days.

Search Engines are constantly on the “look out” for freshly written content that has been submitted online. So how do you come up with ideas for your next article? Here are several suggestions that may help…

* Hang out in online forums. Watch what people are talking about. Look at the questions they are asking. The topics that are bringing the greatest number of visitors would make for an excellent article.

* Take a look at what information is being broadcast on TV, radio, newspapers, and online. This information is usually a hot topic.

* Read blogs. What are people posting about? What kind of comments are they leaving? What questions do they have? Blogs are the hot internet marketing medium right now and you can literally find them everywhere on any topic. This is an excellent source for your next article idea.

* Survey your current customers or website visitors. Ask them what kind of article they would like to see in your next ezine or published on your website.

* Check bookstores online. What are the top sellers? This can be a good way to come up with an article that catches the attention of what people are reading.

* Be seasonal. Write about what is going on that time of year. Holidays, festivals, sports, graduations, etc. all make for an article that someone will want to read.

* Write an article about a current fad. There is always something that is hot at the time and could make for interesting reading from you.

* Keep track of what your customers and prospects are asking you. If you get an email or phone call with a question this may make for a good article. Others may have the same question, but are afraid to ask it.

* Start a swipe file on what others are writing about. If it is of interest to you it will probably be of interest to others. Never plagiarize the work of others, but you can certainly get good ideas this way. The biggest benefit of a swipe file is having it handy to refer back to over and over whenever you are ready to write your article and are not sure what you want to write about.

Hopefully this will give you some ideas on how to come up with your next article. The internet marketer who can write interesting articles has a huge leg up on their competition. If you can master this strategy there is no limit to how much money you can make online.

Reason #1: Article marketing is free. Every business owner knows that advertising isn’t cheap. Every newspaper or magazine ad you run costs you dearly. By spending just a little extra time writing and submitting several articles each month, you’ll save quite a bit of money. Best yet, article marketing doesn’t cost you a dime–just a few hours every week.

Reason #2: Article marketing brands your business. Have you ever wondered how some businesses seem to become so well known in such a short amount of time? They’re getting their name out there. They’re giving away something of value for free to their potential customers. Your articles will brand your business and make it a well-known name.

Reason #3: Article marketing makes you an expert. If you write articles about the subjects you know well, you’ll quickly become known as an expert in your field. Do you run a website on bird watching? Writing and submitting fifty articles on bird watching will show people that you know what you’re talking about.

Reason #4: Article marketing teaches you how to relate to people. You can’t write a bunch of articles without learning how to communicate effectively. The more you write, the more you’ll learn how to get your message across in a friendly, personal tone.

Reason #5: Article marketing creates back links to your website. Without getting into the technical details of this, back links to your website are good and you’ll want lots of them. Back links help boost your rankings in the search engines, thus gaining more exposure for your website.

Remember that article marketing isn’t the cure-all answer to advertising your business; it’s one piece of the pie. You also can’t submit a handful of articles one time and expect to see results.

Article marketing requires persistence and patience. You should plan to spend a certain number of hours each week writing and submitting articles to promote your business. Pencil in this time faithfully and stick to it. Within a few months (maybe even a few short weeks!), you’ll begin to see the results of your hard work pay off.

Knowing your SEO hats

Article marketing makes up a big chunk of online marketing strategies. Businesses online depend on websites, and the blood work of all websites is content. You need to keep your content relevant if you want to attract costumers. However, costumers aren’t the only ones you need to write for.

To raise the page ranking of your website in popular search engines and directories, you need to keep your content optimized. This means knowing how to place the right number of keywords within the article. These “keywords” or key phrases will then be indexed by search engine “spiders”. Since these spiders are programs, they cannot initially gauge the quality of your articles depending on the value of information included in it. Most pages are ranked on search engines because the right keywords are frequently mentioned in the same article.

While this is good for the search engine, being too redundant in the article (e.g. saying the word “hormonal imbalance” 30 times in a 400-word article) is annoying for the human reader. Keyword stuffing this intense is also referred to as black hat SEO or bad SEO. While this may result in top page ranking overnight, you can also lose your slot in no time once your irrelevant content was found out by human editors.

Other people use the term white hat SEO for article marketing that is more focused on human readers than search engine spiders. However, no online marketing strategy today can claim to be purely white hat SEO. Because of the tight competition of businesses online, companies are bound to make use of a little black hat SEO trick once in a while, but probably not to the extent that they are risking being banned from search engines.

The most common form of article marketing today makes use of gray hat SEO strategies, which is a well balanced scheme which considers both the human readers and the search engine spiders.

Email marketing ethics

If you are personally annoyed at spam mails, then you might immediately want to cross email marketing off your list. You should not do this just yet. Email marketing is an effective Internet marketing strategy if you know how to do it right.

Sending out advertisements and newsletters to a random number of email addresses will not help you gain customers. Instead, you will be putting all your hard work in the trash bin of someone�s email. Think about your target audience instead. Do not simply blast your advertisements everywhere.

What you are looking for here is a list that is more focused on quality, not quantity. A targeted list of 20 clients, or prospective clients, is more effective than 200 strangers who might just see your unsolicited newsletter as an annoyance.

Getting the list right

Targeted lists can be formed from databases in your website. People who visit your website could simply drop a line, and voluntarily give out their email addresses where you can send product catalogues, newsletters, and whatnot that is related to your product.

If you are a traditional business who also trades offline, you can collect emails during tradeshows. If you have a shop somewhere in the city, you can ask your clients to fill out a small survey form, which also asks for their email addresses. It can be a simple line at the bottom saying: Would you like to be updated about out latest products? Tell us where we can find you in cyberspace so we can drop a line.

Keep in mind that while posting articles to article directories can help to improve your search engine rankings and increase the visitors to your sites, all the work you spend writing and posting will be in vain if article directory owners choose to not post your article.

Let’s take a look at how you can stay on the good side of article directory owners and increase your chance of getting your articles posted:

1. Follow the rules. You stay on the good side of article directory owners simply by reading the submission guidelines posted on the article directory site. These guidelines explain the rules that you will need to follow in order to get your article posted. At minimum, they will describe the types of topics the directory owner will accept, formatting requirements and even word length.

2. Show your expertise. By writing extensively on a particular subject or similar subjects within a broader category, you become respected as an expert – often allowing you the privilege of having your articles automatically accepted. However, submitting articles on a number of different topics might send an alert to the article directory owner that you could be a possible spammer. You could have good intentions and simply want to submit articles reflecting the variety of different sites that you own, but having many articles on many topics could send a flag that you are aiming mainly for a high number of backlinks and the quality of your articles may not meet the requirements of their site. If you want to submit articles on a variety of topics, try submitting certain topics to certain directories or sign up with multiple usernames or pennames (if allowed by the article directory).

3. Rewrite your PLR articles. If you use private label rights (PLR) articles, be sure to rewrite your articles. Do not use them straight out of the article pack, because many others who have the same article packs will not rewrite theirs! Duplicate articles are always deleted from article directories, therefore if yours does not get in the directory first; there is a good chance your article will be deleted. Furthermore, not all article directory owners understand the use of PLR for article marketing. Do not take a chance that the article directory owner might accuse you of copyright infringement!

Remember, if you have questions, ask the article directory owner(s) because it is much easier to do it right the first time than to spend time and effort rewriting it or just being taken off the list of qualified writers for that article directory. Always submit high quality work, do not try to cut corners once you have established a rapport with the website owner.

The key to effective article marketing is to offer useful and interesting content that is optimized for the search engines.

To start the article, choose a topic that pertains to your affiliate offerings and find the best keywords related to the topic. You can use a free resource such as Keyword Playground to research the popularity of certain words and use Google to research the competitiveness of the keywords.

Informative, well-written content with a keyword density of three to five percent is a good step to getting your article ranked in the search engines. Do not, however, overuse keywords or else your articles will be ranked lower due to the spam flag.

Make sure to research the topic you are writing about through Google searches, encyclopedias and/or library research so you offer meaningful content.

Choose an attention-grabbing title to raise interest, such as posing a question or a challenge to your readers. As you write the article, check your spelling and grammar so your writing has a professional appearance.

If you find the process difficult, you may choose to invest in a program such as Fat Content that guides you through SEO writing step-by-step and includes an optimized search engine browser for outstanding research.

Unique articles providing outstanding information will bring the most traffic to your affiliate pages. Once you prepare an original, well-written article, proofread your work or ask someone else to read your article so you know it makes sense.

Once the article is perfect, it’s time to submit it to article directories such as Ezine Articles, Article City and Go Articles. You can also feature your article on blogs, forums and newsletters. Make sure, however, that your bio box includes the link to your affiliate website before you submit to the directories.

Although it can be time-consuming, writing great articles is an affordable way to boost your affiliate profits even if you have a small advertising budget. And if you’re able to to write an over-the-top article that goes viral, you’ll be amazed at the traffic it will bring you.

There are several ways to incorporate your affiliate links in an article submitted for publication. The most common and acceptable way to do this is by including a short bio of yourself as author of the article along with a link to the site of your choice.

This will usually include you expressing yourself as an expert and suggesting that your readers go to a certain site for more information. You can also just tell readers that as an expert you highly recommend this certain product and have used it yourself.

This is called the author resource box and is standard practice with almost all article directories and submission sites. If you are submitting to individual sites make sure to include a disclaimer along with your article that the resource box must be included if the article is to be republished in any blog, ezine or newsletter.

But another, albeit sneakier, way is to write a review of a certain product or service and tell the reader that they can have a look at the product by following the link in the article.

Many article directories will allow up to three such links within each article as long as the article itself is not just a blatant advertisement for said product.

This can work to your benefit as you may join several different affiliate programs within the same niche and do a comparison between them and include your link for each.

Another approach that works great is to weave your affiliate links into your articles by simply being creative with the wording.

By just describing a product or service within your article and using an affiliate link to take your readers to a page as an example that can better describe your points will more likely be accepted and also greatly increase the chances of the readers clicking your them.

Research has proven that the most effective affiliate links are text links. They far exceed banners and flash animations when it comes to click through rates. By adding these links into your articles and distributing them across the web and also using them on your own sites and blogs you will see more clicks and more affiliate sales.

Your article needs to relate to a subject people are looking for information about. Some one wants to know how to take care of their animals (care, training, etc.); or maybe they want information on building a simple bookcase; or the basics on choosing a car; or…

Writing on a subject you know is the usual way to go about producing an article but with the advent of the Internet we can write on any subject of interest to us, whether we have full knowledge of the subject or not. Why? Because today we have the ability to fully research any subject through the Internet, put that information into our own words and publish that information.

For instance, one fellow bought a 1969 Roadrunner muscle car – a real wreck! With his knowledge about this, and other cars, he fully restored the car to prize-winning condition. He knows where every nut, bolt and screw goes. His knowledge can be turned into articles that help others.

Putting something of yourself into your article is a great way to get people interested in you and your subject. Not your life story just something simple, maybe an anecdote on something that happened to you. Remember; always be honest with your readers. You are creating a picture with your words, not just of your subject but also of you.

Just put the information down on paper – or word processor. Don’t worry about the grammar or sentence structure, or anything else. Make the article somewhat light – but informative, as you want your readers to follow up by going to your site for more information. Once you have the words on paper then you can go back and rewrite to make corrections and polish the article. Spend time on this aspect – this tells your readers something about you.

Now, admittedly that writing is hard for a lot of us. Using an outline can be one of the easiest ways to put an article together. Whatever you are producing will practically write itself with the use of an outline.

Having said that, it is a good feeling when you put your words to paper and know that others are interested in what you have to say. You and your information are valuable because no one in the world has your exact viewpoint on the subjects that interest you – because no one has your exact experiences!

Once an article has been completed, you submit it to sites that specialize in free content. In turn, others that have an interest in your particular subject pick up your article and the article gets passed around the web. It becomes – very Viral!

How does this help you? Well, at the bottom of your article is a little box called a resource box. This little box has a small bio on you with a website link. It contains your name, who you are and a link to the website you want people to visit.

A link which takes your readers where ever you want them to go: a website with information you are providing such as books, ebooks, manuals, services you provide, etc.

Just go for it – start researching your subjects and writing, putting information into words that have meaning to you and your readers and – PUBLISH!

By submitting your articles to article directories, article announcement lists, and ezine publishers, you accomplish several things.

First, you establish yourself as an expert in your field. Readers are more likely to listen to you if they feel you know what you are talking about.

Second, by attaching a resource box to your article, you are giving the reader a link to your website. If the reader is impressed with your knowledge, they will likely click on your link to see what it is that you are offering.

Third, you increase your search engine page rank by providing a non-reciprocal link to your website. Search engines seem to give extra weight to non-reciprocal links in their page rankings.

But many marketers are not comfortable writing their own articles. They just do not know how to put their thoughts into words. Or worse yet, they do not have any thoughts worth printing.

That is why private label articles are in such high demand these days. There are several of these services available and more seem to be popping up every day.

Therein lies the problem. Depending on how these articles are used, the results can be good, bad, or downright ugly.

The Good: As stated previously, private label articles, when used correctly, can give the non-writer a big advantage over other marketers. They can increase your traffic, sales, and opt in subscribers. That is good.

The Bad: A common mistake made by marketers using private label articles is getting lazy. They simply copy and paste the article and submit it, as is, with no personalization.

At the very least, you should change the title. Most article directories require that your article be approved before they are posted. But do you really think they read every article that comes in? Not likely.

They get dozens, even hundreds of submissions every day, so it’s unlikely that your article will actually be read.

But most directory software will automatically search their database for duplicate titles. If the title of your article matches one in their database, yours will be rejected.

So do yourself a favor and at the very least, change the title. It might also be a good idea to change the wording in the first paragraph.

The Ugly: Many marketers load so many links in their article that it becomes one long ad. This will not only get you rejected, but eventually banned if you do it often enough.

A good article contains useful information to the reader whether they buy your products or not. Give them good content and you will increase the chances that they will click your link in the resource box.

Private label articles are a great tool, but do not get lazy!

There are many webmasters using article submission sites to find content to use on their own website or newsletter. If you have a link to your website or business opportunity in some of these articles you will be rewarded with a backlink when they make use of the content you delivered on their web sites.

It’s a pretty sure bet that anybody can do if they for instance write about their favorite hobby or passion. If you can tell a short story you can write an article!

If you decide to write an article you want it to draw peoples attention and gets them to act by for instance signing up for a newsletter (and thus building your list) or doing something else what you might want to mention in the resource section belonging to your article.

A great way to get people click through to your web page is to offer them a sequence of articles (after you have let them taste your first free article enabling them to get hungry for more) if they are willing to perform an act of lets say signing up to your newsletter or subscribing to for instance your members only site. It makes perfectly good sense for your visitors to take action if they enjoyed the first (free) article you offered and they want to learn more on the topic you presented.

Most articles miss the logic of this emotional driven appeal to find out more. By offering a 300 to 500 words appetizer you are appealing to peoples curiosity. Taking action for your audience is only a small step by then.

If you want to publish you article you can chose Article Directories. There are very many on the internet. But as a matter of caution I suggest that when you approach an article directories a good advice would be not to treat your article as a sales piece in stead of a content piece. The Article Directory might not be willing to accept the article you offered for inclusion in their directory. And you will go back to your writing board again.

Different websites have different goals. One may be to build a brand, another may be to sell a product while yet another may be to build a list from leads. No matter what the goal, tracking should be done to see whether the traffic generated from various sources is actually helping to achieve that goal.

In some cases, it is easy to see the difference between various traffic sources. For example, it is usually much cheaper to buy Pay Per Click (PPC) ads for a content network than for a search network. On a content network, ads appear on related web sites while on a search network they appear as the result of a user keying in specific search terms.

People who click on ads on the content network tend to be browsing the Internet for information. In most cases, they expect to get this information for free. On the other hand, those searching for key terms, especially product names, are more likely to be looking to buy. Because of this, conversion rates are typically much higher on the search network. This leads to more demand which, in turn, leads to higher prices for these ads.

Unfortunately, paying for advertising can eat into profits. In some cases campaigns that are generating a good volume of sales can be rendered unprofitable due to the costs of advertising. However, organic traffic, which comes from unpaid listing on search engines, is free and targeted. The difficulty arises in generating sufficient volumes of traffic. To do this requires being on the front pages of the major search engines for popular terms. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the process of trying to rank highly for competitive keywords. Unfortunately, many SEO techniques take considerable time to put into place and to affect search engine rankings.

One technique to overcome this problem is to aim for ‘low-hanging fruit’. That is, keywords that have less competition. While these generate lower traffic, it is possible to build up considerable amounts of traffic by building up a portfolio of less popular keywords.

Other good forms of generating free targeted traffic include article marketing, email marketing and utilizing joint venture partnerships. The main thing is to avoid traffic generation strategies that cost money, but don’t result in conversions.

Every online publisher needs traffic to their site, but how do you get a steady increase of traffic each month? How do you even get traffic started coming to your site?

Blogs automatically get traffic coming as soon as you make your first post. With a good ping list, each time you make a post to your blog dozens of sites are notified and traffic starts coming in. Therefore the first step in getting traffic to your blog is to post regularly. Posting once or twice a day is fantastic.

Article Syndication

Writing articles and syndicating them to article directories is a powerful technique to grow your traffic. Try to write at least one article a week (or have a unique article written for you), post it to your site, wait a week for the search engines to index it, and then submit the article to article directories. For a nominal fee SubmitYourArticle.com will submit it to hundreds of article directories, saving you a lot of time and effort.

Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is another very powerful tool. It takes less than a minute to submit your article to OnlyWire.com. Once submitted they take it and submit it to about fifteen other social bookmarking sites.

Imagine if you bookmarked one article a day and submitted each to fifteen social bookmarking sites for one year. That would add up to over 15,000 backlinks for your one site! Incredible! But there’s even more you can do.

Pay Pay Click and More

Pay per click, email marketing, viral marketing, and commenting in forums are all great ways to get more traffic. For instance, Answers.Yahoo.com is a site where people post questions and wait for an answer.

For instance, if you have a site about dogs and someone asks about what to feed their puppy, you can post an answer and include your URL in the signature. As people read the question and your answer, some will click on your URL to see what else you might say about taking care of dogs.

Tracking and Statistics

Track the visitors to your site by using tools such as MyBlogLong.com, Google Analytics, and the tracking tools found in your site’s cpanel under Stats. Google Analytics is a plugin for Wordpress. It takes a minute to set up and gives you vital information to help you focus on what your visitors want.

By looking at your stats a few minutes a week you can see what articles are most popular, what topics are most popular, how long people are staying at the site, and what links they click on to leave the site. You can use this information to make changes to your site, increase the number of posts you make on popular topics, and anything else that will encourage people to stay longer and to come back.

It is not hard to get traffic to a blog. Set aside some time each day to write an article or to post to your blog, submit it to the social bookmarking sites, and submit your articles to article directories. Follow these basic tips and traffic to your site should increase significantly each month.

Targeted traffic involves enticing visitors to your site who are actually interested in the content of your website. If people are interested in buying tropical fish they will find websites about buying tropical fish interesting.

There are a number of methods for obtaining targeted traffic.

Forums – If you are an active participant in a forum you can obtain targeted traffic through the link to your website that you are usually allowed to add to the signature. If you spam you are likely to get banned. However, if you add value by joining in debates and answering questions you may even come to be known as an expert. If others like your style, the quality of your posts or even the promotional text in your signature you can generate targeted traffic that doesn’t cost you anything.

Reciprocal Linking – For most product websites there are usually many other related websites which aren’t direct competitors. You can contact the owners of these websites to ask for a reciprocal link. While a number of them will simply ignore your request, you will start to build up some useful links over time. Again, this can provide a source of targeted traffic.

E-zines – E-zines are ideal because the readership is targeted. Nevertheless, not all e-zine advertisements result in a good conversion rate so it is best to start slowly with a new e-zine to see it is worth the investment. If you do get good conversions then you can ramp up the amount of advertising with that particular e-zine.

Newsletters - As well as using other web owners e-zines, you should consider starting your own newsletter. In this way, you can build up your own list of targeted people and when the size of the list grows you can start selling your own advertising as well.

E-books – People like to receive things for free. You can give away e-books which contain useful information and are valued (and read). The trick is to include links back to your site. If the information is really useful, the books tend to be passed on from one person to another creating a viral effect.

Joint ventures – Successful internet marketers are always on the look-out for new opportunities. If you have a good product which converts well, don’t be shy in contacting them to offer a joint venture. You only need a few well-connected partners to see a large expansion in your traffic.

PPC – Pay per click will cost you money, but it is the quickest way to get targeted traffic. If you write your ads well and select your keywords carefully making sure to include negative keywords, such as ‘free’, you can end up with a positive return on investment. Of course, if you choose poorly you can burn through a lot of cash quickly.

By applying a number of these techniques you can increase your level of targeted traffic which, in turn, can increase the profitability of your website.

Don’t waste a golden opportunity you may have by not taking full advantage of the PLR products that may be collecting digital dust on your hard drive. If you have obtained PLR rights to an ebook filled with affiliate links, and have not changed the links to reflect your affiliate information, then you are giving away a potential steady stream of additional income.

Many people are aware that it is permissible to use their own name as the author of works derived from PLR products, so they go ahead and list their name as the author of the work. Unfortunately for them, that’s all they do. Some people even know that it is best to change the product in some way to make it unique. That’s an important part of marketing with PLR products, but it’s not enough. If you have private label rights, you may change anything inside that product including affiliate links to other products and services. If your PLR license has limitations on what you may change, then it is not really a PLR license and you should avoid that product.

Inside of many PLR products are pages of content containing links to affiliate programs of all kinds. If these links are not changed to reflect your own affiliate information, you will not be able to collect any commission due if the link is clicked and a sale is made. Can you guess who will collect the commission on the sale of any products or services referred? You guessed it! The commission will go to the original creator of the PLR product. This is not to imply that there is something unethical going on here. On the contrary, the creator of the original PLR product was writing about a particular product or service. To include a link to that product or service is an act providing convenience for the reader. Someone will get credit if that link is clicked. It might as well be you, so make sure that if there are affiliate links in the PLR product that you are modifying, you remember to change those links.

You simply need to be aware that it is not enough to just slap your name on a PLR product without changing anything else. If you modify the content to make it unique and change the affiliate links to reflect your affiliate information you will get the full value potential of your PLR products.

What to Look Out For:

Copyright – you absolutely must check on this – violating someone’s copyright is not clever and can be a really expensive mistake not to mention seriously damaging your reputation. Is it really public domain? All those lawyers fees can really mount up when checking into all this but believe me, you really don’t want to end up in court over it.

Public Domain Content – If you have the money to have a lawyer look at copyright for you then fine, go ahead and get started. Where can you find this type of content? It can be difficult to find content that is free to use but here are a few links to get you started:

http://www.gutenberg.org/

http://www.wikimedia.org/

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/index.html

Master Resale Rights – If you can’t afford expensive lawyers what else can you do? One rather less pricey way is to buy Master Resale Rights to a product – this gives you the opportunity to name yourself as the author, use the content in another product, rewrite the whole thing – the possibilities are endless. Just be aware with this that you will need to look at the terms and conditions of what you are allowed to do with the product before you buy.

On a budget? – not to worry, there are still many ways you can find great content without spending a fortune or worrying about whether you can legally use it. Sites such as http://www.infogoround.com and http://www.thelostfiles.com provide guaranteed public domain or private label content for a monthly fee. You could also sign up to some of the well known internet marketer’s newsletters. Why? Well if you’re serious about internet marketing you should be checking out all the latest happenings anyway, but a lot of newsletter owners will have free ebooks, giveaways and articles to download – some of which you will be able to use as your own.

So you’ve got your content ready to go and you’ve checked your rights and permissions but there is one more thing to think about – sites such as http://www.copyscape.com can check for duplicate content on the internet and of course so can the search engines. This could mean anything from the search engines deciding they won’t rate your site as highly because the exact same content is available elsewhere to some smarty pants asking you if you really did write that incredibly good article because they’ve seen someone else claiming that they wrote it too, so you do need to be aware of this when looking to use content you haven’t personally created, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go ahead and make the most of all that wonderful information.

What Can You Do?

You could just read the information to learn from it yourself; you could read it to get ideas for businesses, more articles, content, the list is limited only by your imagination.

How about:

Ebooks

Print Books

Presentations

Membership Sites

Face to face courses

Mini courses

Teleclass content

Webcast content

Podcast content

Blog content

Content for your Autoresponder

Ezine content

Articles for your site to build AdSense income pages

Viral Reports

Tips Lists

When it comes to using all the content you have gathered, you need to look through it all and decide what you want to produce. If you plan to use content from more than one source, such as 2 or 3 articles by different authors to be combined into a report, you will need to go through and change the content into a similar style, check that it is all written in the same tense, make sure the formatting is the same throughout, check for spelling and grammar (for example – spelling for some words is different in the US than the UK) and look through all the articles to see if any of the points made are duplicated.

Once you’ve done this, make a list of points you want to make in your report, read the articles through again and start combining them together to fit what you want to say – cut and paste to copy sections into the right place.

Next, look at the way your draft reads now and see if it fits your style of writing, your personality and your business. Reword it to fit with this – there’s no point in producing a very formally written, stiff sounding report for a hobby site.

At this point you could just tweak it, proof read it, and then go ahead and publish it but to take it a step further and make it really unique, why not look at how you might rewrite it so that all of the content is yours – now you’ve got the basic idea down and laid out, it shouldn’t take you long to reword things, add in some of your own ideas and keywords that fit your site, and maybe a few quotes and suddenly you’re looking at something that no-one else has got, that the search engines will love and that no-one can claim you copied.

Time to start creating!

Basic resell rights only give you the right to sell the product. You cannot claim the product is your own and you do not have permission to offer the resell rights to anyone else. Basic resell rights are usually the cheapest, so it may be easier to make a profit. Check the terms for how much you can charge for the product or if it can be given away, perhaps as a bonus with something else. There may also be conditions for distributing the product from membership and auction sites. If you are buying rights to software make sure you know the product well enough to deal with any troubleshooting enquiries. Some software rights sellers are prepared to deal with enquiries themselves. The product may also come with a web sales page that you can use, but check for any restrictions.

Master resell rights often include a web page with the product. They give you the right to sell the product and you can also pass on this right to your customers. However that is as far as it goes. Your customers cannot give the resell rights for the product to their customers. The best master resell rights packages will include a zip file containing everything you need to put on your download page.

There are two types of resell rights that may be referred to as private label rights. One type is where you are given the resell rights for a finished product and you are also allowed to put your name on the product as the author. This type of product is a ready-to-sell information or software product. You cannot change it other than put your name on it.

The second type of private label rights is also known as source code rights. The product is not a finished ready-to-sell item. Instead it will be the raw source material that you can use to produce a finished item. Programs will be in the source code format; information products will be in a word processor format, like MS Word.

You can change the product in any way you want. You can add your name as author, add more content, omit parts or split it into several products. You may also be able to sell resell rights and even master resell rights. Terms and conditions should be posted, so check them carefully. Most private label rights packages also come with a web page and graphics that you can use for selling.

If you have found a resell rights product that you think you can sell you need to do some basic market research before purchasing. How many people are searching for this type of product? How many competing products are there? Have you seen the product available elsewhere?

If you are going to sell on the internet you need to have access to the following skills. You must be able to edit web pages, create payment links and upload the product and web pages to a server. If you are buying private label rights you must also be able to edit the product. This is especially important if you are buying rights for software.

There are many ways you can sell products on the internet. You can usually set up your own website or add the sales page to your existing site. You could invest in pay per click ads or ezine ads. You could write articles. If you have private label rights to a book you can use some of the content to produce articles or even a free report for viral marketing.

Resell rights offer the advantage of not having to produce your own material. However, you need to be sure the product is good quality and that you have a good marketing plan.

Not only can members of private label rights services use the articles and ebooks, but also they can publish the material under their own name. This gives them added authority in the eyes of their site’s visitors and increases the likelihood of a visitor making a purchase, or at least returning to their site.

But, one thing you should consider about publishing any private label rights article on your site is its potential to be considered as “duplicate content.” If you are publishing an article that can be found on another site, your article can be considered duplicate content. While translations of articles and short quotes are not considered duplicate content, major portions of, or the entire content of articles can be flagged as duplicate content.

Understand that search engines want to present a full spectrum of relevant information to their search users. If a number of items on the search results page contain essentially the same content, the search engine user will not be pleased with the results of their search. Such a user may well decide that the search results were below their expectations and decide to use other search engines in the future.

Google is one search engine that considers duplicate content negatively. Google penalizes duplicate content by trying to index only one version of an article. If Google believes you are trying to manipulate the search algorithm by using duplicate content they may also make downward ranking adjustments to your site.

If you are using private label content, you can find out how many other sites are using that same content by selecting a sentence from an article, putting quotes around it, and entering that sentence into a search engine. Often you’ll find 10, 50, or 100 other sites with the same article.

I used the first sentence of a private label rights article in a Google search and found only 5 results. But, the duplicate content message was displayed: “In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the 5 already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.” When I clicked to see all the items, there were 53 items, more than 10 times as many as originally indicated.

I did the same search on MSM’s Live Search and found 31 items.

Try this with a couple of private label content articles you have published on your site. Do your results indicate that your private label content articles may be flagged as duplicate content and thus not found by the average search engine user?

If so, how can you safely utilize private label rights content on your site?

First, you should add a new first paragraph to the article. This paragraph can relate the information that follows to the rest of your site and provide a smooth introduction to the new material.

Second, you should rewrite substantial portions of the first two or three paragraphs. Just state the concepts of those paragraphs in your own words. I like to read a few sentences in a paragraph and then reword them in my own style. Then I delete the original sentences and continue with the next sentences.

This process creates at least three or four paragraphs totally in your own words that are very unlikely to be duplicated elsewhere.

Just how may paragraphs you rewrite is up to you. The more your rewrite the better off you will be. And, the more you change, the more original the article will appear to both the search engines and your site’s visitors.

Third, write a new closing paragraph. Make this a summary of the article. You may also include a lead-in to another page on your site with a link to that page.

Private label rights articles can be very helpful. They can provide research that would take you many hours to perform. All you have to do to effectively use the results of that research is to state the ideas in your own words and thus, avoid the duplicate content penalty.

What is Targeted traffic? It is simply visitors to your website that are interested in what your website is about. For example, people interested in buying jewellery will find jewellery websites interesting.

How do I get targeted traffic I hear you ask? The following are tried and tested methods:

Forums: Subscribe to forums that discuss your topic. Answer questions and join in the debates there. Become an expert in the field. Then with each article reply you write have a discreet link to your website in the signature file. What can be placed in your signature is often determined by the forum moderators. Do not spam the forum or you will be stopped from posting. This is one of the most productive ways of getting free traffic as those who click your link have already read and liked your style.

Linking from/to other websites: Contact website owners that have similar but not competitive websites to yours, ask them for a reciprocal link from their website to yours. Be sure to select your link partner to match closely your customer profile. Software programs such as Arelis are very helpful in this process.

E-Zines: Contact e-zine owners that have your target readership and buy advertisements from them. Be sure to have a test run to see that the return on investment is sufficient to cover the costs involved. If you are buying an extended run of advertisements haggle with the e-zine owner over price. You may save a considerable amount.

Newsletters: When people visit your website offer them something of value for free if they sign up to your newsletter (like an e-Book). Your newsletter should be written tightly geared towards your topic. It should be published regularly at weekly intervals.

E-Books: Often used, these are usually free informational books for your clients and for others to give away free if they leave your links in the book itself. You can place links back to your website in the books you sell or give to your clients.

Joint Ventures: Contact online marketers looking for new products to sell. They often have large mailing lists with eager to buy customers. Normally they are willing to email their list for a cut of the sale price. This works particularly well with informational products. It has several advantages. It can give a very sizeable boost to both your sales and mailing list within a very short period.

Buy Traffic: This is probably the cheapest in terms of time and most expensive money wise. It gives a traffic boost normally within 30 days. What are you buying? You are buying traffic from expired domain names which the company selling the traffic has bought. They are domain names still registered on the search engines which get a considerable amount of traffic. The previous domain name owners have either lost interest in the name or simply forgot to renew the registration. This means that the traffic from the expired domain name is simply redirected to your website. This is usually high quality traffic as only websites with traffic such as you want is redirected to you. As always, a test run to see if this traffic is suitable should be undertaken.

When you combine these techniques and apply them consistently over time you will find a rich source of targeted traffic coming to your website. This, combined with quality products will ensure the success of your online business.

1. Writing articles and submitting them to article directories. Almost all article directories provide a form field to include you copyright notice and the resource box. You should use the resource box not just to talk about your self but also to entice readers looking for more information. The resource box for your articles should be used to offer a freebie e-book or a report or even an attention-grabbing headline to attract the readers to click the link and visit your web site.

You can also end the article with a question and link to your web site to find the answer. Since web masters looking for free content on their sites also use the articles you publish in article directories, it creates a viral affect with your site getting traffic from varied sources. You also gain credibility as an expert with articles. Your article displays your knowledge and shows readers how much you know, about a specific topic.

2. Creating and distributing a free report on a specific subject also helps to get free traffic without putting in much effort. You should include a link to your site or link to a squeeze page to capture readers name and email. Having a link to a squeeze page automatically builds your own list of readers who can be contacted later with affiliate programs in the related subject. You should send your paid traffic to download this free report and allow them to redistribute the report. Giving the report for free attracts readers, and by allowing them to distribute freely ensures that your web site gets free traffic, long after the report was distributed.

3. You should regularly post on forums related to your site. This is perhaps the easiest and quickest way to get free traffic. You should use these forums to make useful and interesting posts, and include a signature file that allows readers to click through to your site. If you are not an expert in any niche and are unable to have a discussion around a topic, you can always post questions. Asking for help will get your site noticed and get you some good incoming links.

4. Another option to explore for free traffic is to find link partners and exchange links. This will not only get you direct click-through traffic from other sites, but it will also get you search engine traffic once those sites are indexed and your site is given credit for the inbound links.

5. If you maintain a blog on your site, submitting your blog feed URL to various RSS sites also helps getting exposure to your site very soon. You should consider submitting feeds or sites to blog directories with a high PR to make sure you are getting quality incoming links. You should also not ignore submitting to sites with low PR in the later stages. If these web sites “make it big” you do not want to be left out. You should not submit to millions of web sites or directories using some software. Trying to submit your site to millions of other web sites may just work against your site.

6. You should look at submitting your web site to the social book marking sites like Squidoo, del.icio.us etc. This helps in getting good exposure to your web site.

Whatever the way you choose to get the visitors to your site, you need to be careful to do it naturally and never stop your hard work on your web site. After all Patience really pays!!!

The problem for many new online marketers is how to create all the quality content that search engines demand and visitors require. Coming up with even ten pages of content can seem daunting, let alone 100’s of pages.

If you have the money, you can outsource this task to others. A quick search for outsourcing sites will show people are offering several hundred dollars for only 20 or 25 articles. This method of getting quality content will burn up the dollars in a hurry.

For those not so blessed with money to burn, the alternative is to create the content yourself. But trying to find the time and ideas for writing all that content makes many marketers throw their hands up in defeat.

This is why many marketers turn to private label rights content. It seems so easy. Join a membership site offering private label content, find an article about your niche and slap it on your site. . .instant content.

The problem comes with the word quality. You want your website to offer unique information that will keep both the search engines and most of all, your visitors coming back. If you have the same content on your site that hundreds of other sites do, you are not offering anything new to keep a reader interested. As is usually the case in life, the answer lies in the middle.

Infogoround is a membership site offering private label articles and products. You pay a monthly fee and in exchange have access to a searchable database of articles. You also receive niche products every month.

Everything they offer comes with private label rights meaning you can put your name on it. The key to best using this site though is that you can also change any content to suit your needs and make it original.

When it comes time to write an article for your ezine or to create another content page for your website, just visit Infogoround. Go to their search page and type in a keyword that describes what you want to write about. Up pops articles concerning your subject.

Do not use the articles. Instead, take the time to read through the ones that seem to best focus on the content you want to create. Get ideas from these articles. Use them to create an outline of the article you want for your ezine or website. If you have Microsoft Word, copy the article to it and use the Autosummarize option under the Tools Menu to pull out the main points of the article. Now instead of having to start your article from scratch, you have good quality content to get the creative juices flowing.

If there are parts of the article you want to use as is, go ahead. Just rewrite the paragraphs before and after to keep things unique. Use a thesaurus to find synonyms for words and change the article that way. Add an introduction at the beginning using your own personal perspective. Create a summary for the end of the article recapping the highlights. Make sure you come up with an original keyword rich headline.

There are hundreds of different ways to say the same thing using the English language. Taking advantage of this and adding your own experience can turn a private label article into creative quality content. This gives you the advantage of appearing knowledgeable to your visitors and keeping search engines coming back for more.

Wait a minute you say. Was this not supposed to be about getting free private label rights content? Paying a membership fee every month is not an example of no cost.

This is where Infogoround is different then most membership sites. Every month you pay $24.95 to receive access to great private label rights articles and products. But every month you also have the opportunity to earn $24.95 paid back to you by writing just one article.

When you are ready to write an article for your ezine or website, just log into Infogoround and go to the publishing center. Create your article using the private label content you have already checked out in their database. Using the suggestions above, create your article.

Infogoround offers numerous tools to help you check your article for grammar and common errors. Once you have the article written and checked, hit submit.

Provided your article meets the basic requirements that every writer must follow, within two days Infogoround will have your article scanned and published into the database. Once it is published at Infogoround, paste it into your ezine or website.

Not only do you now have good content that you created, but you will also be paid $24.95 for writing just this one article. You are then free to take advantage of all the other private label content and products available at Infogoround at no charge for the rest of the month.

Most members at Infogoround that use your article for content on their site will use some of the above techniques to make the article theirs. This will keep your content yours. For those that do just copy and paste, this one article may lose some of its unique value.

But by using Infogoround private label content and the above strategy, you can create as many articles per month as you want. Even if you only write four other articles per month, your websites uniqueness rating to visitors and search engines alike would be at 80%. This 80% rating will get you much further in the Internet Marketing game then posting 20 replica content pages.

The thing about running your own business at home is that you can never have too much traffic. You should always be looking to increase your traffic volume so that you can increase your income. Typically you want to find a few solid marketing techniques and stick to them as opposed to using several different techniques. But you may have to try out several before you find the most effective method for you.

One technique to raising your traffic volume with Internet marketing is submitting a site map to search engines. What this will do is give your site a better chance of being examined by the search engines. With more visits to your site from the search engines spiders, your sites will gradually climb higher on the search engines thus increasing your traffic.

Most people are aware of affiliate programs, but few are familiar with how they can benefit the site they already have. If you set up your own affiliate program for people to sell your product or service, you will have a business within a business. Not only will you have other people selling for you, your traffic will increase as well because of two separate businesses.

Perhaps the easiest method of increasing your traffic volume is posting in forums. There are literally hundreds of thousands of forums to choose from. The key is to post in forums with a lot of people that are all interested in the niche you are involved in. After spitting out some fresh and enticing information, you can reel people in to your website immediately.

The last method is one of the best on the Internet right now: article marketing. Article marketing can do a number of things for your site. First, it allows you to write fresh and enticing content that readers will be astonished by. Second, you can promote or write about whatever people are looking for here. Lastly you can place a bio box with your URL in it to direct customers to your site after submitting the articles to article directories.

Traffic is essential to having success with Internet marketing. It can be difficult having your own business at home, but using a few of these marketing techniques can make life much easier for you.

Traffic exchanges work as follows: you surf for credits, usually having to spend 20 seconds at each site, and the exchange company will post your ad for others to see. Your credits will normally come on a 3:1 or 4:1 basis, meaning that you need to surf four sites for every one that they will show. Many exchanges will also offer bonuses for referring friends, often several layers deep and those bonuses can add up quickly.

Most traffic exchanges have categories available where you can post your ad. This is a very nice feature as you will get targeted prospects that might be interested in your product or service.

While many of the traffic exchanges can produce great results, often times many people do not use them correctly and fail miserably. Here are some tips to help you get the most out of your traffic exchange experience.

The first thing you need to do is offer something for free. It doesn’t matter if it’s an ebook, a video or a sound clip. People are on the exchange because they have to be there, not because they want to be there. They are seeing pitch after pitch every 20 seconds and quickly put their credit card away. So, be different and be nice and send them a free gift for visiting your website.

The next thing you must do if you want to be successful is to collect your prospect’s email address. However, leave the selling for a later time. Your point of being on the exchange should be one thing and one thing only: getting subscribers.

Many people are using traffic exchanges to promote multi level marketing and affiliate programs. This can be a great way to recruit, but keep in mind that many programs will saturate quickly on the exchange. Always ditch the corporate opt in form and make your own. There are many products that will make creating your own opt in form a breeze.

Try to find a traffic exchange that allows you to run multiple ads so you can split test. Take advantage of this. Your responses will improve significantly.

In conclusion, if you want to make money online, then traffic exchanges are welcome additions to your online arsenal.