Archive for March, 2010

no spam!
Image via Wikipedia

I get people asking me how to get more traffic to their web site. My question to them is usually what kind of traffic do you want coming to your site. It’s easy to get a ton of traffic but what is traffic if it doesn’t convert in income.

I tease them a bit with traffic exchanges, and maybe a few other crappy methods for earning money. Then I smile at them before I say some things like, ‘really though’. That’s when I tell them about article marketing.

Article Marketing For Target Traffic

I have proven to myself, years ago, that article marketing works as long as you write and link to the same thing. I have seen too many article writers that write about one topic and then link to something entirely different claiming they are an expert. Why would I want to link to something non-related to the topic I wrote about? Doesn’t seem very professional to me.

It does take time to build a really effective network of articles that will earn you a great income but doing it just one article at a time you will get there. Just don’t stray from the path of linking to relevant content in each of your articles.

Using The Top Article Directories To Send You Traffic

1. Good Content

Just think. If you were to write an article that focuses on one aspect of what ever you are marketing. Doing a good job as well, people don’t like reading crap so they mostly would click away from your article if it is.

2. Stay on Topic

The biggest problem I see in articles how the author jumps from topic to topic. It seems like they feel that if one topic doesn’t get their interest maybe one of the others will. Not smart thinking.

If their reader arrives from a search engine based on a phrase they typed in only to find that it wasn’t the main topic they may just leave.

On the other hand if you had written an article for each of your topics then that visitor would have landed on your one topic page and you stand a much better chance to have them follow your link to your money page.

So pick your topic and stay on that topic.

3. Re-Write Your Articles For Other Article Directories

I see people publish the same article over and over to all kinds of places. They use they same exact anchor text for each article as well. Not good planning and shows a person to be somewhat lazy too.

My strategy is to get as much attention from Google as I can, good attention that is. Publishing an article 30 times with the exact same text and link text looks like you’re spamming and you won’t get as much link juiced as you would if you were to make each article somewhat unique.

Being unique also applies to your link text, don’t use the same text, vary the text.

I usually go for a minimum of 30% for a rewrite and move paragraphs around if the article is structured in a way so that you can do that. If you are using points it’s each. If you are using step by step it can be a little tougher to move them around so be creative with your words.

NOTE: Write like a human and don’t grab words that most people would not use in conversation. It seems fake after too many weird words.

4. A Good Article Marketing Strategy

So you are going to rewrite your articles now and vary the link text or anchor text so that the search engines see your article as unique. Great start.

Now if you pick a topic and write about that topic for a month before moving on to the next topic or phrase.

5. No Brownie Points For Duplicate Content

Make sure you have pages to link to so you are not always linking to your main page. Get links to those internal pages but DO NOT link to the same article on your site. That’s so unprofessional. When I read a good article and follow the link only to find it’s linking to the same article on their site I just leave.

You won’t get nearly as much positive attention from the search engines and you will lose readers one after the other. If you have any subscribers you will most likely see them drop your site. Don’t go the duplicate content route to save time. It just costs you money.

In Conclusion: Article marketing is one of the most powerful marketing strategies on the Internet. Start writing today. It takes just one article at a time and your business will start getting that target traffic that helps us make a living on the Internet.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Yard Sale Northern California May 2005. This i...
Image via Wikipedia

I work from home as you will know if you follow my blog posts. I love working at home and wouldn’t want to ever change that now. I have far more flexibility with my time now, although I had to work hard when I started my online business.

I was a web site designer and teacher before starting my work from home business so I kind of stuck with that for a while after I started working from my home office. I didn’t really want to continue as a web designer though, it was just a way to make money while I was studying other methods for earning an income online.

Work From Home Starter Money Tip: I also made some great business starter money by selling things that we don’t use any more. We had a few yard sales in the past but that never earned us much, however when I started buying things at yard sales and then sold them on eBay I made a whole lot more money.

I thought that was a very useful tips for this time of year as it’s spring and people are starting their yard sales. You can make a lot of money  and it can be a lot of fun if you, like us, love yard sales.

Small Business Opportunities Magazine

Not sure what to do for your work at home opportunity, not a problem, just go to where you get your magazines and books. There you should find a section that will have small business opportunities. Buy one or two of those magazines and then find a nice quiet place to scan through them.

Magazines like that have great info for those wanting to work from home. Don’t skip the ads as they can be a wealth of info. Just think about why they place their ads in those magazines. Do you think they would continue to place ads if they didn’t get results?

Investing in a couple of subscriptions for work from home opportunities is a great move. A couple of my niches are gardening and fishing so I make sure I have a few subscriptions for magazines that will give me hints about what to write about on my blogs. Checkout the Home Business Magazine at Amazon.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Image representing Facebook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase

Since email and chat, the Internet is still continuing to provide great ways for people to interact with each other. After dating websites came the social networking websites, such as MySpace and Friendster. Now, one of the fastest growing and very popular websites today is Facebook.

Fundamentally , Facebook is similar to your average social networking web site. it has more in-built features which will enable folk to have interaction with one another far more effectively and more fun than any other social networking sites today. In fact, Facebook is now the speediest growing social networking web sites today with millions of customers from all around the world logging out and in every day and millions more continue to subscribe for a new account.

Though Facebook is great as a social networking internet site, you’ll see this particular site has a great potential for online marketers or advertisers. In reality, Facebook is now being used by lots of possible entrepreneurs to market their brands or their goods and services.

If you are an advertiser, you know that Facebook is reasonably a tough market to pass on. With so many folks in one place at the same time, you’ll see this internet site is unquestionably a gold mine.

First of all, Facebook already has a huge traffic. It has millions of people logging in and out each day. The great thing about Facebook is that you will be able to find all sorts of people in groups. Different types of people in different age groups with different interests will create their own group inside Facebook. This will make it easier for you to find your target niche.

Also, Facebook will be able to provide you with the necessary tools to promote whatever it is you are selling. You can try out posting on virtual walls, and you can also use the notes and news feeds feature in the website.

You may syndicate your blog site using RSS. This way, you’ll be able to bring your blog to your network in Facebook. They are going to be able to read your blogs within the web site. They do not essentially have to go to another internet site to read your blog. By just visiting your personal page, you’ll see that they’ll be able to simply read your blogs.

To attract people to visit your profile page in Facebook, try to complete your profile and try customizing it. You can do this by posting pictures and videos as well as edit your profile using profile editors that is readily available in Facebook.

These are the benefits of Facebook. By marketing on Facebook, you may have already got the tools as well as the traffic you need to efficiently promote your goods.

All you need to do is use these tools and know where to market in Facebook in order for you to attract people to visit your profile and your business website. Remember these tips, and you can be sure that you will be able to increase your sales and your profit.

With Facebook, marketing on the web is less complicated, quicker, and more fun than previously. It’ll supply you with a bigger traffic and it’ll also offer you a less complicated way to reach out to folks.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Online Article Marketing Strategy

Article Marketing Secrets

Recently I’ve come across a very talented internet marketer by the name of David Wood. ‘Oh to touch the hem of his garment’ – well maybe not quite, but when it comes to mlm David has certainly got it nailed down to an art and yes I believe that sponsoring in MLM is indeed an art. As many of us have done David spent a lot of time developing his business offline and found it very challenging. We should remember that offline mlm marketing does work for sure even though there are some ‘gurus’ who say offline marketing is dead.

After watching his mlm income fall away to pretty much zero over the course of a year and a half David decided enough was enough and he started researching on the internet for ways he could build his business there. David Wood started building his mlm online, from a broke perspective, his situation was so bad that he often was concerned if he would actually be able to eat! 5 months on it’s a very different story, he gets nearly 100 leads every day for free through his website and has earned commissions in excess of £100K and has now moved to a new home in Costa Rica with a beach outside his front door. That really is an amazing achievement Oh yeah, he didn’t spend a dime on marketing. ‘How is that possible?’ you ask.

The online article and content marketing strategy is the secret weapon that David Wood uses to generate mass traffic and we know that to get a constant influx of leads we need a lot of consistent traffic. With these article and content marketing online strategies you are able to dominate the front page of search engines. I have watched David’s site rise to an Alexa ranking of 28,500 in the last 2 months, a truly incredible achievement for any website let alone one that is only six months old.

If you are going to write good articles then your content must be engaging. Your article should tempt the reader to click on you resource link and you must provide some good value content so that they will learn something new, do this right and you will generate some good traffic. Also you will be building backlinks to your webpage which is essential to help you rank better in the search engines organic results. It is very important to be regular in this strategy. Once you have your article post it to some of the popular directories so that your content gets seen, it is also worthwhile shooting a video to advertise your article so that you increase exposure. Not many people know about another strategy that you can implement to further increase your exposure ten fold. There is more about this in the resource box.

There is no doubt about it that if you have a limited budget for marketing then content marketing is the way to go, but be warned it’s no free lunch! For sure you will need to invest your time into this strategy but the results will warrant the effort, investigate the results David Wood gets and you will discover for yourself. Make sure my friend that your content is unique and is YOURS and not ripped off from someone else. By being unique and putting your own personality into things you will attract the right people to you and over time they will become your prospects and hopefully business associates. You will have far more success. Oh and David Wood has achieved these amazing results for not just one website but two!

For in depth teaching about this online article marketing strategy, claim now your free admission to this guidance webinar where you will become skilled at the exact article marketing secret that can settle you on Google Page One in a very short space of time.

 

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

WordPress
Image via Wikipedia

What is the goal of most bloggers these days? For me and other bloggers I know it’s all about getting more target traffic. Why? Because we need readers to earn money with our blogs.

Success with blogging is all about the marketing you do right from the get-go. Get it right and you will see success but don’t bother to research your niche and you may just be spinning your wheels like I did for a couple of year.

Ignore my warning and you will have to just find our for yourself, but you are going to find that you can not just create a blog, make a post or two and then expect to make money.

To Start Blogging You Need A Blog

Once you have a blog setup, which is so easy these days, you need to populate your blog with great content that’s relevant to your niche.

Posting regularly is what works best. You won’t be likely to find success if you just put up a bunch of articles and leave it at that. I often check the date on a blog to see how often it’s updated. If it’s not updated at least once a week I don’t bother with it. A blog that’s not updated gets old fast.

You can go with a free service for blogging but I have had bad experiences with free blog platforms. They can shut you down instantly if someone complains about your blog, even if it’s not true. Then you have to prove they are wrong.

I use Wordpress myself and also use blog themes that make my blogs look somewhat unique and then I even change the header and footer images along with the colours so that it’s all mine.

Do try to get a theme that is going to match the market what you’re promoting. I have a couple of travel blogs and took a bit of time and used Google to find a travel blog theme for Wordpress that looks great. I just popped a new header image in for both blogs and was good to go.

Get Links To Your Blog

Once you have your blog thought out and you are adding great relevant content it’s then time to start getting backlinks to your blog pages.

Don’t Only Link To Your Main Page

A big mistake I made when I started getting backlinks to my sites was linking to the main page all the time. Instead, I should have been linking to relevant pages in my site.

I use Bloglines as my RSS feed reader to keep up with related blogs.

I find blogs that are in my niches and then comment on blog posts that match my content. Once I have a blog that matches and then an article I like I will comment but not before finding a good match to link to on my related blog.

If I can’t find an article that fits I will take the time to write one and then link to it from the comment I am leaving. Don’t be in a hurry and do it right, it’s worth your time.

1. When you are going for links to your site do your best to get one-way links, they are more powerful than reciprocal links.

2. When commenting leave value-added comments and try to be first to comment. That is why having a RSS feed reader like Bloglines comes in so handy. You can see new blog posts immediately.

3. Leave your real name instead of a keyword where your name goes. I personally delete all comments now where keywords are used as their name. It looks like the comment was left as a comment when you use your name compared to seeing a keyworded phrase instead.

4. Do your best to comment on blogs that have good page ranks. It’s always better for your blog when you are commenting or linking from authority sites.

5. Hire a company to do a linking campaign for you. They are usually quite affordable and if you focus on one blog at a time you can really shoot your site up in the rankings.

Note: When you hire anyone to do a back linking campaign be sure to check them out first. There are a lot of scammers out there. Be sure you have some type of guarantee you can work with.

I used a place once that only offered 50% refund guarantee. I asked them about it and he just explained that they did this manually so labour was involved. I still gave them a try as it was less than $50 for 80 backlinks.

I was pleased with their service but we had a heck of a time with emails. I told them in the end that I was pleased with their work and they did a great job but I wouldn’t use them again because of the email problems. I would still be using them if not for that problem.

So, in conclusion, blogging is easy, fun and quite rewarding if you start right and keep focused.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Searching For That Work From Home Job

American cultural icons, apple pie, baseball, ...
Image via Wikipedia

Frustration moves over your crumpled brow as you check your email account for job responses. There’s no doubt that finding a decent job/career in this new millennium can be quite the challenge. Keep in mind that six billion others inhabit this planet.

A good 300 million in the USA alone. That’s a pretty hefty load of competition. Many of us search high and low for new positions, but struggle with the bleak results. It’s tough to grasp the attention of potential employers now days. Nevertheless we have to continue the jobs search and hope for the best. Finding that ideal career is all about perseverance and focus on the goal.

If you thought it was difficult to find job openings back in the day, welcome to the age of technology. Things are not as restricted anymore. There may be oodles of competition to vie with, but there are also more resources at-hand.

Probably your most imperative one is the Internet. If you’re not taking full advantage of this jobs search Mecca, then you’re missing out on plenty. Not that I’m ruling out the old-school newspaper. It’s still a decent source when it comes to job hunting. However, there is so much more to be found in cyberspace. Advanced search engines are easy to come by on the web.

My personal favorite is Craigslist.com. I don’t care where you are in the USA, you can find job openings and career possibilities in your area. Not to mention this is a very simple website to navigate. Click on your preferred city and then on your area of interest, whether it be engineering or writing. This website has aided me in past jobs searches and I still make use of it regularly. Then there are numerous others such as Monster, Careerbuilder, and Dice.com.

Be sure the resume and cover letter are up to par. A jobs search is not so beneficial if your resume looks like garbage. No respectable company will respond when there are plenty of other applicants to choose from. Have it professionally done if you’re not sure how to write/structure it. I guarantee it will make your jobs search more successful. It’s essential to fully address your skill set in a well articulated, yet concise format. Don’t stop your jobs search until you get that response you’re after.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Learn The Truth About Affilorama

Niche Affiliate Marketing System (NAMS) Workshop 3
Image by rogercarr via Flickr

Mark Ling’s Affilorama is a membership site for teaching you how to build an income as an affiliate. Being a ultra affiliate marketer himself, Mark’s advice is worth listening to.

Joining costs nothing, and there is lots of great info available even if you won’t upgrade your membership to on the list of advanced levels. At least, you should use the website and see what is available.

But, almost all of the nicer information will be off limits for the normal folks. Enrolling for a advanced membership offers you access to the most effective and even hottest elements such as video lessons or PDF document ebooks.

The prolonged doubt for many people is usually “Is the advanced Membership in Affilorama a good investment? ” That, I suppose, is dependent upon the needs you have.

If you’re new to the affiliate marketing, the content obtainable coupled with the forums comprises everything you are going to need to get your business interest ready to go. At minimum it will, it’s going to place you on the quick path to producing a few gross sales. Not a single thing will motivate you to generate further sales that to make some sales initially.

An Affilorama membership will also aid you in case you have been having difficulties to make affiliate gross sales. I can share a small secret with you. Almost every thing you read about creating wealth is either fake or overcomplicated.

But a very powerful item you’re going to get is the assistance of the fellow people by using the forums. Affiliates there are not out to sell you anything, only to help. Some have been helped by themselves and are giving back. Everyone adopts and expands together.

For anyone who is already earning living on online income, possibly Affilorama isn’t for you. Unless you wish to join the boards and provide some back yourself.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Magazine Article
Image by Clover_1 via Flickr

Are you searching for total niche domination?

I work from home and have found that article marketing addresses some key marketing strategies. This article will give you a few reasons why you need to market with articles now!

Are you itching to dominate your competitors?Article Marketing can help you with that.

If you are in online marketing for the long haul you will need to continually apply innovative marketing strategies and tactics which can give you that edge you need to succeed. It starts with showing your prospects and clients see you as the expert in your niche.

Utilize the power of traffic coming from article directories and the backlink juice that it gives to your sites. Of course, it would be great to know how to do so that you get the best bang for your invested time and money.

Give your self the required time for article marketing to work. My first real article marketing campaign only took a couple of weeks to start showing results and once it started it kept gaining momentum that surprised me.

These are some of the best reasons for it:

1. Article Marketing Can Be Done Free

Don’t have a big budget, then write and publish your own articles. Just think about it. One article a day and you have 365 articles in a year. If you rewrite each article you can publish across multiple article directories and easily double or triple the amount of articles.

All that for time spent.

2. Find Writers In Counties With Strong English

Personally I have found writers that have good English skills, enough to write great articles. I get people to write articles for niches I don’t have a lot of knowledge in yet. I can get a good article for about $5.00 each, so I can’t go wrong.

3. Others Will Publish Your Articles If They Are Good

Take the time to produce quality content in your articles and others will want them for their own sites, making them viral because they  have to leave your links in the article when they get them from article directories.

Note: People will outright steal your work so keep an eye on your content as you may find it in a lot of places without your links and that’s stealing.

4. Search Engine Optimize Your Articles

An article is only as good as your keywords when it comes to finding your content on Google, so make sure you take the time to know your keywords and use them in the right density, about 1-3%.

Use your keywords in your title and try to use it at the start of the title.

Use your keywords again in the first sentence, every other paragraph and in the last sentence.

Don’t try to use too many keyword phrases, maybe three at the most. I usually don’t go past two keyword phrases in my articles so that it doesn’t look spammy to my readers and the search engines.

5. Make Money With Your Article Marketing

There isn’t much sense writing articles that don’t focus on making you money. Unless you are not even trying to make money, then it’s cool.

Find things in your niche to promote and build pages that you can point to from your articles so that each and every article has the potential to earn you money.

I didn’t do this and now I am going back through hundreds of articles and adding links to affiliate sites. Those are the articles I have on my own blogs and sites. For the articles I have published on article directories I have them pointing to landing pages I created. From the landing page I give readers the link to my affiliate program so as not to violate terms of service for article directories.

I publish to article directories but one thing that is working really well, but costs a little which is worth every penny, is to use My Article Network to publish my articles across about 10,000 other blogs.

Note: I have told a few friends and associates how I started getting tons of backlinks to my blogs. First write a few articles in your niches, being sure you focus on paying keywords. I started with 10 articles over 4 niches.

Then, after they were already done I purchased a membership at My Article Network and published those articles immediately. Doing it this way I have a full month before I had to cancel my membership if I felt the need.

When I cancelled my membership my articles were not deleted but they stopped being published. That was cool I already had my articles published over hundreds of blogs and already saw my ranking going up in just a month. I did cancel my membership and watched them over the next two months.

It worked great and I started my membership again, after writing a bunch more articles. I again published them immediately and gave them the month to spread out across those blogs.

My other articles became actively promoted across the blogs again so they started getting even more attention and I was making money by this point, because of my keyword focus.

No longer a need to cancel my membership.

I found out later that if you renew within 90 days you will not lose the articles you have in your account. Although the articles already published remain published and keep working for you.

Of course My Article Network offers a money back guarantee if you are not satisfied. I didn’t even think about asking for a refund. Even my wife was impressed and that’s not easy. So get over to My Article Network and give it a try.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Discover How Twitter Is Fighting The Recession

Image representing Twitter as depicted in Crun...
Image via CrunchBase

There are not many businesses, (or indeed individuals), currently trading that do not have some sort of presence on Twitter. It is not hard to understand why; Twitter is fast becoming the social networking platform of choice for all of us.

If, by chance, you aren’t familiar with Twitter, you can easily locate a quick introduction to Twitter online.

That is not to say that other platforms do not have a place; of course they do. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t add another plum to your pudding.

While other platforms offer more applications, this is their downfall. the beauty of Twitter is in its ease of use; for readers and posters alike. Other than changing a few settings once creating your account, and the occasional background change; you can do everything from your tweet entry box.

What to send a general message? Well then you just type and send. What to send a message to someone in particular, but the world to see? Well then you just type @ before the user name, type away and send. Not rocket science.

Just as easy; is developing your network of followers. With profiles easy to check and a host of ways to join in; significant numbers can be yours within days. Relevant, pithy and informative postings taken for granted of course.  It is also very helpful to have a customized Twitter background so that you stand apart from the others.

There are few businesses that would not find that Twitter is useful to them; I actually cannot think of any as I write. I can of course think of certain areas where it would be most effective; professional writers, musicians, comedians; anybody that aims to entertain or inform.

It is a great tool particularly for alerting your followers to breaking news, sudden changes in circumstances and even special deals. People like to feel wanted, and being on Twitter is showing your customers you care in many respects.

As with anything; Twitter will recede in popularity and use; but not for a good time yet. Twitter is here to stay for a while; growing stronger all the time. Good little bird.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post

Creative Writing and How to Make Money

Creative Writers Unite
Image by Barbara.Doduk via Flickr

A great way to start profiting from your creative writing is to sign up for a blogging program, create a blog, and post regular content.  A regular basis means updating you blog in a consistent manner of at least twice a week. Remember, if you do not update your article regularly, it will not get the visits or readers needed to profit.

After you have Constructed your Blog

Once you have posted an adequate amount of articles on your blog (more than 10 entries), you can focus on connecting to businesses, both online and off, that specialize in connecting professional bloggers to businesses that wish to pay for reviews of their products or services. These businesses might also want you to have their links embedded on your website or on certain blog posts.

My 4 Creative Writing Tips

In this article, I have listed my top 4 tips to implement when starting a money-making blog by crafting a profitable online creative writing business:

1. What are you Interested in Most?

Blogging doesn’t have to be a full-time gig, but once businesses begin to invest in your blog, which is now a fellow business, you must deliver. Constant readership means you need to be constantly uploading content. You must have an idea of what you are most passionate about. What magazines do you faithfully read? If you love your current career or job, what excites you most about it? Once you realize your passion, your drive, and excitement for a particular subject, you can rest your mind assured that constant content and joyous research will follow.

2. Find Keywords that Pay Big

After choosing what your desired topic(s) will be, it’s a good idea to search for high paying keywords related to the topic. There are tools such as Overtures Keyword Selector Tool, and many more. Simply perform a Google Search, and then type in profitable online keyword generator, or anything similar to that phrasing. This will produce a list of websites offering the information you want. What is the information you want? The most popular keyword searches from last month.

3. On you mark… Get set… Write!

Once you have your niche idea, and you have identified keywords, you are set to begin the wonderful creative blog writing process. One thought to make the blogging experience easier for you to adjust to is, image that it’s like your personal journal. Remain true to who you are, and be as passionate in your posts as you are for the subject itself. Incorporate your keywords throughout the content without overdoing it; conversely, try not to only add your keyword just once or twice. Also, online pinging services can assist in alerting the search engines that you have uploaded new content. Services such as Pingomatic and Pingoat are but two of many other services that helps you alert existing readers, as well as many other search engines, that you have something fresh to offer.

4. Place Ads on your Blog

After you have established some readership, and some could be a mere 5 unique visitors a day, you might consider placing some advertisements on your blog. Adsense is, by far, one of the most popular online publishing goldmines. It’s best to place adverts in areas of your blog or blog posts that will receive clicks from visitors. Choose an ad format that fits the look and feel of your blog in a dynamic way, for example, the 336X280 is a great option to utilize, because it looks like regular links, and not like ads. So remember, the more content you create, the more people will visit your blog, and the more people that visit your blog the more likely they are to click on ads. The more ads your visitors click on, the more money you make, and just think, you can do it simply with creative writing.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Post to Twitter Tweet This Post