Author Archive | Joseph

Everyone wants traffic to their website. It is not always easy to get more people to visit your site. There are ways to generate the desired traffic. It takes being creative and innovative sometimes; yet here are several ideas that will help.

1. Use Flickr. Social photo sharing drives people to your website. Add good tags to the photos so they attract the members on the site. Write a post in your blog and add the link to the Flickr site. The two sites will work in unison to draw traffic to your site.

2. Join a social bookmarking site. Share your favorite sites with other people sharing the same interests. Include your website. The social sites are like a specific search engine for many people. Add the bookmarks to your blog site to increase your internet traffic. Add interesting links to relevant products that the users are searching for. The more interesting links you have bookmarked the larger your following will become.

3. Start blogging. Join several sites where you comment on the blog posts. Add your URL with posting. Keep in mind you are commenting on your posts so remain focused on the topic since you do not want your posting to be deleted or considered as spam. You want to appear knowledgeable and someone others can trust.

4. Use forum signatures for promotion of your site with a live link. Use topics with great information and link them back to your sties. The more information you provide the readers the more they will rely on you for your new information. They will return repeatedly to read what you are posting.

5. Add widgets, themes, and extension to your site. There are many free additions that will enhance your site. Make your site interesting rather than the typical boring website. Make your site user friendly and exciting. Users want to see and experience new things, give it to them with your site.

6. Use your friends to know your business and have them help spread the word about your website. They can use their personal blogs, websites, and contacts to increase your website traffic.

7. Use industry specific sites to add links and networks with by contacting the websites. Many are willing to join the cause to help your build your website traffic.

8. Expand your exposure by adding podcasts to your site. Include audio and video that is interesting and intriguing.

9. Submit your feed to blog site directories. The feed will drive traffic from another site to your site.

Last but not least:

10. Submit articles to article directories, using the resource box to drive traffic to your site and establish strong backlinks to your site; for the Search Engines.

When you do your traffic building, it is not really about the traffic but offering what the readers want. When you reach out to them with information and products you service a valuable purpose.

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info

One easy way of automating the list building process with Twitter is by using the services of SocialOomph.com

You can send out automatic direct messages to those who begin to follow your updates. These automated messages could include a direct link to your website, blog or better yet your squeeze page where you offer each Twitter user a free incentive, such as a report, ebook, article content or guide based on your niche market.

When it comes to using Social Oomph to build your list and initiate first contact with those that follow you, be sure that the product you are offering on your squeeze page is extremely focused on your niche market and offers something of value.

You don’t want to give away a product that is already saturated online, such as outdated PLR. Try to offer something original, even if it’s a short report or mini-product, the more exclusive it is to your list, the more likely that your visitors will subscribe to your newsletter.

Just like with every other social community, your marketing campaign needs to be tweaked and offered in a slightly very different format that caters to their desire to network with other like-minded individuals.

This means that you want to make sure your automated DM message, as well as every tweet you broadcast is seemingly written for the benefit of the reader, rather than direct advertisements.

Posting entertaining and useful tweets is an important part of successfully building your online business with twitter, however you want to focus on spending your time wisely and ensuring that each tweet is productive in helping you further your brand, right? This is where twitter link bait comes into play. Rather than posting a link to a direct news story, post a summary of it on your blog and direct people to your page in order to read the message you are broadcasting.

This is a passive aggressive marketing tactic that works very well within twitter, because rather than directly trying to sell to your following base, you are simply posting about something you found interesting, useful or entertaining.

Once you have them on your blog, they’ll likely explore your website and if you’ve done your job of developing relationships with your following base and staying active within the twitter community, it will be a lot easier to convince them to subscribe to your newsletter or purchase your products.

Show people that you are interested in getting to know them, what they are interested in, what they are looking for.

Focus on giving, more than receiving and you will quickly discover, just how effective twitter can be in helping you further your brand and building your online business.

By answering questions and providing help, tips or advice on questions that people have, you can establish yourself as a credible source for information within your niche market, quickly and easily.

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info

A great many people within today’s world believe that websites are a quick ride to fame and fortune overnight. These same folks also believe they can become successful without putting in hard work. I am here to tell you; this very rarely happens and if it does it is accomplished by those with experience; in internet marketing.

Most people are also sold on the dream that SEO is the cure-all to their financial woes and they are going to become rich. Successful websites are not always successful in the beginning and sometimes beginning an internet website can prove to very difficult and time consuming.

Google Search Engine Marketing:

Google is a search engine that your internet website must be listed within. Keep in mind that Google has approximately fifty billion internet web pages, which increases daily. You have to ask yourself with those kind of figures, why should Google index your one little business website? To be frank you may not get indexed if your aren’t careful.

Your website is completed now what?

More than likely when your website is completed, it will join a huge population of other websites while sitting dormant. There are of course ways to list your business but a word of warning, this sometimes can prove complex and is very easy to make a mess of it; if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Search Engine Optimization:

When your website is up and running, you must jump into what is called Search Engine Optimization. SEO is not a one-step process. SEO is something, which must be performed often in order to retain your search engine rankings.

Your goal should be to bring customers to your website:

You must also market your site, in order for your products and services to get in front of your potential customers. Keep in mind, you must first draw these potential customers into your business website before you call sell them anything.

Long waiting periods and frustration

Some business website owners complain of a long waiting period, while they wait to appear on the Google Search engine. The truth is that more than likely you are going to wait quite a while before internet traffic will find your business within the Google Search engine. SEO is not the cure all for your marketing strategies and frankly, you would make a mistake if you solely depend on it for your marketing strategy.

Alternatives to search engine marketing

Some great alternatives are email marketing, article marketing, blogging, newsletters and AdWords and others. These are traditional methods within the internet advertising arena?s and have been found to work from not only a cost effective standpoint; but a time-efficient standpoint as well.

Is search engine marketing truly crucial for your marketing needs?

Some marketing experts will gladly inform you, that your business should not rely on Google or the other search engines for success. As a businessman you should not expect to make all your money through search engines. However the search engines should be incorporated into a well rounded marketing plan.

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info

First of all, Facebook is a social networking website that was primarily designed for use for Ivy League college students. However, because of the interactive tools that it can offer, it is now widely available for many people from different parts of the world. Whichever college or school you go to and wherever you are, you will now be able to join Facebook.

With Facebook, you will now be able to keep in touch with your friends as well as make new friends. However, the best thing about Facebook is probably its tools that you can use to market your business. Facebook is now one of the most popular websites today. With over 62 million active members from all over the world and still growing, you will see that this website is now somewhat of a large community.

You will see different people here from all walks of life.

With this figures, you will see that it will have the potential in providing you a way to market your products or services. It has tons of traffic and a lot of potential in providing your website with more targeted traffic.

You may ask why Facebook became one of the best places to market on the internet. Basically, Facebook is different from other social networking websites. Unlike other social networking websites, you will see that Facebook will be able to offer you different kinds of useful applications or tools that you can use to market your products or services. The applications on Facebook will let you market your products or services far more effectively than the available tools in most social networking websites.

By adding applications in your Facebook page, such as games, groups, and quizzes, you will be able to get people to view your Facebook page and help you market your products or services. The best thing about the application is that it is free.

Facebook is definitely a great place in the internet to market in. With the ability to drive targeted traffic to your website, you can be sure that you will be able to have lots of fun marketing your products. You have to consider the fact that Facebook is about networking. If a particular person in your friends list loved your products, they will most likely tell their friends in their Facebook friends list about the product and encourage them to purchase from you.

This is how Facebook marketing basically works. You’ll be surprised as to how many people will be quite interested in what you have to offer. You have to remember that targeted traffic is the key to internet marketing. If you are marketing your products or services in Facebook, you can be sure that you will be able to get a lot of targeted traffic in your business website.

So, the next time you plan on marketing on the internet, you might want to join Facebook. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s a lot of fun. With Facebook, you will really have great time marketing and also profit from it at the same time.

With Facebook, internet marketing is easier and a lot cheaper than ever before. Remember these things and you will be able to see how much potential Facebook will be able to provide your business with.

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info

Wouldn’t it be terrific if you could go from being Mr./Ms. Marketing Nobody to imediate “guru” status overnight? You’d enjoy instant authority in your niche and a high level of credibility with your potential customers as well as your potential JV partners. People would trust your opinion. You’d be quoted in blog posts and asked to do guest posts…

You could get interviewed. You could join lucrative joint ventures and mastermind groups. Your social media accounts would become magnets to followers and fans. Customers’ sales resistance would go down and your sales would go up, and so forth.

Becoming an ‘overnight’ authority in your niche shaves a few years off of your online marketing career path. You’re taking a quantum leap from being an unknown to being – well, KNOWN in your niche. And you receive all the benefits a known expert in your field gets, only without the years of work.

Sounds pretty good, don’t you think? Yeah, it’s cheating, but it’s not. Who ever said you have to take years and years to accomplish what can be done in a few days or weeks?

Here are 5 ways to do it:

1. Interview others. Oprah wasn’t an expert, she interviewed experts. And by doing so, she became associated with every expert she interviewed. In your case, you’ll want to go much more narrow and deep than Oprah, choosing your targeted niche carefully and then interviewing anyone and everyone in that single niche.

2. Buy named rights products and sell them. These are products sold by big name marketers that allow you to keep their name on the product when you sell it. You’re basically co-featuring with an established expert. At the bottom of the salesletter you can write something like, “From the desk of ‘your name’ and ‘guru’s name.’ Buyers will assume you have partnered with the guru in putting this product out. These types of resale rights generally aren’t cheap, but that plays in your favor as well, since it greatly limits any competition.

3. Create a product yourself, then let a big name marketer be the co-author and co-owner. This heightens your profile and generally brings in a lot of sales from that marketer’s list, as well as from affiliates who promote for that marketer.

4. Write/edit a book full of other people’s articles. Choose a topic and then find articles written by the experts on this topic. Ask their permission to place their articles in your book, giving them full credit and links back to their website. You do the editing, write the introduction, and also add notes at the beginning and end of each article if you choose. But the experts are still doing all the heavy lifting, while you get to associate your name with theirs. In fact, it looks like a collaboration between you and all these big names, with YOUR name on the front cover.

5. Do all 4, along with guest blogging and being active in social media. All of a sudden people will say that they see and hear you everywhere.

Some people take a lifetime to go from the mail room to the boardroom of a company. But this is your business, and YOU make the rules. Don’t wait years to become an expert in your niche – decide to become one today.

Every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication. There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online.

What are these three tactics?

1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buys them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannot be missed. Try to create auto responder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect.

Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.

Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word ?free? because there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them first. Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.

3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product. Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest.

Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day. Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can make 10 sales based on the average statistic.

The tactics given above does not really sound very difficult to do, if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part.

Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do. Besides, think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving?

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info

A common mistake that new online marketers make is to create a website and then think of ways to get guaranteed web traffic to it. While that is an intuitive thought, you should really first put some analysis into the traffic before you even establish your website. The reason for this is that SEO (search Engine Optimization) will be an important way for you to gain organic traffic, and if you do it the right way, you can start seeing visitors right away.

SEO is comprised of two elements: relevant keywords and backlinks or, as some people refer to them, incoming links. Before you develop your website, you will need to have an idea of the keywords that you want to target and make sure that they are included in the website’s content in order to get guaranteed web traffic. It’s generally recommended that when you first start out, you should go for the lower-search volume keyword phrases, rather than the more competitive general terms.

For example, if your business focuses on jewelry, you might want to identify a more specific keyword like “costume jewelry” or even more narrow, like “costume jewelry earings”. The keywords that you will include on your website should be the exact terms that people are looking for when they do a search online. And you can find these keywords very easily by using the Google Adwords Keyword Tool which is completely free of charge.

This tool gives you keywords that are relevant to your business and also provides information about how competitive the keywords are, how often they are searched for, and how much people are bidding on them for PPC ads. You want to locate the lower-searched terms that have less competition. Identify three to five that you can use early on in your website or blog.

In general, each keyword should be used once in some sort of important position in your site or on your blog (like the title or page header), in the first five words of any description following the title or heading), and in the last sentence of the content. In the body of your content, it should be used no more than three percent of the time. Before you start looking for backlinks, you want to have at least five articles (of about 500 words) on your blog or at least five pages of your website.

Then you can start working on obtaining backlinks. You can do this by submitting articles about your business to article directories, Squiddoo, HubPages, or article directories and linking them back to your website. Or you can comment on blogs and forums that are related to your industry, and include your link in your comments.

These are just a few ways that you can get backlinks to your site. The more quality backlinks you have, the better the search engines “like” you, the higher you will be ranked in search engine results, and the more guaranteed web traffic you will obtain.

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info

Getting traffic isn’t rocket science – it’s actually pretty easy when you know a few of the best tricks pro-bloggers are using every day to get more traffic to their blogs.

Create an not-so-secret inner circle of your best buddies.

Put together a list of your very best and most influential readers. These are the ones who regularly interact with you or post replies to your posts, share your posts with their followers, send you articles, buy your products and so forth.

Put these folks on your special inner circle list, and email them to let them know of their newly attained status. Let them know the benefits – they’ll get to see your posts before the general public and they’ll be apprised of any new offerings, updates and ideas before anyone else.

Solicit their feedback on your posts. This creates a sense of ownership for them and increases the odds they will go out of their way to share your content with their followers. Give them special benefits to thank them for their help, and offer to help them in return.

Make it brain dead easy to share your content.

If content is too difficult to share, your readers and inner circle are less likely to share it. So add the appropriate social sharing buttons for sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Write in-depth content that makes your readers look sexy-smart.

Here’s a little secret: People like to look super smart to their readers and friends. Okay, so maybe it’s not a secret. But the fact is, in-depth articles tend to get shared more because the people sharing them want their friends to think they read in-depth articles. Plus, when someone new lands on your in-depth article, they are more likely to subscribe to get even more info than if they land on a simple fluff piece.

Another secret: Posts with images, lists and videos will attract over 5 times more links than posts containing only plain text. So don’t stop at just the words – add things like images and graphs to make it share-worthy.

Cheat. Just a little.

This isn’t really cheating, but it sure feels like it. Look at your old content and find the pieces that are still relevant, whether they were written 3 months ago or a year ago. Now share them again via social media. This way you get new traffic without having to write new content – how awesome is that?

Write a mini-sales letter to promote each blog post.

Traditionally, when a blogger writes a new post she sends out the title and first paragraph to her list with an invite to click the link and read the rest. But the real meat of a blog post isn’t in that intro paragraph, which is why this method isn’t worth beans.

Instead, write a mini sales letter that gets the email reader curious and excited to know more. This doesn’t have to be long; 50 -100 of the right words is perfect. Build curiosity and show them what the big benefits / takeaways of reading your article will be, and your click-through rates could double if not triple.

That’s it – 5 simple tips to increase your blog traffic. Pick out your favorite and try it right now, then make a note to use the other 4 within the next 7 days and you’ll begin to see a real boost in your traffic within the month.

When you make the decision to earn income from the internet you will need to go through a set up process to be ready for business.

Following are the basic steps in setting up for home business success.

1. Attitude

The key to your business success is your attitude.

Treat your business like a business.

This is critical whether you are working part-time or full-time. One of my colleagues is a mother who works from home around her family. She has always put her family first whilst at the same time developing her business. She says, “I work part-time, but I have a full-time attitude.”

Put another way, “If you have a hobby attitude you will have a hobby income, if you have a business attitude you will have a business income.”

You can be successful working part-time and you can be successful working full-time but it is highly unlikely that you will be successful working in your “spare time”.

2. Working Environment

A space that you can call your own, free from distractions for your scheduled time.

A comfortable chair and organized desk. Stationery supplies as required. For example:

– pens – highlighters – stapler – hole punch – sticky tape – note book(s) – a simple filing system – ring binders – manila folders

Consider the value of a broadband connection. Your time is valuable and a broadband connection can allow you to get more done in a given time frame.

3. Schedule

Develop a schedule that works for you, your family (or “significant others”) and your business. When you allot a block of time for work then use that time for work. Equally important is to schedule time for your other commitments – family time, self education ( reading, listening and viewing), “health time” (exercise, cooking and eating), and leisure time. During these other times don’t work. After all if one of the reasons to work from home is to spend more time with your family then you don’t want your working at home time to consume your family time.

You are working for yourself and your schedule (by your choice) is your “boss”. When you have people calling you or dropping around unexpectedly or maybe out-of-town visitors may want to catch up with you then you need to make a choice. Are you committed to your own business success? What will be your choice in these situations? Only you can decide what is important to you.

In a family environment you may need to negotiate with your partner and children to have your business time agreed upon, during which you will not be interrupted. Put this schedule prominently somewhere so all family members are aware of your work schedule.

4. Describe Your Business

Be able to describe your business concisely; a powerful one or two sentence description that someone can repeat in describing your business to others. A unique and memorable tag line can also be invaluable for promoting your business.

5. Know Your Product or Service

Once you have selected your product or service to sell, it may or may not be something that you use yourself but you need to know your product intimately. If you are selling ebooks then know the content and its value. If you are selling software then use it know it “inside out”. You will develop a reputation of providing quality information and because of your product knowledge you can become the preferred supplier.

It is not practical to use certain products (for example a woman may choose to sell man’s shoes or vice versa) in which case the seller won’t be a product user, however the seller can still know the benefits and features of the product intimately.

6. Administration

Use good record keeping practices.

This may involve a consultation with a tax advisor who can let you know about the optimal way to set up your financial records and what records need to be kept. Your advisor will also recommend record keeping systems and you can find out what software may simplify this aspect of your business. Additionally your obtain advice on the best arrangement for your bank accounts. You will most likely be advised to have a separate bank account.

You will also need to keep track of your various logins, usernames and passwords. A very handy little software tool for this is Treepad available as either the free Lite version (without password protection) or the commercial Plus or Biz versions. http://www.treepad.com

There are other useful tools for this also from a simple paper notebook to free and commercial password keepers. One popular solution is Roboform that will remember your login details and can automatically fill out your login and other registration forms. http://www.roboform.com

7. Computer Protection

Your computer is the lifeline to your business dealings and must be protected including the data that is stored.

You need a virus scanner, personal firewall, anti-spyware and anti-adware and preferably an email scanner with the ability to delete suspect of spam email from the server before it is downloaded to your computer.

Some suggestions are:

Free AVG Anti-Virus: http://www.grisoft.com Spybot S&D: http://www.safer-networking.org Microsoft Anti-Spyware: www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx Adaware: http://www.lavasoft.com/ Mailwasher Email Scanner: http://www.mailwasher.net

8. A Domain Name

You will most likely need a domain name for your business and one cost effective registrar is GoDaddy, http://www.godaddy.com.

9. Payment Processing

You will need a way to process credit cards; that may be using services such as: – PayPal https://www.paypal.com – Storm Pay http://www.stormpay.com – 2 Checkout http://www.2checkout.com – Clickbank http://www.clickbank.com or others.

This is the most economical way to get started. Once your business picks up you may need to look into your own merchant account for credit card transactions.

Consideration may also be given to other forms of online currency such as eGold http://www.egold.com

10. Email accounts

Once you have your own domain you can use an associated email account. This can further assist in the promotion of your business and promotes a more professional business image.

As a final comment on continuing in your internet business, conduct your business ethically, provide extraordinary service and be proud to put your name to the products or services that you are selling and you will be on track to developing a sustainable long term internet business.

Republished with author’s permission http://jtmoreno.info