Getting traffic and sales to your site can be a constant struggle. I know that I am bombarded with marketing information day in and day out offering me the “next big thing”.

However, there are some marketing methods that always work. That’s why I stick with the classics.

You can use these methods to build more traffic and sales to your site if you are willing to do a little planning.

Below are marketing methods I use to drive traffic to my site. With long term marketing strategies, it will take you awhile to get traffic, but these methods are still worth it because they can be highly viral.

1. Free Search Engines (Long Term Marketing Strategy)
Although free search engines aren’t as effective as they used to be, you can still use them to get traffic to your site.

The easiest way to do this is to use a program like Web CEO, http://www.smallbusinesshowto.com/search.html

The first thing you need to do is to select low competition, highly searched for words. Then optimize indidvidual pages for these words and do your submissions.

2. Article Writing (Short - Long Term Marketing Strategy)
Article writing will do several things for your business.

First, it will brand you as an expert, allow you to build a linking strategy for your website, and even improve your search engine rankings if you optimize your article.

You can also create a viral marketing strategy here because content is an important marketing strategy online. An article you have written today could continue to draw traffic to your site years from now.

Instead of using the push method of marketing, where you are trying to push visitors to your site, you are using the pull method. This method is much more effective because it draws visitors to you.

Article directories you should consider submitting to are:

http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.articlemarketer.com

3. Forums (Short - Long Term Marketing Strategy)
Forums not only allow you to network with others in your field, you can also network with potential customers who are looking for information on what you sell.

The important thing to remember here is not to blatantly promote what you are selling. Answer questions. Build credibility. Include a signature block in your posts with a link to your website.

The Forums Package will help you with finding, tracking, and using forums to help you promote using forums. You can get it here: http://www.smallbusinesshowto.com/forums/

To find forums on your topic, do a search with your topic plus the search term forums.

Continue reading…

Are you also curious, but skeptical, about becoming financially free with network marketing? Do you think financial freedom is only a dream? Why would network marketing be the answer? How should you use it to achieve financial freedom? Let’s begin…

Let’s assume you’ve got a job or you’re self-employed. That means you have to show up for work to get paid. You can say you exchange your time for money. As we tend to spend our money on food, our home, car and other stuff, we have to keep exchanging our time for money.

Although most of us have accepted this, that doesn’t mean it has to be this way. When you feel yourself resisting your 9 to 5 routine or the limited amount of income you’ll be making, you’re ready to look beyond these limits.

The solution to the “exchange your time for money”-problem is to create passive income. As the word suggests this is income that you don’t have to work for. How can that be?

There are two ways by which you can achieve this:
1. Invest in Real Estate to get rental income
2. Own businesses that don’t require your presence

You can still create passive income in real estate today, even without having money, but knowledge of buying houses in preforeclosure is a must. So, if this is your thing, go for it!

If you want to own a business, here are four ways you can get one:
1. Buy a business
2. Buy the rights for a franchise
3. Start your own business
4. Network marketing

Continue reading…

Affiliate marketing is a very hot topic on the web right now. Not surprising when you consider the fact that a vast majority of successful online entrepreneurs make their money from affiliate schemes and programs. Since the early days when Amazon was being set up and founder, Jeff Bezos was establishing affiliates as key marketing tools for any online enterprise, affiliates and affiliate marketing has come of age.

The amounts of income being made have clearly transformed affiliate marketing into a very serious business. There are more and more affiliates comfortably raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.

The first important affiliate marketing secret to bear in mind is the reason why affiliate marketing remains the most effective way of marketing any online enterprise. It is all about the power of the referral. It is rather awkward when a website is trying to promote itself directly to prospects. Actually very different from the situation where somebody else refers the business to others, including people they do not know personally.

This works out superbly for several reasons. Firstly the affiliate as a consumer themselves is able to quickly identify the strong attractive points of the business that will best attract others like them.

The other little known affiliate marketing secret is that most of the top-earning affiliates have their own websites and blogs. Having their own websites gives these affiliates a tremendous edge over others. The sites are usually very closely related to the affiliate program that they are promoting. By having their own site, they are able to harvest the email addresses of the traffic to their sites.

Usually, most people you send to your affiliate site will not end up purchasing anything. However when you have their email addresses in your opt-in email list, you can continuously market to them and the affiliate will automatically end up with a much higher conversion rate from the traffic they generate as opposed to an affiliate without a website who just sends traffic to their affiliate website.

This is the affiliate marketing secret that makes a difference between affiliates struggling to pull in a good income and those comfortably making hundreds of thousands of dollars.

The term might sound like it is esoteric or stratospheric, so let’s take the mystery out of it so you can devise and implement your own business marketing strategy that fits in to your small business plan.

Strategy comes from a Greek word “stratagein” meaning “to be a general”. Think of a strategy as an overall plan of action needed to win a war. The smaller, detailed actions are called tactics. You can have tactical plans which help you achieve your strategic marketing plan or overall business marketing strategy. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?

A business marketing strategy or strategic marketing plan is an overall plan of marketing actions you intend to take in order to accomplish a specific goal for your company.

Start with a goal: $2 million in sales this year; expand into new premises by a certain date; double the size of the company in 2 years… whatever the goal may be. Something realistic but challenging. That’s the “war” you want to win. Guess who the general is.

Then work out a simple, overall plan of the major marketing steps needed to accomplish that (for example):

1. Publish a newsletter for all existing customers and mail out quarterly.
2. Work out 4 special offers in the year and promote them to all our customers.
3. Set up on-line shopping and expand the web site.
4. Direct mail campaign promoting the web site to all customers.
5. Get mailing lists of (target markets) and do a series of 3 mailings of postcards to them and follow up on and close all leads, etc.

Continue reading…

One of the best kept secrets in today’s affiliate marketing world is the pay per click advertising version with Google AdWords. Adwords allows advertisers to place small ads on websites or on Google.com search result pages. You probably noticed the little advertisements to the right on Google.com.

In Affiliate Marketing you are promoting 3rd party products and in return you earn a share of a sale generated from your marketing efforts. We all have seen those little Amazon.com banners on different websites. These would be a very simple form of affiliate marketing. More sophisticated versions are complete stores build around Amazon.com or based on data feeds from other vendors. In some cases the affiliate has to build his own website and store - in others there are white label website templates or pages available for the affiliate to work with. Only when it comes to the actual sale the customer is redirected to the 3rd party vendor who carries the actual product.

Not a new variant but a not very well-known version of affiliate marketing is the promotion of affiliate product links/websites via Google AdWords. The power of advertising on Google.com is combined with the affiliate link. The affiliate partner does not need a website anymore, he directly links the customer to the 3rd party. With Google AdWords very targeted marketing is possible and well-written ads equipped with the right keywords can bring in big bucks. All the affiliate has to do is to figure out which keywords are affordable to promote. And that’s where secret to success is. Everyone can buy the expensive and obvious keywords to promote products but when it comes to affiliate success via PPC advertising (aka Google AdWords) the inexperienced marketing folks are being weeded out or are left with big holes in their pockets. Finding the right combination of keywords, target group, ad copy is the critical piece of the puzzle.

Overall - affiliate marketing via PPC on Google or via Overture (competitor of Google AdWords) can be very lucrative and quite a few people are making a living of it. It sounds easy to do but to break into this field a new affiliate needs a lot of luck, big bucks or patience and knowledge.

By Christoph Puetz

Experienced Internet Marketers and beginners alike have one thing is common. They need products or services to market on the Internet.

The lack of a good Internet Marketing Idea is often the most difficult problem the marketer is faced with, but it is one that can be solved within a few short minutes from now.

Many marketers spend so much time trying to find ideas for products or services they can create; they miss the obvious already-created opportunities in plain view. The best part of these opportunities is that all the market research and business planning has already been done.

So instead of trying to create that one product or service that leads to a million dollar homerun (and more often than not you strike out), you can quickly set up multiple streams of revenue from several websites. That way if one revenue stream dries up, you still have several more to rely on.

One way to quickly set up a new business is to market products and services from a Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) or network marketing opportunity. These opportunities already have support systems in place so all you have to do is to apply Internet Marketing techniques to sell the product or service.

Since few network marketers know how to use the Internet like you do, you’ll have a unique marketing advantage.

You’ll also have an advantage over other Internet Marketers as well because most of them have a negative view on network marketing. It’s probably not because they experienced anything negative about network marketing themselves, but because they know someone else who is negative on it.

Continue reading…