Part 4 – On Page Search Engine Optimization

Now, you should have a blog full with content you have passionately written. It should be a very interesting grapevine for the community of your chosen niche, as opposed to a lifeless factsheet.

However, no matter how delicious your content is, if there is nobody to read it you can’t generate profit from it. Traffic is the lifeblood of your blog. In order to attract people, you must offer attractive information. Simple enough.

However, to get traffic onto your site, you have to think backwards. Where do people look when they need information? Yes, they search using search engines like www.google.com, www.yahoo.com and www.msn.com, to name a few more popular ones. So, to get these people on your blog, your blog needs to rank high on search result pages of these search engines. When these people search for information through the search engines and see your site among the top results, they will naturally click through to your blog!

The art of getting your blog or website onto high rankings on search result pages is called search engine optimization. It is a very complex and hard subject to master, but that doesn’t stop us from learning simple yet effective techniques to conquer the search results for certain keywords. The more complex techniques are usually needed to fight for very competitive and general keywords such as “fat loss”, but I’ll teach you how to overcome that later.

For now, let’s determine the keywords that you want to optimize your site for. For example, your blog talks about tech gadgets. Now, you’d want to check in Google whether it is a very competetive keyword. At this time of writing, there are 29, 000 ,000 search results. Think you can beat 29, 000, 000 sites at your first attempt? I don’t think so.

Now, let’s try to narrow down our scope. Let’s look for “technological gadgets” instead. At this time of writing, Google lists 792, 000 results. That’s more manageable, but you’d like to search for more focused keywords. However, let’s optimize your blog for “technological gadget” just for the sake of learning.

First, you have to pay attention to the title of your blog. Since you’re optimizing for technological gadgets, you need to have that exact phrase in your blog title. For example, a line like “Your Best Technological Gadget Blog!” would work great. You can change the title of your blog in the Blogger control panel or the Wordpress blog when you’re creating it. If you’re proficient with HTML, you can even do that on other blog engines like Moveable Type. Bottom line? Learn a little HTML!

Other than that, your page heading should also contain the term you’re optimizing for. The page heading is the bit of text in your code that is enclosed within the

and

tags. This is important as it tells the search engines what your page is about (in this case, “technological gadgets”). Since we’re posting a blog, the

tags are usually the post titles, so remember to include the term there whenever relevant.

One last bit, you should also sprinkle the words “technological gadgets” in your posts whenever possible. The frequent occurrence of that phrase in your blog will hint the search engines that your blog is really relevant to that topic.

However, this is the most important bit of all. Always keep in mind that you’re writing for real life people who read your blog to obtain information, so it is very stupid to spam your blog with keywords! In fact, if you do that, the search engines will end up thinking you’re spamming and drop your ranking further down into oblivion… So keep in mind! Write for humans, not search engines!

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Increased Web Site Traffic - 5 Tips on Getting Continuous Traffic to Your Websites

Rather than giving you a single way to drive traffic to your websites, I'm going to give you a rundown of several of the easiest and most important tips for generating traffic – and allow you to try them all out yourself to determine what will work best with your given setup.

Traffic Generation Tip #1: Pick The Low Hanging Fruit Using SEO

Building natural search engine traffic for “low hanging fruit” is akin to building an asset. You are simply creating pages that have little competition, which upon being indexed, will immediately take the first, second, or third slot for their given keyword.

Traffic Generation Tip #2: Use Viral Promotion

At least once every two months, creating some type of viral product to generate more traffic for your site. This can be a piece of software, a PDF, an audio recording, a video, or an ebook. Whatever you select, make sure you make people want to distribute it for free – and make sure it has built in ways to bring people back to your site.

Traffic Generation Tip #3: Consider Legitimate Link Exchanges

Link exchanges only work if you do them with sites that get a lot of traffic and have high PR – and if you exchange them in places where people might actually click. Keep in mind that the traffic leaving your site probably would have left, anyway, but the traffic you gained wouldn't have arrived any other way.

Traffic Generation Tip #4: Use Joint Ventures and Affiliate Programs

A joint venture partner or super affiliate can generate a veritable avalanche of traffic faster than any pay per click campaign, natural search engine traffic, or link exchange. So spend the time to find the right partners at the right times – and engage them personally.

Traffic Generation Tip #5: Always Recycle Traffic

Recycling traffic ensures that your traffic increases each month, even if your natural search traffic remains the same – or even decreases slightly. Find ways to recycle your traffic into regular visitors and you will increase your revenue each month.

And there you have it: five simple tips you can use to generate traffic to your site without too much additional work.

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Negotiating Joint Ventures and The 3 Things a JV Partner Often Look in Your Offer

A joint venture partnership with an established Internet marketer is the quickest avenue to success for the novice Internet marketer or for an individual who has created a product or service but has never done any Internet marketing. Partnering with an established marketer gives a newbie instant credibility and access to the best market for his product, service or idea.

When approaching an established Internet marketer with a joint venture proposal, an individual should realize that there are three main things that the marketer will evaluate when determining whether to accept your joint venture proposal.

First: Product Quality will be considered and looked at very carefully and from every angle. The successful Internet marketer is not going to recommend an inferior product or service to the members of his list. He has put a great deal of time and effort into establishing himself as a reliable and dependable provider of information…an inferior product or service could undo all of his hard work. Check what you are offering to make sure it is of highest quality possible and that it delivers what is promised.

Second: Market and demand for the product or service has been well established. You must have done your research and be able to prove to him that there is a market as well as a demand for the product or service you are selling. No matter how great your new buggy whip might be, there just won’t be a market for it and no demand either. What you are selling needs to be relevant to today’s market place.

Third: How persuasive your sales letter is written will be the final determining factor. Even is you have a high quality product or service for which you have established that there is a market and a demand, if you sales letter is weak, the established Internet marketer will not bother with you.

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Collect Email Addresses Online and Offline - 7 Ways You Can Count In

Your email campaign starts with a strong list. Without a good list of people who “opt-in”
you aren’t going to be able to make email marketing work for you.
Here are 7 little-used ways to collect email addresses:

1. Pop-ups
One of the most underused and highly effective ways to capture emails is to create a
pop-up window on your web site. This can be a pop-up on entry or exit – they are
both effective. When we started using this on www.instantsalesletters.com we saw a
500% increase in opt-in subscribers.

2. Subscriber box
You should prominently provide a email subscriber box on each of your site’s web
pages. This will significantly increase your sign-ups.

3. Postcard Million Dollar Emails
If your customer list is mainly offline you can send out a postcard and offer an
incentive for them to send back their email address.

4. Contests
Contests are a great way to capture opt-in email addresses because most people will
have to give you their correct address so they can be informed when they win.

5. Advertise Your Autoresponder Address
Many people will run ads advertising their web site. A smarter way is to run ads or
promotions and use an autoresponder email address – this way you will capture all
email information from interested prospects. The autoresponder will be set-up to
automatically deliver your promotion to people that request it. (A complete source of
autoresponder information is at: www.autorespondermagic.com)

6. Capture Using Simple Forms
Most offline stores and businesses completely miss an opportunity to capture the
email addresses of their customers. A super example of someone doing this right is
the California Tortilla example in this ebook. Any time a customer or prospect phones
you, walks in or does business with you is an opportunity to capture their email
address.

7. Give Aways (free ebooks, software, etc.)
Give aways or “bribes” are highly effective means of capturing emails. You need to
provide people with an incentive to give you their email address. People are
becoming more hesitant to hand out their email addresses for fear of rampant
spamming – but if your incentive is big enough you’ll get lots of emails to build your
list.

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Part 3 – Blog Content Brainstorming

Face the fact – your blog needs to be regularly updated to maintain its readership! Hence, you must always find fresh topics to write about, and we’re going to discuss how to do just that in this article.

We have discussed how to write attractively, so now we are going to discuss what we are going to write on. The very first option that I think a blogger should write on is a topic that he or she feels passionate and interested in. You’ve chosen to make blogging your career because you want to escape a mundane job – forcing yourself to write about something that you’re not interested in is as torturous as as your mundane job!

The other reason I ask you to write about something you’re passionate about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings! If you feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the sake of it, your readers will notice it. Remember the advice about writing with a personality? Forcing yourself to write will not establish a welcoming style at all.

Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog about it and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it’s only a comment on the newspaper article you read today. Think of yourself as a gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your full speed. Then, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you instead!

However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to get exhausted over some time, so here are methods to brainstorm for content for your blog.

1) The very best way to brainstorm is to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your field of discussion. And the very best way to find related blogs is to use http://blogsearch.google.com/ or www.technorati.com. There are other decent search tools too, you just have to look around. From other blogs, you can gather more knowledge on your subject and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!
2) Once you’ve established contacts with other bloggers in your field, you’ll have quite an unexhaustible “conversation” ongoing, so you’ll not need to actively search for content to write about. However, if you’re still stuck, search for news articles related to your niche in the local newspaper or online through sites like http://news.google.com and http://news.yahoo.com.
3) You can also have conversations with people with the same interest as you in the particular niche you choose, so you will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting discussions to write about in your blog. To do this, join forums related to your niche, but don’t join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or two with the biggest number of members or the one which is most focused on your niche. This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and generating profits.

Remember to keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or more if you have a lot of content to write about) so that the major search engines will know that your blog has fresh content everyday. This will attract the search engines to spider your page on a more frequent basis, hence gaining you extra traffic.

Don’t worry about the paragraph above about generating traffic and search engines, because we’re going to talk about that in more detail later. For now, remember to keep a consistent effort everyday and build up momentum like that of a locomotive!

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Benefits of Being an Affiliate Marketer

Affiliate marketing has become one of the most effective ways to advertise online. It is also one of the easiest ways for anyone with a website to make a profit online. Affiliate Marketing is an agreement between a merchant and a website owner. The website owner, or the affiliate, allows the use of their site for the promotion of the merchant's products by linking to the merchant's website. In exchange, the merchant pays a commission to the affiliate on all sales generated by the affiliate. Every time someone clicks on the link on the affiliate website and proceeds to make a purchase, the affiliate gets a commission. The merchant will pay the affiliate only when a customer clicks on the product link and makes a purchase.

Affiliate marketing programs are described as a win-win situation for both the merchant and the affiliate because of the pay-for-performance scheme. Both the merchant and the affiliate enjoy some benefits in affiliate marketing. There are many benefits on the merchant's side. It gives the merchant a wider market in which to advertise a product or service. Affiliate marketing will give the product or service the maximum exposure that it may not get with other traditional advertising techniques. The more affiliate sites a merchant has, the higher the traffic, which can convert to sales. Affiliate marketing is the equivalent of having an army of sales people who will do the advertising and will only get a commission if a customer purchases.

Meanwhile, since an affiliate marketing relationship is a win-win situation, the affiliate also enjoys many benefits. Foremost among these is the easy way to make a profit. The affiliate can earn by having an ad or link to the merchant's website, which prospective customers will hopefully click and proceed to make a purchase. As soon as the customer clicks on the ad on the affiliate's site, is redirected to the merchant's website and goes on to buy that particular product, the affiliate earns a commission. The more referrals there are the more profit for the affiliate.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to earn money while at home. There are virtually no production costs. The product is already developed and proven by the merchant, and all you have to do to find, as many prospects as you can that will bring in the profit for both the merchant and the affiliate. Affiliate programs are usually free to join, so affiliates do not have to worry about start-up costs. There are thousands of products and services you can choose from. You can find affiliate programs for every product under the sun. Surely, there is a product or service out there that is relevant to your website.

In addition, there is absolutely no sales experience necessary. Most affiliate programs offer excellent support when it comes to providing marketing material. The simplicity of affiliate marketing allows you to be an affiliate marketer at the least cost and the most comfort. You can even build a successful affiliate marketing business right in the convenience of your own home. In affiliate marketing, your responsibility is simply to find prospects for the merchant; you do not have to worry about inventory, order processing, and product shipping. These, along with customer service support are the duties of the merchant.

Because of the global reach of the internet, you can easily find thousands of prospects. You can intensify your advertising campaign by exploiting more aggressive and productive strategies such as viral marketing. By attracting more prospects, you also maximize your potential to earn. Another benefit of an affiliate marketer is the minimal risk involved. If the product you are advertising is not making money then you can dump it and choose another. There are no long-term binding contracts tying you to products that are not making enough money.

All the same, the best benefit of being an affiliate marketer is the opportunity to increase your income; and you can make a profit even if affiliate marketing is only a sideline business. With your own affiliate business, you can earn easily earn extra income, although you do have to exert effort and use your imagination to maximize your earning potential. Indeed, affiliate marketing is one of the simplest and most effective business opportunities on the web today.

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Part 2 – Blog Content

Today, we’re going to discuss the type of content that is suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. First off, I want you to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in.

However, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable blog is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, would you prefer to read your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favourite author?

You may prefer to read the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. However, the most important point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. You see, when people log on to your blog, they are not only looking for information – they are also looking for information they can obtain easily, and better still in a relaxed manner.

So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining you’re talking about a certain topic with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humour, so try to add funny comments in your articles where they are suitable.

Another important key point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. What I really mean is you should not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, you should write as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority.

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words. Human beings are very curious creatures, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.

So, the lesson for today is to simply write as an equal friend to your visitors, write to them as if you’re talking to a single person and establish your own personality on your blog.

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