Uncommon Internet Business Sense

There are approximately 70 Million websites in the world.

Most of these websites are spectacularly unsuccessful, since they do not get very many visitors. Only a small proportion of Internet Entrepreneurs make money on the Web, and the main reason they do is that they get more traffic to their sites.

It stands to reason that traffic is the Lifeblood of internet marketing - the more traffic you get, the larger the sales funnel and the greater your chances are of making money. The object of any promotion activity is to drive traffic to your sites, and preferably targeted traffic, that is, people who are actually looking for your product or service.

Alexa.com is a site that provides a ranking service for all websites based on traffic.

Over the last four months, I have improved my Alexa ranking for my domain justd.ws from #3,427,000 to it’s current position of #152 824 (look over to the left to see what it is today if you are not reading this on the day of publication) That’s my site’s position in the WORLD…

How did I do this?

Actually I did it with all free resources using a strategy that incorporated a number of elements, and I am giving you the opportunity to duplicate my methods on my new site, the latest in the ToTheMax series, traffic To The MAX:

http://justd.ws/loves/trafficmax

And when I say I am giving it to you, I will take you through a 6-step action plan for Free that will guarantee you serious volumes of traffic.

WARNING: There is actual work required - nothing complicated, but there will be a time investment and you need to learn a few things. Autopilot Moneymaking is a myth reserved for conmen and fools.

In just a few weeks, you will have established a web business with your own infrastructure and you will be making money…

http://justd.ws/loves/trafficmax

Here to Help,

Derek

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Google Alerts is a useful service provided by Google whereby Blog article addresses and short summaries are delivered via email, enabling a one-click interface to reach the information.

You can set up your account using your Google account by going here: http://www.google.com/alerts

If you do not have a Google account, you can get one when you click on ’sign in’ at the top on the right hand side. If you’ve never used Google services before, you might want to avail yourself of the opportunity - I use the Webmaster tools, which include the uploading of sitemaps, really useful if you want to get all your web pages crawled by Google so you can get search engine traffic. There’s also the Reader for RSS feeds, always useful so that your favourite Blogs can be read from your Google account without going to the Blog.

Of course, you can also manage your Adsense/Adwords facilities, your Blogger account, YouTube and Feedburner from one place - I find it very convenient.

Google Alerts has a huge readership, and so being visible on Blogs referred by Google Alerts is important. While many of them are ‘nofollow’, it is still useful to visit the Blogs and comment as soon after the email lands as possible, that way you will be among the first commenters and visible to all others who come after. If your comment is intelligent and adds some value, you will get traffic - the sheer size of the Google readership guarantees that.

On ‘dofollow’ Blogs there is always the additional benefit of getting backlinks, and I use the Quick Search Status Toolbar to get a heads up regarding which are and which aren’t: http://www.quirk.biz/searchstatus

It tells you the Google Page Rank,Alexa Ranking, and highlights ‘nofollow’ links. This does not alter my decision - in most cases I comment anyway. If I’m there I may as well make the most of the time…

But get Google Alerts to learn and get news, not just for traffic - in every way, you will benefit!

The target to aim for, of course, is to get your own Blog article published in Google Alerts - just imagine the traffic!

Here to Help,

Derek
(just call me D!)

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On the one hand, keywords are important. On the other, the ‘right’ keywords are not a magic wand that will instantly deliver visitors to your site. There are many myths surrounding keywords, and it will be important to get some of those out of the way first.

keyword Myths and New World Search Engine Scenarios…

Loading your meta keyword tag with many and varied versions and concepts related to your core keyword will probably have no effect whatsoever. While there was a time when this worked, the important search engines now ignore the meta keyword tag and instead look at the Title tag, the Description tag and the content of the page in order to determine ‘relevance’.  The keywords must be in the Content. Simple as that. This does not mean you should use keywords like punctuation - write naturally, the keywords should flow automatically.Look at this article and see how many ‘traffic‘, ‘backlink‘ and ‘article‘ keywords there are. I did not focus on this, it occurred naturally.

Relevance is only important if your site is relevant, and it is “Importance”, or “is this page significant in comparison to other pages offering the same or similar information?” that the search engines will establish before they ask the question “is this site relevant?”. And importance is determined by two things: backlinks and existing traffic.

backlinks: The Worst of Links and the Best

The worst way to get backlinks is to buy them. The search engines are not fooled, and the sudden appearance of hundreds of backlinks to your domain is likely to get you penalised. Slowly and surely is the secret, because what the search engines are looking for is organic growth, since that is how the natural process of word-of-mouth develops. Link Farms and Directories are equally dangerous - register at a couple, but don’t overdo it. And high Page Rank links are better than low-PR. It’s not about numbers, it’s about quality.

The most consistent, viral and the strategy with the greatest potential for natural expansion is article marketing. Hands down, this is simply the best method for developing backlinks. A single article may be replicated hundreds of times, and the scaling effect is truly awesome. Blog Comments to ‘DoFollow’ Blogs will also help, but don’t spam - my Blog is dofollow, I moderate the comments myself, and I delete the spam with extreme prejudice…

traffic: The More you Get, the More you Get...

The crazy thing about the above heading is that it’s true. If you’ve had not traffic to a page, the search engines will not give you some - they will send you traffic when you have shown that there is existng demand for what you are offering. If you’re already getting traffic, ideally from promotions to list memberships, safelists or ad sites, whether paid or free, and you have the prerequisite number of quality backlinks, and your keywords pass the relevance test, you’ll get search engine traffic, always the best traffic because it’s very specifically targetted.

Next: The Long and the Short of it: The benefits of long-tailed keywords,and how to find them…

Here to Help,
Derek
(just call me D!)

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Getting the Name Right

(First part of my new series, From Zero to Hero in Six Easy Steps)

Why do we give a website a name? For some, it’s a case of personal pride or association with something - for others, it’s a reflection of an attitude or a belief. For those wanting to make money, the name must either tell visitors what we’re about or give some idea of what’s on offer. Giving your first domain your own name may make you feel good, but it won’t get you any traffic unless you’re already famous, in which case you probably don’t need to make money from the site anyway. Oh and while I’m on the subject, if you’re not interested in getting your own domain, you;re kidding yourself - you’re unlikely to develop a sustainable Internet business.

So the name must catch the eye or trigger the mind, and the association created in your visitor’s mind should also stimulate a sense of anticipation, so that they look forward to knowing more. Clever use of words and concepts will give you some benefit here, but not everyone is a wordsmith. Fact is, it’s a lot easier than you might think to come up with domain names that will attract search engine traffic, but it won’t be because of the domain name alone that it will happen. It’s the subdomain in combination with the domain that carries the key. The subdomain can be the name of a product, a ‘guru’, or another popular site that attracts traffic.

For example, lets say I buy the domain ‘examined.com’ (it’s not available, but it works for illustration purposes - it must be a verb!). Now I have available a whole bunch of subdomain names: twitter.examined.com, facebook.examined.com or perhaps donaldtrump.examined.com, and you could feature a squeeze video or a product or service review and free ebooks which the visitor can download if they subscribe, after which you can promote other related products and services to them…

Needless to say, other factors such as meta tags (title, description, keywords) will be critical, but once you have the concept, you can build those around the central idea of the subdomain. It then becomes easy do it over and over again using the same domain, which means you save on having to buy new domains all the time.

I do this on my domain to-themax.com, where I have written ebooks helping people to use two Craig Haywood products: tta.to-themax.com and mvs.to-themax.com - in fact, neither of these needs to attract search engines, since there are links in the training sections of those sites to these domains, but you get the principle. Have a look at te video at quickcash.to-themax.com too, where I’ve employed the principle in a video squeeze page…

Use famous names to leverage your search engine traffic, it’ll make all the difference.

Next: Once the subdomain and the page is set up, keyword research!

Here to Help,
Derek
(just call me D!)

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One of the most common phenomena in internet marketing is that of program-hopping; people start with one program which they market, often a network marketing opportunity, a high yield income or two-tier commission program, and they eventually lose faith in the program because it isn’t selling. Then they ‘hop’ over to another and the next minute they can’t sell that either, and so it continues. The product is blamed, never the marketing utilized to sell the product, and the situation continues until eventually they give up and say “internet marketing doesn’t work”

Fact is, it was never internet marketing that failed, but the methods employed.

It’s not the product. There are so many products out there and so many people marketing every one of them successfully that the argument holds no water. There are no bad products, only bad marketers. The key to marketing may, of course, be found in many places, and the following have been given credit when success has been realized, and blamed when failure was the result:

1. Poor graphics and website design.
2. Bad sales copy and a sales page that does not flow.
3. Bad choice of domain name or product name.
4. Inferior technical infrastructure

Yes it’s true that all of the above may well have an effect on a marketing campaign. But the key factor is always going to be the same.

It’s traffic. Whether you’re promoting the ugliest site on the planet, and I have seen many of those make big money, or the simplest site requiring almost no technical wizardry, and actually they work best, you’re going to need traffic. Lots of traffic. Consider this: given an average click-through rate of 2% (2% of the people receiving your ad will click on the link), you will need at least 1000 prospects to send to in order to get 20 visitors. And if those that arrive at your site convert at, say, 10%, you would get 2 signups from those 1000 visitors. You would need a 50% sales conversion rate to get one sale, almost unheard of. Fact is, in many cases, we get responses, especially from large membership lists, of around 0.2%… You need LARGE numbers to promote to if you want enough people to see your offer. And with so many marketers promoting the same products to these lists, how will you stand out?

Being outstanding has never been the result of following the sheep. I see the ‘sheep’s ads’ daily in my email or on twitter and they all look the same. If you want to stand out, stop being a Clone Marketer. Stop doing what everyone else does, which is follow the path of least resistance.

Having a successful Internet business is about building an infrastructure that continuously brings traffic to your door, even when you don’t promote. I recently had a week days where I was very busy with part-time work that I enjoy, that of teaching psychologically-challenged youngsters thinking skills, and I did nothing in my Internet business for the entire week. My traffic went UP.

Six months ago, my Alexa ranking for this domain was #2 675 000 – yesterday, my 4 week average was #176 000. Over the next few weeks I will explain how to build a sustainable infrastructure without buying list memberships, without spending money at Google Adwords, using mostly free resources and doing a little work.

Smarter, not harder. Watch this space.

Here to Help,

Derek .

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Create keyword links to your affiliate programs with this FREE Wordpress plugin!

When I first saw affiliate Ninja, I was very tempted to buy, but as I always do, I looked around for what was readily available. It did not take long for me to find a plugin that did what I was looking for: enable me to place affiliate links on keywords on my Blog. I downloaded, unzipped and installed it, which took all of 2 minutes in total, and spent the next 2 hours adding keyword links to all 3 of my Blogs.

Why did I want this? I have RSS feeds registered in a few places, and there are two ways people tend to access RSS - in a Feed Reader like Google or by publishing it on their website. It means that when they get my article, they do not see my Blog, which means that my advertising links and banners are invisible to them. BUT if the links are in the article body, they are transported with the article, and I get both backlinks to my domain and traffic from inquisitive people.

Besides the ‘add keyword‘ feature which is truly idiot-proof, there are additional very useful features:

1. You can set the link as a ‘no-follow’
2. You can set it so that only the first instance in a given article uses the link, and subsequent ones are ignored
3. You can decide how you want the link to operate, whether in the same window or a new one.
4. You can set it to ignore the type case
5. You can decide whether you want it to work in comment fields

This Wordpress plugin is FREE and you can get it here:

http://www.dijksterhuis.org/wordpress-plugins/keyword-link-plugin/

All in all, I saved some money and got what I wanted, really nice little plugin that will bring you traffic and SEO backlinks - download and enjoy!

Here to Help
Derek

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