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Archive for February, 2010

Five Ways To Increase Targeted Traffic

Every affiliate home based business is fueled by traffic. Especially high quality targeted traffic. With steady website traffic a website can be a money making machine running on autopilot.

A website is your system for making money and the traffic is your hard earned visitors you work hard to attract. Targeted website traffic helps you enhance clickthroughs and build more commissions. Here are five ways to increase targeted traffic to your website.

Blogging

Much like a journal where you write interesting and informative articles for readers. The articles you post on your blog can have links back to your other websites which are called back links. These back links help improve Page Rank in Google and search engine positioning for other related keywords searched by your niche market.

Start a blog at Blogger and Google will start bringing you traffic in two days or less with your own RSS feed. Google will distribute your content around the web and give you free targeted traffic.

Forums

Forms are a fun and easy way to increase website traffic and promote your affiliate marketing business. You can respond and start topics in forums related to your niche market and learn a lot about the market in the process. You are not supposed to blatantly advertise your products but most forums allow a signature which is a space under your posts where you can place links to your websites.

Viral Marketing

This is one of the oldest and fastest ways to build website traffic. You can do this buy producing a funny video and spreading it on YouTube or giving away an Ebook on your website with a few links to your affiliate programs product website. Allow your readers to freely pass your Ebook around and watch this promotion grow bigger and bigger with more sales commissions.

Social Marketing

Myspace is a great example. Myspace is now widely used as a highly effective Internet marketing strategy if done right. Facebook is emerging as another great place to attract targeted web traffic.

Article Submission

Another guaranteed way to build your website traffic and affiliate online business. You can write interesting and informative articles for your web visitors. Article marketing as it is called will bring you tons of targeted website traffic that already wants to know more about your products and services.

To save time you can make money on the Internet with an affiliate program that gives you article content to rewrite and submit to article submission directories. Make sure you rewrite your articles and mix in your own ideas to stay away from content duplication penalties from search engines.

Not only is getting targeted website traffic vital to the improvement of your online empire it is also crucial where you are driving these visitors. The best idea would be to route them to an affiliate programs product website that will do a good job of selling the customer once you have done the work of warming them up to the sale. Again all you need to do is pre sell or warm up the reader by giving good information about the product. The companys job is to sell the product. Following is how to avoid affiliate marketing scams to make the most money online.

Avoiding Affiliate Marketing Scams

Affiliate marketing is a way to earn cash on the Internet and enjoy doing it too. This can only happen when you choose the right affiliate programs to promote. You want to get a high payout and be paid in a timely fashion.

A great way to prevent getting scammed in the online marketing world is to carefully do your homework on the program such as in the Internet marketing forums. Ask yourself and other marketers the these questions about programs you are thinking about promoting.

1. Does the company have good affiliate support? Do they answer affiliates emails and have correct contact information?

2. Do they display their offline address?

3. What is the per cent of commission they pay; 3050 is the best.

4. Tracking system this should be in real time and accurate.

5. Products should be well targeted for your market and of high quality.

Where to research:

1. Forums related to your industry. There are many smart Internet marketers who use the forums for reference. You can ask them their opinions about the programs they promote.

2. Discussion lists.

3. Look into the program carefully and read their terms and conditions.

4. Put the company name plus the word scam into the search engines and see what comes up. Dont believe everything you read however as sometimes these reviews are not all true.

GOLDEN RULE: Study the program before you sign up to prevent wasting time and money with affiliate scams. It is often smart to ask others if you dont have the answer. Do not rush instead take the time to choose good reliable programs that will give you the profits you want for many years to come.

About the writer:  George Watson is a successful Affiliate marketer and author. Read more articles to discover more ways to increase targeted website traffic at his Affiliate Home Business Blog and his Internet Money Making website.

Keep And Grow Your Customer Base With Postcards!

In todays fast paced world we see marketing everywhere we go. We see it on billboards as we drive down the freeway on television magazines and on the back of bathroom stalls. Its everywhere! In order to grow our business we have to get involved.

As a small business owner we dont always have the necessary funds to do mass media marketing such as television or billboards. We have to get creative and only target our best potential customers. This is where direct marketing comes into play.

If used correctly direct marketing will give you return on your investment.

So you may ask yourself Sounds great but how do I do this?. I have designed these easy 7 steps to help you successfully market your target audience and create customer retention.

1 Find out who your target audience is. Is it your current customer base? Or do you want to target specific demographics that need your product or services? Direct marketing involves you as a business owner finding out who your best customer is and marketing your products and/or services to them effectively and directly.

This is in fact is the most important step to starting a successful marketing campaign. Constantly learning about your customers needs and characteristics will allow you to maintain and grow your business.

2 What can you commit to each week/month to marketing funds? This is a very important question. With direct marketing it is important to set up an actual schedule for when your email marketing campaign or direct mail campaign goes out whether it is each week every other week or each month.

3 Once your budget is determined you can now decide how you would like to approach your audience. Do you want to blast an email out to your audience every other week then follow with a postcard each week? Whichever strategy you wish to choose just make sure it is consistent and repetitive. Also make sure you are able to catch their attention quickly.

This is one of the reasons we named our company Postcard Planet we are not a fan of envelopes. How many times do you get home from a busy day to open your mail but ignore the envelopes that dont have a bill in them yuck or are from your family?

Postcards catch attention! With the professionalism creativeness and quality of the card youre bound to catch their attention even if its right before they toss it in the trash.

4 Stay true to who you are as a business and stick with a consistent message that works with your company branding. The reason for this is simple: people learn by repetition. You look at some of the larger companies who have commercials every 5 minutes; they always have the same theme going. Can you hear me now? Good! or Mikey will eat anything! or GOT MILK? or my favorite BEEF its whats for dinner. We all know where these came from because they embedded it into our heads by being repetitive and consistent with their message even when they change the offer. This holds true with your direct mail piece or email campaign as well.

5 Testing testing testingvery important. If youre not getting good response on your campaign after the third time around chances are is you need to change something about your offer. For instance maybe the 2.00 off your next visit! didnt grab the attention of the viewer. Or Buy the whole familys meals and get free ice cream on your next visit was not appealing or enticing enough to get the customers attention or business.
The best advice I could give you on how to correctly and affectively get return off your direct marketing piece would be to put YOURSELF in the customers shoes! What would make you stop and read the postcard that you just received? What would make you Call today? Most likely it’s the same thing that would make your customers respond. Lets not reinvent the wheel!

6 Follow through with your offer as well as your services. Lets face it if you get 100 new customers but you dont deliver chances are your campaign was a waste of time.

7 If youre already busy you still have to market! It’s a common misconception that you no longer have to market if you are busy. This is in fact is the best time to start a campaign. Be proactive! Just because you are busy doesnt mean you want your current and potential customers to forget about the great products and services that you provide.

Happy marketing!

Until next time

Jennifer Minor
Chief Executive Officer
Postcard Planet Inc.
Marketing your planet
www.postcardplanet.com

About the writer:nbsp;nbsp;Jennifer Minor is the Chief Executive Officer for Postcard Planet. Jennifer came from a strong background in customer service human resources and sales. She started Postcard Planet with the vision of providing business owners with a sense uniqueness and individualism while maintaining their valued customers visions and branding image. Jennifer wanted to see something different for marketing something more personal for the customer involved. She strives on customer satisfaction and has a strong passion for creativity personality professionalism and the highest standard of quality printing out there.

You can visit Jennifer Minors website at www.postcardplanet.com or contact her via email at jenniferpostcardplanet.com or contact her toll free at 866.427.3623

21st Century Copywriting: Website Marketing Strategies To Engage Your Clients

The new buzzword these days is “engagement marketing” which has replaced oldstyle “interruption marketing.” Engagement marketing creates interactions and deepens relationships with your clients. Interruption marketing breaks into your client’s life the way television commercials break into our programs.

When we engage with clients they welcome us. When we interrupt them they try to shut us out. And technology makes it easy to make unwanted sales pitches disappear.

Engagement marketing allows you to write long copy. In fact it demands long copy. You need to connect with your customers They want more than a quick touch and go.

So how you do create long messages that engage your visitors and help them develop relationships?

1. Create a friendly conversation.

Let’s face it: your website visitors want to connect you. They are sitting all alone with their computers and they want to feel somebody cares enough to talk to them. Reading pages and pages of copy should feel like getting a letter from a good friend.

Short copy and shortshort ezines comes across more like a message left on an answering machine not a meaningful dialog.

Ever had a phone conversation with a friend or even a business relationship when you just enjoyed talking?

You were in no hurry to hang up. You were entertained. You felt affirmed. When readers feel this way they will stay tuned all the way to the bottom of the page.

2. Maintain suspense.

Whether you’re writing website copy or murder mysteries keep the readers wondering what happens next. Each sentence should motivate the reader to move to the next sentence…and the next paragraph…and the next page chapter and even book.

I amm not sure who first applied the term “bucket brigade” to copy. But here is the idea.

Before fire departments got organized volunteers would fight fires by lining up and passing buckets of water from the nearest well to whatever was burning. Another line would pass empty buckets back for refills. Buckets moved from hand to hand fast with no stops.

So think of each idea as a bucket you want to pass along from one sentence to the next. Motivate the reader: “Keep going! Urgent! You need to reach the end before anything else happens!”

3. Ask “Who is reading?” rather than “How long?”

Your target market really wants to learn what you have to say. They realize they’ll learn from you even if you’re overtly making a sales pitch. So they keep reading….and reading.

What is your favorite personal interest? Dogs? Cats? Hiking? Basketball? Soccer? Music? Art? Real estate?

When you’re passionate you cannot learn enough. You hope the article book or talk will go on forever. And if you have targeted right your readers will feel the same way.

4. Encourage your readers to talk back to you.

Marketing researchers know: When we read any message we tend to talk back! Sometimes we speak aloud and even throw a magazine across a room doesn’t work with a computer.

But most often we engage in what psychologists call “counterarguments.” For example you read “This technique will transform your cat into an obedient pet who comes when called.”

You think “No way!” or “You must be kidding.”

We also affirm what we read.

“That’s a great idea!”
“That sounds like something I would like to do.”

And especially if we’re contemplating a bigticket item we’re seeking more and more reasons to justify our buying decision.

So…you’re probably ahead of me: Longer copy means more opportunities to say “Yes it’s for me!”

5. Crawl out on the edge.

What television shows become megahits? You got it: the big HBO and Showtime series that go outside the networking programming box.

They’re more like indie films than television and they attract audiences of millions. Just try to rent a DVD of past seasons: you get on a waiting list.

Marketing works the same way.

Whenever I take a risk with an edgy ezine article a few readers unsubscribe and some even send a grumpy emails. But I always get a few ebook orders. That’s when I get requests for Diagnostic sessions too.

When I write reviews for amazon.com I just say what’s on my mind. And I get some of my best clients and subscribers.

One reader even wrote “Do they call you Cantankerous Cathy? You never say anything nice!” But she signed up for my ezine and attended three teleclasses.

Edgy means just strong enough to resonate with your own target market. Some famous copywriters use strong colorful language. My audience tends to prefer Grated expressions. Adapt your edginess to your audience and your own style.

Bottom line: As long as you hook the reader maintain suspense and tell a good story your message can be as long as you want it to be. Keep doing this and you’ll genuinely engage your audience the first step to turn them into clients in today’s market.

About the writer:  FREE 7 BestKept Secrets of Websites That Really Attract Clients: My Special Report gives you insider tips to convert tirekickers to buyers and earn money while you sleep. From Cathy Goodwin The Content Strategist at Website Marketing Strategies