Month: March 2012

Getting Enough Highly Targeted Traffic

List-building the easy way

More traffic equates to more sales!

I guess most Web marketers will agree if I said that getting enough highly targeted traffic is the key to success in the affiliate marketing business. Driving targeted traffic is proven to be effective if you’re promoting or reselling products or services on the Web. One of the best and most effective marketing strategies that affiliate marketers can employ is the “pay for performance” method. This means that your investments are used only for results such as additional sales and/or subscriptions.

In Web marketing businesses like affiliate marketing, no traffic means no sales. That’s why many affiliates and webmasters easily shell out big bucks just to get top rankings on the search engine results pages (SERPs). Once you are promoting a product or service on your website or Web page, you need to have more visitors that may ultimately become consumers of your products and services.

Paying for performance is fundamentally practical

As one of the fundamental requirements for succeeding in the Web marketing business, top search engine rankings not only assures the marketer of great sales and a decent income, but establishes credibility in his/her area of expertise. Here, you just need to start, get the right combination of free and paid traffic and you can be on your way to a successful Web marketing career.

Let’s take a practical example. Paying for performance! This could mean giving a commission to a sales person only when a new sale is made. This strategy assures you real profit because you can already compute the amount of money you have to spend for every new sale made. Also, you can avoid spending any marketing bucks because every cent you use up has either come from a sale or will generate a sale in the future.

The viability of PPCSEs

Another of the recognized and popular methods of driving targeted traffic is proven to work and is an efficient way of acquiring sales for affiliate marketers. It is the method of attracting laser-targeted traffic to your website and converting it to sales by means of “Pay-Per-Click” Search Engines (PPCSEs).

PPCSEs like Overture can bring impressive sales because they permit you to pay for performance by means of attracting precise targeted traffic to your niche. And this means people or site visitors who are actively searching for precisely what you are offering or selling. Overture’s secret is to drive laser-targeted traffic to your website by proposing or bidding on keywords that are related to the product or service that you are offering. And the strategy works this way: The more exact your keyword is, the better results you’ll receive and the less you’ll have to spend for each new sale.

Combining pay-per-click with your USP

Overture claims to be the Web’s best pay-per-click search engine. It is one of the leading resources of Pay-For-Performance search on the web; And what’s more enticing about the company is, when you advertise in Overture Premium Listings, your site is guaranteed to appear in may leading U.S. search engines like Yahoo, InfoSpace, MSN, Netscape, AltaVista, Lycos and more. Plus, you can get the benefit of reaching more than 80% of active Web users.

Other things that will surely attract lifetime customers to your site include offering valued customer discounts, giving seasonal and special offers, especially to your repeat customers, and “buy one get one free” promotions; plus your unique sales proposal (USP) which is used to distinguish you from your competitors. Don’t get me wrong with this; because the above mentioned strategies can certainly develop a trusted relationship between you and your customers. Aside from patronizing your business, they may even refer others to you via your site.

Tips For Setting Up Your Own Business


To create a thriving small business

Are you thinking about setting up your own business? Do you have an idea for a new business but you are unsure about how to proceed? If you have answered yes to either of these questions, this article could be of benefit to you. It covers various aspects of how to plan and create a successful small business.

Many people are looking at ways in which they can become self-employed as they have had enough of being dictated to, and they’re fed up with long and frustrating commutes to work. They want the freedom of being their own boss and to be able to choose their own hours of work.

It must be said however, that leaving a full time career can be quite a scary prospect. The security of having a regular income and other benefits such as a pension and a shared savings scheme can seem hard to let go. I am sure many people, whether rightly or wrongly, have opted to stick with this security and to merely keep their business plan as a back-up idea, which they never see through or use.

Be willing to take the risk!

On the other hand there are people who are willing and happy to take the risk and see it as a way of getting out of the “rut race” (that’s not a typo!).

When you have an idea for a new business you then need to think of a name to call it. It would help to keep this name quite short as it makes it easier for people to remember. It obviously needs to have something to do with the type of business you are entering.

You will now need to work out how much money you will need to set up the business. This can be quite daunting but is essential. In the short term it would be wise to keep these start up costs as low as possible. You can always buy or rent better machinery in the future, as only on example of keeping costs low in the beginning.

Once you are aware of how much money you need, you then have to find it. You may have enough yourself via savings or a redundancy payout, however most people are not in this position. If you do not have enough money, you could try and raise money via the family, by seeking a partner or by tapping into the equity from your home. There is also the option of a business loan.

Market your product or service

There are many ways of doing this, including:

  • The Web via a website you create
  • An ad in your local newspaper
  • Direct marketing in the form of flyers & business cards
  • An ad in the local yellow pages and B2B pages
  • Exhibitions
  • Trade fairs and other advertising methods.

It is advisable that you find out where other people from your industry advertise as they will have tried and tested many of the above options.

You will need to work out how much to charge for your product or service. A good practice is always keep these charges fairly low in the early going so as to attract as many people as you can and to get some income in. Then you look forward to the time when word of mouth (and your other promotional efforts) take over after a few months you will be in a position to increase your fees.

Maintain a positive mindset

It is also important to realize that you, like many new business owners (and some veterans) will make mistakes along the way. When this happens you’ll need to think positive and not to beat yourself up. Consider it an experience you can learn from.

Always have belief in yourself. Any business will go through a rocky period from time to time, but during these times is when you need to be strong. In my opinion the more work put in, the more rewards you are likely to reap; and this, ultimately, is the reason you’ve opted to start your own business in the first place. The rewards for you and your family!

Self-discipline: Critical!

Self-discipline is one of the keys to your success. Being able to choose your own hours of work may seem like a dream but it can prove to be the downfall for many people. Business owners and entrepreneurs have to ensure that we work the required amount of hours. It is far too easy to stay in bed for that extra hour or to arrange yet another game of golf. These things are fine once you are established, but this is a long way off in the early stages.