Affiliate Business – Page 40 – TP Javeton WebNet

Activity and creativity begets success

Doing business on the Internet is not much different from doing business anywhere else. If you are active and creative you will get success. If you have these two qualities it would be wise to use them to boost your website traffic. Getting traffic is not as easy as you might think.

Although millions of people use the Internet, there are also millions of offerings out there. If you want to get a share of the visitors you will really have to work hard. If you are just starting out there are a number of techniques you can use to boost traffic, as well as to improve the search engine ranking of your site.

Traffic is drawn to interesting websites!

This doesn’t mean that we subscribe to the “build it and they will come” philosophy. However if your website has many pages of information, then each one of those pages will be packed with words and phrases that people will find when they make searches.

On the other hand if you have only published a “brochure site”, a website that is a mirror image of an offline introductory brochure about your company, then there will not be much “spider food” on your site. That is, there will not be much for search engines to put in their data base, and you will not get much traffic from search engine queries.

Another consequence in building an interesting site is that other sites will link to you, viewing your site as an important resource. In fact, this is what Google had in mind when it set up its current ranking system. A site that is informative and filled with useful information will be noticed and other sites will link to it. Each of these links is viewed by Google as a “vote” for that site. Make your site interesting, and people will link to it without you even knowing about it.

In addition, never underestimate the importance of word-of-mouth. If your site is interesting people will tell their friends and they will check out your site. A content rich site is the first secret of boosting traffic.

Publish articles to other websites

This is one of the most effective ways to boost traffic. If your site is full of useful material, then other people will also want to publish it on their websites. Webmasters are hungry for content to beef up their sites and their newsletters.

Here are a few places where you can offer your content (but make sure that you put your url and contact information on each article, this is how you actually get the traffic).

Improve your search engine ranking

While good content is an essential part of any traffic building strategy, it also helps to take steps to improve your ranking in search engines. If your content is not optimized – both on-page and off-page – it will not get the exposure that it deserves.

You can improve your search engine ranking by placing your important key search terms in the title tag, the description tag, in your site’s headlines, and in link text on your web pages. These are the on-page factors of website optimization. If you do this successfully your site’s search engine ranking for a particular keyword or keyword phrase will improve.

It is also important to work on off-page factors that are related to search engine positioning. Your ranking is partly determined by how many other websites link to you. If you have published your material elsewhere, then you will get a good amount of important links. If not, you may have to launch a reciprocal links campaign or place your site in paid directories in order to increase the number of incoming links to your website.

Creativity combined with activity is a good recipe for traffic building. Build your site as best you can, and then spread the word about it. Use these three tips and you are sure to succeed.

To start with

Web Marketing has become a sophisticated and creative way to promote (and sell) a product or service to the largest number of potential buyers, regardless of the physical location of your (brick and mortar) store. In fact, depending on the product or service you’re selling, you may not even need a brick and mortar store or “offline” establishment because marketing on the Web requires neither.

You can literally begin doing business on the Web with just a few simple tools which I refer to as Web marketing basics. First you’ll need a website or blog. Second, you’ll need web hosting in order to get your website or blog on the Web (Internet). And third you’ll need traffic (or visitors) to your website or blog so that your product/service can be exposed to potential buyers.

What & how to promote

The Web marketing basics mentioned above apply to would-be web marketers who already have a product or service to sell but need Web exposure. However, if you do not already have your own product or service but still wish to start your own Web marketing career, you’ll need to add a fourth step. Promote and sell other people’s products/services. You can do this by joining affiliate networks such as Amazon.com, clickBank, LinkShare, Covert Commissions and other similar affiliate networks.

Once you have your basics, it is time to start promoting and competing against other web marketers (and there are many), so a big part of your new job/career as a Web marketer is learning (getting training, tutoring, etc.), optimizing your website/blog, tweaking your message (adding content to your website/blog), and advertising your business (product/service) which is necessary to drive more traffic to it.

Startup costs

So what will it cost (you knew there would be a cost, right?) to get your business up and running with just a few Web marketing basics? The answer is: Not much, if you use the right sources. Creating the website or blog cost nothing if you have some knowledge of HTML. Web hosting cost less then $10.00 per month for 4 websites if you deal with the right Web Host.

Traffic to your website/blog – although the most costly of the basics – could be less than $100.00 if you are willing to work hard and learn a little more about SEO (Search Engine Optimization), and prepare (optimize) your website/blog so that it appeals to the search engines (Google, Bing, etc.).

A lesser cost startup

Let’s face it, even if you have to shell out $100.00 to start a new career in web marketing, it’s a lot less than starting a brick and mortar business in your local business district which could run in the $Thousands or $Tens-of-Thousands.

Recommended Tools & Resources:

A complete overview of the tools and resource package, including FREE training on website/blog creation and the use of basic tools, can be seen on display at CovertCommissions.com.