DATING ONLINE

Love comes from the most unexpected places"... this line from
a popular song explains the excitement and the magic unfolding
in many online dating sites, everyday. And there are sob
stories, too. What makes one succeed at online dating while
another ends up crying? Has love transformed into a game of
chance where in order to win, luck has to wave a magic wand?

So you want to meet someone online who might be a friend you've
been hoping to meet for sometime, or maybe a person you wish to
spend the remainder of your life with. Either way, you would be
meeting him or her on a social network - in one of the numerous
totally free adult dating sites. Welcome aboard!

Online dating websites are virtual hubs created with the end
view of gathering people of different genders, nationalities,
races and ages under one roof. They are places where cultural
differences have found one language that "builds rather than
destroys": love.

How to launch your successful date-quest:

1. Remain Anonymous Until You Are Ready to Divulge Your
Identity

One great thing about online dating sites for free is that you
can keep a low-profile or create an entirely anonymous
character. Although this can sometimes be unprogressive since
people won't talk with a stranger, this gives you the power to
withhold your true identity until you've found the right person
- who might also like you!

But if you're really serious about landing a date online, then
it's probably a good idea to share a little bit more than just a
picture. People usually search through online dating sites
according to age groups. It's a good way to get connected with
people of the same age or from the same city as you. Although a
picture can paint a thousand words about yourself, a little bit
information about your identity will definitely increase your
chances of connecting with someone ...who could be the right
one.

2. Meet thousands of users from different age groups, gender
and race.

Don't get trapped with one poor choice. Establish a wide
network of friends and determine who among them you would most
likely share more information about yourself. This gives you a
lot of options to find your match, rather than get stuck with
someone you'd rather play Pokemon than to be with.

Another good thing about online dating sites is that different
users from different parts of the globe can access it as long as
they have internet connection. Forget about travel fees or long
distance phone patches just to talk with someone from another
part of the globe. Just login to your online dating account and
you're good to go. Meet a man from Paris, a woman from Egypt or
a rock star from Kentucky, and a thousand more users whom you
can build lasting friendships with. Check their profiles and get
to know them well before you actually share a phone call or
voice chat online.

You have the power of choice. Free online dating sites give you
the ultimate power to choose who to befriend with, and who to
share your life with. Unlike traditional boy-meets-girl
situations, which can end up on irritating phone calls and
incidents of stalking when you decline an offer, online dating
eliminates the nuisance and just leaves you with the excitement
of a new relationship.

3. Free local dating site offers its users security.

Most online users prefer keeping their information top-secret;
online dating sites have thought about this well ahead of you,
in fact they have installed complicated software to guarantee
that your best interest is taken care of. Unless it is with your
express consent, online dating sites will not reveal any
information you have shared with them. They maintain the highest
level of online security just to make sure that they will be in
keeping with your trust.

If you trust a friend on the online dating site, and you feel
safe about sharing some personal information like phone numbers
or your personal email address, then you can share these with
them at you own risk.

In the overall, free local dating sites, when utilized
properly, are great places to meet and enjoy people who no
matter how diversified their cultures and races are, they are
basically the same: all yearning for acceptance, all wanting to
belong.

For friendship or for love? Who knows what awaits you until you
go online , and give online dating a try?

Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing

Beginner’s Guide To
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing
By JayKay Bak
http://unselfishmarketer.com/showme
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 4
Tools of the Trade.......................................................................................................................... 4
Promoting Products........................................................................................................................ 5
Getting Ideas ............................................................................................................................... 5
Locating Products ....................................................................................................................... 6
Signing Up ................................................................................................................................. 6
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing .................................................................................................. 7
Keywords ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing Budget.................................................................................. 8
Pay Per Click Programs .................................................................................................................. 9
Google Adwords ........................................................................................................................... 10
Landing Pages.......................................................................................................................... 12
Landing Page Hosting............................................................................................................... 13
Landing Page Do’s.................................................................................................................... 15
Landing Page Do Not’s............................................................................................................. 15
Google Adwords Budget............................................................................................................... 16
Google Adwords Sign Up..................................................................................................... 16
Google Adwords Help Center............................................................................................... 16
Pay Per Click Advantages............................................................................................................. 16
Pay Per Click Do’s.................................................................................................................... 16
Pay Per Click Do Not’s............................................................................................................. 17
Pay Per Click Ads ......................................................................................................................... 17
Keywords ................................................................................................................................. 17
Keyword Do’s....................................................................................................................... 17
Keyword Do Not’s................................................................................................................ 18
Yahoo Search Marketing .............................................................................................................. 18
MSN Ad Center ............................................................................................................................ 18
Other Pay Per Click Providers ...................................................................................................... 19
RESOURCES ............................................................................................................................... 19
Affiliate Networks .................................................................................................................... 19
Financial Formulas....................................................................................................................... 20
GLOSSARY ................................................................................................................................ 21
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations! You are now on your way to learning more about Pay Per Click Affiliate
Marketing.
Inside this report you’ll learn how to set up your first pay per click campaign as an affiliate
marketer. You’ll learn how to use the power of pay per click to make money.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be both fun and addictive.
Ready to give pay per click a try?
Let’s Get Started!
Tools of the Trade
Achieving success with pay per click advertising doesn’t require a lot of fancy tools. Of course,
there are some nifty ones out there that you’ll probably want to invest in later if you decide pay
per click affiliate marketing is for you.
Right now, you’ll need a computer with reliable Internet access. If you have spreadsheet
software and are accustomed to using it, you’ll probably find yourself using it. If you don’t’ have
spreadsheet software and haven’t a clue how to use it, don’t worry.
High speed Internet isn’t a must for pay per click affiliate marketing, but it does make things
easier. If DSL is available, you might want to switch once you get income coming in. You can
also take advantage of a dialup accelerator.
Protect your computer and your data.
Your computer is at the center of your affiliate marketing business. Before you even log on to the
Internet, make sure your computer is protected. Surfing the Internet, researching products and
keywords can expose your computer to all sorts of viruses and spyware. Make sure the firewall
on your computer is activated.
Many experts recommend using at least 2 anti-virus programs and 2 anti-spy programs. You can
get free spyware and anti-virus protection from AVG. There are several good paid programs
also. Whatever protection you choose, remember to use. If it isn’t possible to set the software to
run automatically, make a habit of manually running it daily. Backup data and files regularly.
Email
Set up one email account specifically for affiliate marketing. Free accounts are available at
gmail, yahoo and hotmail. Use this email address only when signing up for affiliate programs or
managing pay per click accounts.
Get another email account to use when researching. Use this email address when signing up for
free newsletters, reports, etc. You don’t want to use your personal or business email addresses
because they’ll fill up fast.
Getting Paid
Most merchants and affiliate programs give you the option of payment by check, automatic
deposit or Paypal. Some merchants use only Paypal. Some offer a variety of payment options.
Sign up for a free Paypal account if you haven’t done so already. Use your affiliate email
account for your Paypal email.
If you’ll be receiving commission checks by mail, you might want to get a Post Office Box if
you don’t already have one. Paychecks may be safer in the post office box than in the mail box.
Preparation Checklist:
o Computer.
o Firewall on Computer.
o Anti-spy and Anti-virus software installed and running.
o Email address for Affiliate Marketing and Pay Per Click Ad Management.
o Email address for research, newsletters and general web surfing.
o Paypal account, if needed.
o Post Office Box, optional.
Promoting Products
Getting Ideas
It’s been said that the hardest part of selling anything is deciding what to sell. The best place to
start is to consider what you know and what you live. Grab a sheet of paper and start listing
everything you enjoy. What are you passionate about? Do you have special skills? What about
hobbies or other interests?
Make a list of 10 or 12 things that you enjoy. Topics that make you smile when you think about
them. Finding something you’re passionate about makes it easier to be passionate about your
affiliate marketing business. Here’s a few ideas to help you get started:
Accounting Arts & Crafts Automobiles Birds Baseball
Books Calligraphy Carpentry Cats Catering
Coaching Computers Cooking Dating Decorating
Dogs EBooks Ezines Fitness Flowers
Football Games Gardening Genealogy Golf
Home Biz\ Home Décor Internet Landscaping Magazines
Marketing Martial Arts Movies Music Parenting
Pet Care Pet Grooming Pet Training Plants Plumbing
Recipes Relationships Romance Sewing Skin Care
Soccer Software Spirituality Teens Travel
Websites Weight Loss
Have you made a nice, long list of possibilities? Make a shorter list now of your top ten or
twelve ideas. What type of products or services could you sell for each of those ideas?
Locating Products
The quickest way to find merchants with affiliate programs and browse their products is to go
directly to an Affiliate Network.
Clickbank, Paydotcom and Commission Junction are three popular ones.
Browsing the categories may give you even more ideas about products you’d like to promote.
Take the time to look at commission rates, affiliate requirements and other fine print information.
Make sure the commission you’ll earn is worth your time.
Look at payment options and times. How often does the merchant pay or network pay? How are
affiliates paid? Some programs pay at least once a month. Some pay only 3 or 4 times a year.
What is required to qualify for the affiliate program?
Some merchants require completed applications, established websites and specific traffic
numbers before issuing approval. Others automatically approve all applicants.
With Clickbank and Paydotcom approval is usually instant and automatic. Commission Junction
features merchants that have varying requirements. Some will approve you even if you don’t
have a website. Others have stricter requirements.
There are other affiliate networks. We’ve included a list of them in the Resource section at the
end of this report. The three we’re focusing on here tend to be the most popular and the easiest to
get signed up for.
Signing Up
Sign up at with the affiliate network that has the products you wish to promote. You might want
to go ahead and sign up at all three. There’s no charge to do so.
Once you are approved at Clickbank and Paydotcom, you choose the particular products you
wish to promote. Whenever you choose a product, you’re given a special code that identifies
you. This code is attached to the link that leads to the product page. This is your affiliate link.
Example of an affiliate link: http://product.com/user/4532. You may have seen affiliate links in
your web browser’s address page before. Since this link is an example and not a real one, it
doesn’t work.
One of the first thing you’ll probably want to do as an affiliate marketer is to find a way to hide
that code. Unfortunately, there are people who will change it or delete it, thereby cheating you
out of a commission. There are several free and paid methods. We’ll cover them late.
Find 2 or 3 products for the top 2 or 3 ideas on your list. Bookmark the site(s) featuring them.
You might even want to print out a copy of the site for reference later when you get into
keyword selection.
Checklist:
o Sign up for an affiliate account.
o Choose 1 to 3 products.
o Copy and paste your affiliate link into notepad for later use.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing
What is pay per click affiliate marketing? It is the use of pay per click ads to sell products and/or
services. When website owners and affiliate marketers use pay per click marketing, they write
keyword based ads.
Once the ads are written, placement is decided by bid amount. There is no charge for ad
placement until someone clicks on the ad. The key to success in pay per click is creating an eyecatching
ad containing specific, focused keywords and monitoring ad cost.
When someone surfs the net and clicks on the ad, the cost is equal to the bid amount that has
been set. For instance, if the bid is .$05 on the keyword hypnotherapist, a nickel will be deducted
from the pay per click account every time someone clicks on the ad featuring the word
hypnotherapist.
Keywords
Success in any type of affiliate marketing advertising revolves around keywords. Keywords are
especially important in pay per click. The cost of the ad is determined by the bid.
Keywords are the words that people type into the search bar when they’re looking for something
online. Example: People looking for a Norah Jones CD will either type “Norah Jones CD” or the
title of the CD into the search bar.
The key to selling a Norah Jones CD would be in using the keywords “Norah Jones CD” and not
the generic terms “music” or “CD.” Keywords must be as specific and focused as possible.
In order to compile a good keyword list, you’ll need to make use of a keyword research tool.
Here are a few of the three popular ones:
Good Keywords a free downloadable software
Google Adwords Keyword Tool free online tool
SEOBook Keyword Tool free online tool
Wordtracker subscription but offers a free trial.
123Promotion free online tool featuring Overture & Wordtracker
When you type one of the words from your list into the search box on a keyword tool, the tool
will tell you how many people searched that word or phrase recently. You’ll also see all the ways
they searched for it.
Example: Go to the SEOBook Keyword Tool and type in the word music.
The results show that millions of searches have been done for the word music. Music is much too
broad a keyword. It must be narrowed down. How do you know how many searches make a
good place to start?
Some successful affiliate marketers say that 15,000 searches are enough. Many affiliate
marketing professionals recommend using keywords that have somewhere between 30,000 and
50,000 searches per month.
If you look on down the returned music search list, you’ll see the number of searches for each
phrase. You can choose one search term that has 30,000 to 50,000 searches or you can combine
several keywords and add the total searches for each until the total adds up to 30,000 to 50,000
searches.
Now, let’s try typing the word music into the Google Adword Tool. We can choose to run an
exact match, a broad match or a phrase match. Google will give us an idea of how often a phrase
is being searched and how much competition there is for that keyword.
Type your product keywords into one of the keyword search tools. If you are an experienced
spreadsheet user, copy and paste the results into a spreadsheet. Use more than one of the
keyword tools. Keep adding to your list of potential keywords. Note the keyword or phrase (you
can search phrases as well as individual words) that gets the most results for each product.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing Budget
Keyword Budget is an important part of pay per click marketing. Bid too much and you’ll go
broke, possibly even without sales to show for it. Bid too low and you’ll never get clicks which
mean you won’t get visitors. No visitors mean no sales.
The best way to set a keyword budget is to take sales figures and costs and do some calculations.
However, if you’ve never sold anything before, there are no sales figures to plug into the
formulas.
For the rest of the keyword and ad exercises, we’re going to use a Clickbank tattoo provider who
pays $23.32 per sale and states that the product has a conversion rate of 100. This means that it
takes 100 visitors to sell one item.
Let’s find out what a visitor is worth.
Visitor Value
Here’s what we know:
The Clickbank Merchant we signed with pays $23.32 per sale.
It takes 100 visitors to get one sale.
Visitor Value = commission amount divided by the number of visitors.
$23.32 ÷ 100 = $.23
So each visitor is worth 23 cents.
This is important to know because you don’t want to pay more for a click than that click (visitor)
is worth.
Our click cost limit is 23 cents, preferably less.
Many people lose money on pay per click affiliate marketing because they do not keep up with
how much they’re spending on ad campaigns and because they fail to check the return on
investment for ads.
In our case, we know that spending more than 23 cents per visitor will mean losing money
instead of making money. It’s very important, especially for the first few days of a new ad
campaign, to pay close attention to the clicks and results.
Many marketers agree that after an ad has received 200 page views, you have enough
information to do something. If there have been no sales, either the ad isn’t focused and well
written or there just isn’t any market for the product. If you aren’t monitoring the ad information
regularly, you won’t know when you’ve reached 200 views.
Let’s see what we can do with a Tattoo pay per click affiliate marketing campaign.
Pay Per Click Programs
The two largest pay per click providers are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.
Google Adwords
Google is the king of pay per click programs. Cost to sign up is $5.00 (given as bid credit) and
your ads can appear in as quick as ten minutes. Since Google is syndicated, ads appear in front of
even more customers. You can target your ads to a particular country, area, or even zip code if
you wish.
While there are less expensive pay per click programs, Google’s Adwords offers several
advantages. Relevant ads rise, price monitoring is automatic, ads go live almost immediately, a
low minimum deposit gets you started quickly, ad areas can be targeted by country or language,
plenty of tools are provided for users and ad price can be set by the word or by the ad.
Google provides several tools to help users succeed. The Google Website Optimizer can help
you test the potential conversion rate of your landing page. As with some other pay per click
programs, Google awards relevancy. The more focused and relevant an ad is, the more viewers
click through. The higher the click through rate, the lower the actual cost per click.
Once you register for a free account, you’re ready to start a pay per click campaign. Use the
Google Keyword Tool to enter all of your keywords. If you haven’t already, you can use the tool
to generate more keywords.
Start with As Many Keywords as Possible
Your keyword list should contain every word you can think of that applies to searching for your
product. It’s okay to totally brainstorm and to add plenty of keywords with the Google Keyword
tool. The point right now is to get as many keywords as possible.
Additional keyword sources include forums and groups. What words and phrases are people
using? As you continue pay per click affiliate marketing, you’ll want to stay up to date on slang
or buzz words related to your product. Consult an online or print thesaurus to find good
synonyms.
Try typing your keyword in Google or another search engine. Visit the first few sites that come
up in the search results. Click on View, then source to see what keywords the site is using. If the
page isn’t encrypted, you’ll be able to read the list of keywords near the top of the source
information.
Ad Campaigns are made up of ad groups. For instance, an ad campaign to promote tattoos could
consist of separate ad groups focused on angel tattoos, dragon tattoos and fairy tattoos. Use
different ad campaigns for separate product types, different projects or different websites.
Ad groups can be based on several different criteria, including design, style, misspellings,
personality types, seasonal promotions, special promotions. Ad groups may contain just one ad
or several ads.
Clean and Customize Keyword List
Look at your keyword list. Are there any words there that aren’t relevant to the product?
Example: We’ve chosen a Clickbank tattoo site to promote. Three of the top designs on the site
are an angel tattoo, a fairy tattoo and a dragon tattoo.
Our keyword list contains angel tattoo, tattoo design, tribal tattoo, tattoo removal, Celtic tattoo
and skull tattoo, fairy tattoo and dragon tattoo, tattoo piercing, and tattoo needles.
The keywords tribal, removal, Celtic and skull can be deleted since they don’t directly apply to
the designs we’ve chosen to promote. (This is a short example. Your first keyword list can be
quite long before it’s cleaned up.)
We’ll now create one ad group on tattoos. There will be three ads in this group, one ad for each
type of tattoo. Think of each ad as a sort of classified ad.
Google policy tells us how the ad must be written:
Line 1: headline, maximum of 25 characters
Line 2: maximum of 35 characters.
Line 3: maximum of 35 characters.
Line 4: URL
The word ‘online’ cannot be used on Line #1. Superlatives (best, most, etc.) are not allowed in
any of the lines. Multiple exclamation points and other excessive punctuation is also prohibited.
Line 1: Ad Headline
This will be the first thing viewers notice. It should get their attention, be focused enough to
weed out the ‘tire kickers’ who are browsing, not buying, and should consist of your #1 keyword
search term.
Line 2: Emotional appeal to viewer. State your product’s best benefit here.
Line 3: Factual appeal to viewer. State your products most inspiring feature here.
Display URL: Include words here that emphasize the product benefit
Destination URL: Actual URL that takes viewer to landing page.
Note: Ad readers like numbers. Try including product price ($xx), percentages (20% off) or other
numbers in your ad.
Writing Angel Tattoo Ad:
Angel Tattoos.
Exclusive Designs.
Quality Creations.
www.terrifictattoos.com
This doesn’t look bad but it’s missing a call to action. Let’s try again.
Angel Tattoos.
One-of-a-Kind Creations.
Get your Guardian Angel Now.
www.terrifictattoos.com
It isn’t Hallmark but it does include a call to action – something that can increase your click
through rate tremendously. The click through rate is determined by how many times viewers
actually click on your add in ratio to how many times the ad was shown. A good click through
rate not only can result in more affiliate sales, it can result in reduced pay per click fees.
When writing ads, make sure you don’t exceed the character limit. Your keywords should be as
focused and specific as possible. A call to action (buy now, hurry, limited offer, etc.) should be
included. Note: the action phrase click here is not allowed.
The important thing to remember when writing pay per click affiliate marketing ads is that you
pay for every click. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to make your ad so focused and targeted
that only potential buyers click on it
You don’t want to pay for the clicks of web surfers who are just browsing. In the case of the
angel tattoo design, the goal is to provide specific information for someone who is already
interested in and looking for an angel tattoo.
The same would apply to the dragon tattoo ad and the fairy tattoo ad. The simplest budget option
for Adwords is to set a low daily budget ($5.00 or so) and to set a click price based on the entire
ad instead of for each keyword.
As time goes by and you see which keywords are getting results, write more ads based on those
words. Do monitor your ads closely. If you get too many clicks and not enough sales, try putting
the price in your ad.
Don’t activate any ads yet. In order for the ad to function, you need a page waiting for the
customer at the URL you’ve listed.
Why not just send the customer right to the merchant product page? There are several reasons.
Google Adwords does not allow landing pages (the page where the customer will land when they
click on the URL) to contain pop-ups or pop-unders. Most merchant pages are highly ‘tricked
out’ with some sort of pop-up or floating ad.
By sending the customer to your page first, you get a chance to capture customer information,
pre-sell the product (a very effective practice) and establish your web page. If you have no
experience with websites, don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be hard.
Landing Pages
Google Adwords Rules and Regulations
Adwords’ rules and regulations can and do change. Google provides a free guide to help you get
started, along with information online and the Adwords Blog.
When it comes to landing pages, Google Adwords expects a link that works. (Seems like a nobrainer
but they obviously had to put it in writing.)
Once a viewer clicks on your ad, the promoted product should not be more than 3 clicks away.
The landing page cannot contain pop-ups or pop-unders. Clicking on the back arrow at any time
must return the user to Google.
The landing page is a vital part of pay-per-click marketing. If you send viewers directly to the
Clickbank merchant’s page, you’re required to show yourself as an affiliate. Google allows two
affiliate links per merchant per page. Two. If you aren’t one of the top two producing pay per
click affiliate marketers for the product, don’t bother writing ads.
URL’s featuring affiliate links or long URLs do not look professional and this can reduce
clickability. Example: Promoting the tattoo site with the Clickbank link would look something
like this – http://tattoo.hop.clickbank.com/7634. Some merchant affiliate links are quite lengthy.
Example: http://greattattoo.com/angel/user/bebop/site2/3658720-90.
These are fictional examples but they illustrate the problem. One solution to affiliate links? Go to
www.tinyurl.com and shorten the link. This is a popular solution. So popular that the words tiny
URL look almost generic. Tinyurl.com also offers what they call the preview version, meant to
instill more customer confidence. This version just adds the world ‘preview’ to the newly created
URL.
You can also download profit protector and use it to create redirects. Since this does require FTP
experience, you might prefer to use URL freeze. It’s free and doesn’t involve any uploading of
files. You’ll find it at www.URLfreeze.com.
The best solution to the URL issue is to get your own domain name. Use your keywords.
Example: We’ll pretend that qualitytattoo.com is available and use it for the exercises we’re
doing.
You cannot set up an actual Google Adwords campaign until you have a URL to direct ads to.
When you type your ad into the Google Adwords ad setup, you’ll be required to provide the
URL. Google will follow the URL, making sure it works and that your landing page contains the
same keywords.
To register a domain name, go to a domain name registrar by typing domain name into the search
engine search bar. There are several popular ones. GoDaddy, and Hostgator are two of them.
Since you’re going to need a 2 page website, it will be easier to get both name and web address
at the same place. While it is possible to point domain names to any location, it takes time.
Landing Page Hosting
To promote affiliate products with pay per click marketing, a lot of bandwidth or server space is
not required. You don’t have to purchase a big, expensive hosting plan. There’s a good chance
that the simplest plan will do nicely.
If you’re new to website design, it helps if your website host has built in website creator
software. It isn’t necessary. There are a wide variety of free and low cost website templates
available online. They come with directions for altering the template and uploading it to the
server at your web host address.
Creating a Landing Page
Once you have a name and an address, it’s time to create a landing page that results in sales.
Keep it simple. Many marketers state that a simple two column page is all you need. For a header
at the top of your page, consider downloading a banner from the affiliate program.
If our example site qualitytattoo.com provided free banners for affiliates, getting one would be a
simple matter of going to the page where affiliate tools and links are provided.
Page one should be where the customer arrives when clicking on the pay per click ad. The
second page is the About page. That’s it. Two pages. Google expects to find a home page, an
about page and contact information.
Three key features of a good landing page:
• Easy to Read
• Attractive and Professional
• Directly Represent What Ad Promotes
The landing page should match the ad – it should contain the same keywords. Write a short
review or article about the product you are promoting. Put text links inside the article to the
merchant page.
Example promo written for domain name of myangeltattoo.com:
The Ebony Angel Tattoo by renowned tattoo artist Cherise is truly a work of art. The ethereal
glow of the angel wings gives the tattoo the look of a living, breathing creature. Crimson etching
shadowing the wings lend an aura of dangerous power… more
The hyperlink for the word ‘more’ leads to the merchant page. The phrase ‘Angel Tattoo’ and
other keywords, (tattoo, design, etc) should be bold and can also be hyperlinked to the sales
page. This text can be a two to three paragraph article or a short introduction.
Your landing page must hook and hold viewers attention in just a few seconds. Product image(s)
should be placed to the left side of the page.
Other Landing Page Contents
A free newsletter sign up form should be included on the page. This is often in the upper right or
left corners of the page. Many web hosting services that feature website builder software also
provide easy to use forms to include on pages. Some web hosts also include a free autoresponder
to handle the signups.
Contact information should reflect the email address you set up with your hosting provider or a
free email address that you will check frequently.
Opinions vary on how many products to feature on a page. Since the angel tattoo, fairy tattoo and
dragon tattoo are all tattoos; all three could be featured on the same landing page. In this case, an
article or product review would be done for each tattoo.
You can keep the landing page fresh and continually updated by grabbing an article feed and
having articles about tattoo related topics showing on the page. These should be positioned
below your tattoo promo material.
Using RSS article feeds
Ezinearticles.com and other article sites allow articles to be used as long as resource boxes are
included. If you are using the ezinearticle.com feed, you don’t have to worry about anything
except making sure the feed works. Ezinearticles.com has a high ranking, another good reason to
have them linked to your page.
To get an ezinearticle.com feed, go to www.ezinearticles.com/rss. There you can scroll down to
the ezinearticles.com arts and entertainment - tattoo section. Click on the orange feed button. The
copy and paste the address shown at the top of the page. It will end in xml. In this case it is
http://ezinearticles.com/rss/Arts-and-Entertainment-Tattoos.xml
This will be the feed address needed to add the feed to your landing page. If the website builder
software that came with your webhosting doesn’t allow easy, automatic feed insertion, there are
many free RSS tutorials online.
Search engines like fresh content and a feed that updates daily is fresh content you don’t have to
be doing manually.
Landing Page Do’s
Do deliver what the ad promises.
Do include ad headline in landing page headline.
Do limit or remove navigation
Do use the search terms at the top of the landing page so that viewers know they’ve landed on
the right page.
Landing Page Do Not’s
Do not use the same old boring text.
Do not clutter the page.
Do not make it easy for the customer to leave the page. (Keep navigation bar a simple one –
home and about.)
Google Adwords Budget
The simplest way to begin an Adwords campaign is to set your daily budget at $5.00. You can
watch daily to see if your ads are drawing clicks. It’s been estimated that 95% of those who lose
money on pay per click advertising do so because they fail to keep an eye on not only the daily
budget but the results of ads.
Often the most popular keywords will be entirely too expensive to bid on. This is where a long
keyword list can come in handy. Try using more of the words that cost less, in addition to
phrases and terms.
When ads are producing clicks that result in product sales, you can cut your bid amount in half or
even by two-thirds and still get traffic.
Google Adwords Sign Up
Google Adwords Help Center
Pay Per Click Advantages
When used correctly, pay per click ads get immediate results.
Pay per click ads give you the power to test a business idea and find out if there is a market for it
before investing a lot of money.
Pay Per Click Do’s
Do research keywords carefully.
Do use specific, focused keywords.
Do monitor ad campaigns closely.
Do set a budget and stick with it.
Do shoot for a position somewhere between 3rd and 7th.
Do know your profit margin and conversion rate.
Do include keywords in ad titles.
Do consider current event keywords.
Do consider buzz keywords.
Pay Per Click Do Not’s
Do not automatically bid for the highest spot.
Do not ignore budget.
Do not forget to keep an eye on ads & monitor their performance.
Do not put off turning off ad campaigns that are not getting results.
Do not get involved in bidding wars.
Do not use direct URLs to the merchant site.
Pay Per Click Ads
Typical pay per click ads consist of a heading, a short summary and the URL where customers
who click on the ad will land. Some pay per click providers allow more words per ad, some
allow less. The rules regarding terms and descriptions used vary from provider to provider.
With some pay per click providers, your ads will appear instantly. With other providers, you
must wait until your ads have been approved.
Once you’ve written an ad, try creating different versions of it. Don’t be afraid to tweak ads and
try them again.
ROI, or return on investment is what matters. To determine the ROI of an ad, subtract the cost of
running the ads from the amount earned from the ads. If the ROI is low or is a negative number,
it’s time to stop the ad and change or delete it.
Keywords
The success (or failure) of your ad relies very much on your selection of keywords. Keywords,
the words customers will use to find your ad, should be as focused as possible. The more focused
the keyword, the more the ad can potentially earn.
Keyword Do’s
Do Choose Keywords Carefully.
Do Use Specific, focused keywords.
Do use more than one keyword tool to build the best selection.
Do Set Negative Keywords.
Keyword Do Not’s
Do Not Use broad keywords.
Yahoo Search Marketing
Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) operates much like Google and other pay per click
programs. Ads appear on pages in the Yahoo Search Marketing directory area. Yahoo’s help
section features frequently asked questions and topic search options.
Cost to get started is a $5.00 deposit (used as bid credits). Although the fine print states that you
may be charged 10% more than the budget amount that you set, this rarely happens. Yahoo does
automatically charge your credit card every time you run low on funds. Other pay per click
providers do not charge your credit card and add more credit to your account until you choose to
do so.
When signed in to Yahoo Search Marketing, you’ll see id ranges, estimated clicks and estimated
share of clicks. You can change your maximum bid to see how this affects expected traffic and
anticipated costs.
Remember that it isn’t necessary to be in the #1 position. It’s often better to be at #2 or #3 than it
is to be at #1. What matters is that you are on the first page of search results.
Relevant, well-written ads can result in a high click through rate (CTR) and a higher quality
scoring. Ads that score higher often get discounts on click costs.
Where Google lets you choose exact, broad or phrase matching, Yahoo offers standard and
advanced. Ads set for standard match will show when keywords match the exact terms being
searched, in addition to singular, plural and misspelled versions of your keywords. Advanced
matching displays ads for broad range matching.
Yahoo offers standard and advanced match listings. Standard listings can actually appear above
advanced ones when the standard listing search terms more closely match the words being
searched.
Microsoft Ad Center
Microsoft Ad Center’s distribution area is more limited than that of Google and Yahoo, although
it is growing. Signing up is simple, a help center and ad tools are provided.
One neat tool that the Ad Center features is an actual ad writer. You type in the URL of the site
you wish to promote. The program will show you potential ads. You’ll find a long list of helpful
tools here that you could also use while writing ads for Google Adwords and other programs.
Other Pay Per Click Providers
There are many other pay per click providers. Smaller pay per click search engines often feature
keywords at lower bid costs. This is because less people are using these engines. The cost to get
started varies from company to company. Here are a few of the popular ones, in alphabetical
order.
ABCSearch
Enhance
ePilot
Espotting
FindWhat
GoClick
Kanoodle
Looksmart
Lycos
Miva
Search123
SearchFeed
7Search
RESOURCES
Affiliate Networks
www.advertising.com
www.affiliatefuel.com
www.affiliates.befree.com
www.clickbank.com
www.clickxchange.com
www.clixgalore.com
www.cj.com
www.commissionsoup.com
www.linkshare.com
www.performics.com
www.primaryads.com
www.quinstreet.com
www.referback.com
www.search4clicks.com
www.shareasale.com
www.websponsors.com
Financial Formulas
Conversion Rate: How many visitors (clicks) are needed to sell one item.
Number of visitors divided by the number of sales = conversion rate.
Ex: 100 visitors divided by 1 sale = 100
Visitor Value: How much a visitor is worth
Net profit per sale divided by conversion rate = visitor value
Ex: 23.32 divided by 100 =.23
Each visitor is worth 23 cents.
Net Profit: How much you make when you sell an item
(Gross Revenue – total expenses) divided by total sales = net profit on sale
Tools
There are a huge variety of tools available for pay per click affiliate marketers. Many tools are
based on finding keywords. There are also companies and software programs created to manage
bids, ads and everything related to writing ads and promoting products.
Keyword Elite: keyword tool
Nichebot: keyword tool
Wordtracker: keyword tool
ppcToolkit: various tools
Googspy: keyword tool – see what keywords a site is bidding on
GLOSSARY
Ad Campaign: Set of ad groups based around one website, project or product line.
Ad Group: Individual ads based on each part of a product line, website, etc.
Adwords: Google’s Paid Search Marketing Program.
Affiliate Marketing: Act of selling products on a commission basis. Commission may be
percentage or flat rate.
Auto Bidding: your keyword bid is automatically changed by 1 cent if your closest competitor
changes their bid.
Bid: the amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
CPM: cost per 1000. The cost of 1,000 ad views or impressions.
CTR: Click through rate. Number of viewers who clicked on ad.
CPC: Cost Per Click The amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Conversion Rate: (the number of click throughs divided by the number of purchases) The
higher the conversion rate, the more successful the ad.
Hits: number of times a web page is viewed.
Impression: web page view.
Keyword – the word, term or phrases users type into the search boxes. A pay per click campaign
can use a few keywords or a few thousand keywords, depending on size of campaign.
Keyword Bid – The maximum amount you’re willing to pay every time someone clicks on your
ad.
Minimum Bid - The minimum price required to bid on a keyword or phrase.
Page View - The number of times a web page is viewed.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising - A marketing method where advertisers pay when viewers
click on their ads.
Return on Investment (ROI) –
Unique Visitor - The number of people who view a web page. If one person visits the same web
several times, they will be counted as only 1 unique visitor.
ROI: Return on Investment. How much money is left after deducting expenses from income.
PAY PER CLICK AFFILIATE MARKETING CHECKLIST
o Product Chosen.
o Keywords:
o Domain Name Reserved:
o Web Hosting:
o Landing Page Created:
o Main Search Term for Ad Headline:
o Emotional Appeal Benefit Keyword(s)
o Factual Appeal Feature Keyword(s)
o Destination URL: http://
Index
Ad Sample................................................. 13
Adwords
Rules ..................................................... 14
Affiliate Link
Example .................................................. 8
Affiliate Networds
Signing UP.............................................. 8
Affiliate Network
Clickbank ................................................ 7
Commission Junction.............................. 7
Paydotcom............................................... 7
Affiliate Networks
List ........................................................ 21
Top Networks.......................................... 7
Anti-Virus Protection.................................. 5
Budget ....................................................... 10
Checklist ................................................... 23
Clickbank .................................................... 7
Commission Junction.................................. 7
Email Providers
gmail ....................................................... 5
Hotmail ................................................... 5
yahoo....................................................... 5
Formula
Conversion Rate.................................... 21
Net Profit............................................... 22
Visitor Value................................... 10, 22
Google Adwords ....................................... 11
Ad Specifications .................................. 12
Landing Pages....................................... 14
Keyword
Do Not's ................................................ 19
Do's ....................................................... 19
Explained ................................................ 9
Keyword Research Tool
123Promotion.......................................... 9
Good Keywords ...................................... 9
Google Adwords Keyword Tool............. 9
SEOBook Keyword Tool ........................ 9
Wordtracker ............................................ 9
Landing Pages
Creating................................................. 15
RSS ....................................................... 16
Pay Per Click
Ad Writing ............................................ 18
Budget ................................................... 10
Defined.................................................... 8
Do Not's ................................................ 18
Do's ....................................................... 17
Free Ad Writer ...................................... 20
Writing Ads........................................... 12
Pay Per Click Programs ............................ 11
MSN Ad Center .................................... 20
Yahoo Search Marketing ...................... 19
Pay Per Click Providers ............................ 20
Paydotcom................................................... 7
Payment Processors
Paypal...................................................... 6
Paypal.......................................................... 6
Products
Deciding what to sell .............................. 6
Locating .................................................. 7
Promoting Products..................................... 6
RSS Feeds
Using on Landing Pages ....................... 16
Yahoo Search Marketing .......................... 19

Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing

Beginner’s Guide To
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing
By JayKay Bak
http://unselfishmarketer.com/showme
Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 4
Tools of the Trade.......................................................................................................................... 4
Promoting Products........................................................................................................................ 5
Getting Ideas ............................................................................................................................... 5
Locating Products ....................................................................................................................... 6
Signing Up ................................................................................................................................. 6
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing .................................................................................................. 7
Keywords ....................................................................................................................................... 7
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing Budget.................................................................................. 8
Pay Per Click Programs .................................................................................................................. 9
Google Adwords ........................................................................................................................... 10
Landing Pages.......................................................................................................................... 12
Landing Page Hosting............................................................................................................... 13
Landing Page Do’s.................................................................................................................... 15
Landing Page Do Not’s............................................................................................................. 15
Google Adwords Budget............................................................................................................... 16
Google Adwords Sign Up..................................................................................................... 16
Google Adwords Help Center............................................................................................... 16
Pay Per Click Advantages............................................................................................................. 16
Pay Per Click Do’s.................................................................................................................... 16
Pay Per Click Do Not’s............................................................................................................. 17
Pay Per Click Ads ......................................................................................................................... 17
Keywords ................................................................................................................................. 17
Keyword Do’s....................................................................................................................... 17
Keyword Do Not’s................................................................................................................ 18
Yahoo Search Marketing .............................................................................................................. 18
MSN Ad Center ............................................................................................................................ 18
Other Pay Per Click Providers ...................................................................................................... 19
RESOURCES ............................................................................................................................... 19
Affiliate Networks .................................................................................................................... 19
Financial Formulas....................................................................................................................... 20
GLOSSARY ................................................................................................................................ 21
INTRODUCTION
Congratulations! You are now on your way to learning more about Pay Per Click Affiliate
Marketing.
Inside this report you’ll learn how to set up your first pay per click campaign as an affiliate
marketer. You’ll learn how to use the power of pay per click to make money.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing doesn’t have to be expensive. It can be both fun and addictive.
Ready to give pay per click a try?
Let’s Get Started!
Tools of the Trade
Achieving success with pay per click advertising doesn’t require a lot of fancy tools. Of course,
there are some nifty ones out there that you’ll probably want to invest in later if you decide pay
per click affiliate marketing is for you.
Right now, you’ll need a computer with reliable Internet access. If you have spreadsheet
software and are accustomed to using it, you’ll probably find yourself using it. If you don’t’ have
spreadsheet software and haven’t a clue how to use it, don’t worry.
High speed Internet isn’t a must for pay per click affiliate marketing, but it does make things
easier. If DSL is available, you might want to switch once you get income coming in. You can
also take advantage of a dialup accelerator.
Protect your computer and your data.
Your computer is at the center of your affiliate marketing business. Before you even log on to the
Internet, make sure your computer is protected. Surfing the Internet, researching products and
keywords can expose your computer to all sorts of viruses and spyware. Make sure the firewall
on your computer is activated.
Many experts recommend using at least 2 anti-virus programs and 2 anti-spy programs. You can
get free spyware and anti-virus protection from AVG. There are several good paid programs
also. Whatever protection you choose, remember to use. If it isn’t possible to set the software to
run automatically, make a habit of manually running it daily. Backup data and files regularly.
Email
Set up one email account specifically for affiliate marketing. Free accounts are available at
gmail, yahoo and hotmail. Use this email address only when signing up for affiliate programs or
managing pay per click accounts.
Get another email account to use when researching. Use this email address when signing up for
free newsletters, reports, etc. You don’t want to use your personal or business email addresses
because they’ll fill up fast.
Getting Paid
Most merchants and affiliate programs give you the option of payment by check, automatic
deposit or Paypal. Some merchants use only Paypal. Some offer a variety of payment options.
Sign up for a free Paypal account if you haven’t done so already. Use your affiliate email
account for your Paypal email.
If you’ll be receiving commission checks by mail, you might want to get a Post Office Box if
you don’t already have one. Paychecks may be safer in the post office box than in the mail box.
Preparation Checklist:
o Computer.
o Firewall on Computer.
o Anti-spy and Anti-virus software installed and running.
o Email address for Affiliate Marketing and Pay Per Click Ad Management.
o Email address for research, newsletters and general web surfing.
o Paypal account, if needed.
o Post Office Box, optional.
Promoting Products
Getting Ideas
It’s been said that the hardest part of selling anything is deciding what to sell. The best place to
start is to consider what you know and what you live. Grab a sheet of paper and start listing
everything you enjoy. What are you passionate about? Do you have special skills? What about
hobbies or other interests?
Make a list of 10 or 12 things that you enjoy. Topics that make you smile when you think about
them. Finding something you’re passionate about makes it easier to be passionate about your
affiliate marketing business. Here’s a few ideas to help you get started:
Accounting Arts & Crafts Automobiles Birds Baseball
Books Calligraphy Carpentry Cats Catering
Coaching Computers Cooking Dating Decorating
Dogs EBooks Ezines Fitness Flowers
Football Games Gardening Genealogy Golf
Home Biz\ Home Décor Internet Landscaping Magazines
Marketing Martial Arts Movies Music Parenting
Pet Care Pet Grooming Pet Training Plants Plumbing
Recipes Relationships Romance Sewing Skin Care
Soccer Software Spirituality Teens Travel
Websites Weight Loss
Have you made a nice, long list of possibilities? Make a shorter list now of your top ten or
twelve ideas. What type of products or services could you sell for each of those ideas?
Locating Products
The quickest way to find merchants with affiliate programs and browse their products is to go
directly to an Affiliate Network.
Clickbank, Paydotcom and Commission Junction are three popular ones.
Browsing the categories may give you even more ideas about products you’d like to promote.
Take the time to look at commission rates, affiliate requirements and other fine print information.
Make sure the commission you’ll earn is worth your time.
Look at payment options and times. How often does the merchant pay or network pay? How are
affiliates paid? Some programs pay at least once a month. Some pay only 3 or 4 times a year.
What is required to qualify for the affiliate program?
Some merchants require completed applications, established websites and specific traffic
numbers before issuing approval. Others automatically approve all applicants.
With Clickbank and Paydotcom approval is usually instant and automatic. Commission Junction
features merchants that have varying requirements. Some will approve you even if you don’t
have a website. Others have stricter requirements.
There are other affiliate networks. We’ve included a list of them in the Resource section at the
end of this report. The three we’re focusing on here tend to be the most popular and the easiest to
get signed up for.
Signing Up
Sign up at with the affiliate network that has the products you wish to promote. You might want
to go ahead and sign up at all three. There’s no charge to do so.
Once you are approved at Clickbank and Paydotcom, you choose the particular products you
wish to promote. Whenever you choose a product, you’re given a special code that identifies
you. This code is attached to the link that leads to the product page. This is your affiliate link.
Example of an affiliate link: http://product.com/user/4532. You may have seen affiliate links in
your web browser’s address page before. Since this link is an example and not a real one, it
doesn’t work.
One of the first thing you’ll probably want to do as an affiliate marketer is to find a way to hide
that code. Unfortunately, there are people who will change it or delete it, thereby cheating you
out of a commission. There are several free and paid methods. We’ll cover them late.
Find 2 or 3 products for the top 2 or 3 ideas on your list. Bookmark the site(s) featuring them.
You might even want to print out a copy of the site for reference later when you get into
keyword selection.
Checklist:
o Sign up for an affiliate account.
o Choose 1 to 3 products.
o Copy and paste your affiliate link into notepad for later use.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing
What is pay per click affiliate marketing? It is the use of pay per click ads to sell products and/or
services. When website owners and affiliate marketers use pay per click marketing, they write
keyword based ads.
Once the ads are written, placement is decided by bid amount. There is no charge for ad
placement until someone clicks on the ad. The key to success in pay per click is creating an eyecatching
ad containing specific, focused keywords and monitoring ad cost.
When someone surfs the net and clicks on the ad, the cost is equal to the bid amount that has
been set. For instance, if the bid is .$05 on the keyword hypnotherapist, a nickel will be deducted
from the pay per click account every time someone clicks on the ad featuring the word
hypnotherapist.
Keywords
Success in any type of affiliate marketing advertising revolves around keywords. Keywords are
especially important in pay per click. The cost of the ad is determined by the bid.
Keywords are the words that people type into the search bar when they’re looking for something
online. Example: People looking for a Norah Jones CD will either type “Norah Jones CD” or the
title of the CD into the search bar.
The key to selling a Norah Jones CD would be in using the keywords “Norah Jones CD” and not
the generic terms “music” or “CD.” Keywords must be as specific and focused as possible.
In order to compile a good keyword list, you’ll need to make use of a keyword research tool.
Here are a few of the three popular ones:
Good Keywords a free downloadable software
Google Adwords Keyword Tool free online tool
SEOBook Keyword Tool free online tool
Wordtracker subscription but offers a free trial.
123Promotion free online tool featuring Overture & Wordtracker
When you type one of the words from your list into the search box on a keyword tool, the tool
will tell you how many people searched that word or phrase recently. You’ll also see all the ways
they searched for it.
Example: Go to the SEOBook Keyword Tool and type in the word music.
The results show that millions of searches have been done for the word music. Music is much too
broad a keyword. It must be narrowed down. How do you know how many searches make a
good place to start?
Some successful affiliate marketers say that 15,000 searches are enough. Many affiliate
marketing professionals recommend using keywords that have somewhere between 30,000 and
50,000 searches per month.
If you look on down the returned music search list, you’ll see the number of searches for each
phrase. You can choose one search term that has 30,000 to 50,000 searches or you can combine
several keywords and add the total searches for each until the total adds up to 30,000 to 50,000
searches.
Now, let’s try typing the word music into the Google Adword Tool. We can choose to run an
exact match, a broad match or a phrase match. Google will give us an idea of how often a phrase
is being searched and how much competition there is for that keyword.
Type your product keywords into one of the keyword search tools. If you are an experienced
spreadsheet user, copy and paste the results into a spreadsheet. Use more than one of the
keyword tools. Keep adding to your list of potential keywords. Note the keyword or phrase (you
can search phrases as well as individual words) that gets the most results for each product.
Pay Per Click Affiliate Marketing Budget
Keyword Budget is an important part of pay per click marketing. Bid too much and you’ll go
broke, possibly even without sales to show for it. Bid too low and you’ll never get clicks which
mean you won’t get visitors. No visitors mean no sales.
The best way to set a keyword budget is to take sales figures and costs and do some calculations.
However, if you’ve never sold anything before, there are no sales figures to plug into the
formulas.
For the rest of the keyword and ad exercises, we’re going to use a Clickbank tattoo provider who
pays $23.32 per sale and states that the product has a conversion rate of 100. This means that it
takes 100 visitors to sell one item.
Let’s find out what a visitor is worth.
Visitor Value
Here’s what we know:
The Clickbank Merchant we signed with pays $23.32 per sale.
It takes 100 visitors to get one sale.
Visitor Value = commission amount divided by the number of visitors.
$23.32 ÷ 100 = $.23
So each visitor is worth 23 cents.
This is important to know because you don’t want to pay more for a click than that click (visitor)
is worth.
Our click cost limit is 23 cents, preferably less.
Many people lose money on pay per click affiliate marketing because they do not keep up with
how much they’re spending on ad campaigns and because they fail to check the return on
investment for ads.
In our case, we know that spending more than 23 cents per visitor will mean losing money
instead of making money. It’s very important, especially for the first few days of a new ad
campaign, to pay close attention to the clicks and results.
Many marketers agree that after an ad has received 200 page views, you have enough
information to do something. If there have been no sales, either the ad isn’t focused and well
written or there just isn’t any market for the product. If you aren’t monitoring the ad information
regularly, you won’t know when you’ve reached 200 views.
Let’s see what we can do with a Tattoo pay per click affiliate marketing campaign.
Pay Per Click Programs
The two largest pay per click providers are Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.
Google Adwords
Google is the king of pay per click programs. Cost to sign up is $5.00 (given as bid credit) and
your ads can appear in as quick as ten minutes. Since Google is syndicated, ads appear in front of
even more customers. You can target your ads to a particular country, area, or even zip code if
you wish.
While there are less expensive pay per click programs, Google’s Adwords offers several
advantages. Relevant ads rise, price monitoring is automatic, ads go live almost immediately, a
low minimum deposit gets you started quickly, ad areas can be targeted by country or language,
plenty of tools are provided for users and ad price can be set by the word or by the ad.
Google provides several tools to help users succeed. The Google Website Optimizer can help
you test the potential conversion rate of your landing page. As with some other pay per click
programs, Google awards relevancy. The more focused and relevant an ad is, the more viewers
click through. The higher the click through rate, the lower the actual cost per click.
Once you register for a free account, you’re ready to start a pay per click campaign. Use the
Google Keyword Tool to enter all of your keywords. If you haven’t already, you can use the tool
to generate more keywords.
Start with As Many Keywords as Possible
Your keyword list should contain every word you can think of that applies to searching for your
product. It’s okay to totally brainstorm and to add plenty of keywords with the Google Keyword
tool. The point right now is to get as many keywords as possible.
Additional keyword sources include forums and groups. What words and phrases are people
using? As you continue pay per click affiliate marketing, you’ll want to stay up to date on slang
or buzz words related to your product. Consult an online or print thesaurus to find good
synonyms.
Try typing your keyword in Google or another search engine. Visit the first few sites that come
up in the search results. Click on View, then source to see what keywords the site is using. If the
page isn’t encrypted, you’ll be able to read the list of keywords near the top of the source
information.
Ad Campaigns are made up of ad groups. For instance, an ad campaign to promote tattoos could
consist of separate ad groups focused on angel tattoos, dragon tattoos and fairy tattoos. Use
different ad campaigns for separate product types, different projects or different websites.
Ad groups can be based on several different criteria, including design, style, misspellings,
personality types, seasonal promotions, special promotions. Ad groups may contain just one ad
or several ads.
Clean and Customize Keyword List
Look at your keyword list. Are there any words there that aren’t relevant to the product?
Example: We’ve chosen a Clickbank tattoo site to promote. Three of the top designs on the site
are an angel tattoo, a fairy tattoo and a dragon tattoo.
Our keyword list contains angel tattoo, tattoo design, tribal tattoo, tattoo removal, Celtic tattoo
and skull tattoo, fairy tattoo and dragon tattoo, tattoo piercing, and tattoo needles.
The keywords tribal, removal, Celtic and skull can be deleted since they don’t directly apply to
the designs we’ve chosen to promote. (This is a short example. Your first keyword list can be
quite long before it’s cleaned up.)
We’ll now create one ad group on tattoos. There will be three ads in this group, one ad for each
type of tattoo. Think of each ad as a sort of classified ad.
Google policy tells us how the ad must be written:
Line 1: headline, maximum of 25 characters
Line 2: maximum of 35 characters.
Line 3: maximum of 35 characters.
Line 4: URL
The word ‘online’ cannot be used on Line #1. Superlatives (best, most, etc.) are not allowed in
any of the lines. Multiple exclamation points and other excessive punctuation is also prohibited.
Line 1: Ad Headline
This will be the first thing viewers notice. It should get their attention, be focused enough to
weed out the ‘tire kickers’ who are browsing, not buying, and should consist of your #1 keyword
search term.
Line 2: Emotional appeal to viewer. State your product’s best benefit here.
Line 3: Factual appeal to viewer. State your products most inspiring feature here.
Display URL: Include words here that emphasize the product benefit
Destination URL: Actual URL that takes viewer to landing page.
Note: Ad readers like numbers. Try including product price ($xx), percentages (20% off) or other
numbers in your ad.
Writing Angel Tattoo Ad:
Angel Tattoos.
Exclusive Designs.
Quality Creations.
www.terrifictattoos.com
This doesn’t look bad but it’s missing a call to action. Let’s try again.
Angel Tattoos.
One-of-a-Kind Creations.
Get your Guardian Angel Now.
www.terrifictattoos.com
It isn’t Hallmark but it does include a call to action – something that can increase your click
through rate tremendously. The click through rate is determined by how many times viewers
actually click on your add in ratio to how many times the ad was shown. A good click through
rate not only can result in more affiliate sales, it can result in reduced pay per click fees.
When writing ads, make sure you don’t exceed the character limit. Your keywords should be as
focused and specific as possible. A call to action (buy now, hurry, limited offer, etc.) should be
included. Note: the action phrase click here is not allowed.
The important thing to remember when writing pay per click affiliate marketing ads is that you
pay for every click. Therefore, it’s in your best interest to make your ad so focused and targeted
that only potential buyers click on it
You don’t want to pay for the clicks of web surfers who are just browsing. In the case of the
angel tattoo design, the goal is to provide specific information for someone who is already
interested in and looking for an angel tattoo.
The same would apply to the dragon tattoo ad and the fairy tattoo ad. The simplest budget option
for Adwords is to set a low daily budget ($5.00 or so) and to set a click price based on the entire
ad instead of for each keyword.
As time goes by and you see which keywords are getting results, write more ads based on those
words. Do monitor your ads closely. If you get too many clicks and not enough sales, try putting
the price in your ad.
Don’t activate any ads yet. In order for the ad to function, you need a page waiting for the
customer at the URL you’ve listed.
Why not just send the customer right to the merchant product page? There are several reasons.
Google Adwords does not allow landing pages (the page where the customer will land when they
click on the URL) to contain pop-ups or pop-unders. Most merchant pages are highly ‘tricked
out’ with some sort of pop-up or floating ad.
By sending the customer to your page first, you get a chance to capture customer information,
pre-sell the product (a very effective practice) and establish your web page. If you have no
experience with websites, don’t worry. It doesn’t have to be hard.
Landing Pages
Google Adwords Rules and Regulations
Adwords’ rules and regulations can and do change. Google provides a free guide to help you get
started, along with information online and the Adwords Blog.
When it comes to landing pages, Google Adwords expects a link that works. (Seems like a nobrainer
but they obviously had to put it in writing.)
Once a viewer clicks on your ad, the promoted product should not be more than 3 clicks away.
The landing page cannot contain pop-ups or pop-unders. Clicking on the back arrow at any time
must return the user to Google.
The landing page is a vital part of pay-per-click marketing. If you send viewers directly to the
Clickbank merchant’s page, you’re required to show yourself as an affiliate. Google allows two
affiliate links per merchant per page. Two. If you aren’t one of the top two producing pay per
click affiliate marketers for the product, don’t bother writing ads.
URL’s featuring affiliate links or long URLs do not look professional and this can reduce
clickability. Example: Promoting the tattoo site with the Clickbank link would look something
like this – http://tattoo.hop.clickbank.com/7634. Some merchant affiliate links are quite lengthy.
Example: http://greattattoo.com/angel/user/bebop/site2/3658720-90.
These are fictional examples but they illustrate the problem. One solution to affiliate links? Go to
www.tinyurl.com and shorten the link. This is a popular solution. So popular that the words tiny
URL look almost generic. Tinyurl.com also offers what they call the preview version, meant to
instill more customer confidence. This version just adds the world ‘preview’ to the newly created
URL.
You can also download profit protector and use it to create redirects. Since this does require FTP
experience, you might prefer to use URL freeze. It’s free and doesn’t involve any uploading of
files. You’ll find it at www.URLfreeze.com.
The best solution to the URL issue is to get your own domain name. Use your keywords.
Example: We’ll pretend that qualitytattoo.com is available and use it for the exercises we’re
doing.
You cannot set up an actual Google Adwords campaign until you have a URL to direct ads to.
When you type your ad into the Google Adwords ad setup, you’ll be required to provide the
URL. Google will follow the URL, making sure it works and that your landing page contains the
same keywords.
To register a domain name, go to a domain name registrar by typing domain name into the search
engine search bar. There are several popular ones. GoDaddy, and Hostgator are two of them.
Since you’re going to need a 2 page website, it will be easier to get both name and web address
at the same place. While it is possible to point domain names to any location, it takes time.
Landing Page Hosting
To promote affiliate products with pay per click marketing, a lot of bandwidth or server space is
not required. You don’t have to purchase a big, expensive hosting plan. There’s a good chance
that the simplest plan will do nicely.
If you’re new to website design, it helps if your website host has built in website creator
software. It isn’t necessary. There are a wide variety of free and low cost website templates
available online. They come with directions for altering the template and uploading it to the
server at your web host address.
Creating a Landing Page
Once you have a name and an address, it’s time to create a landing page that results in sales.
Keep it simple. Many marketers state that a simple two column page is all you need. For a header
at the top of your page, consider downloading a banner from the affiliate program.
If our example site qualitytattoo.com provided free banners for affiliates, getting one would be a
simple matter of going to the page where affiliate tools and links are provided.
Page one should be where the customer arrives when clicking on the pay per click ad. The
second page is the About page. That’s it. Two pages. Google expects to find a home page, an
about page and contact information.
Three key features of a good landing page:
• Easy to Read
• Attractive and Professional
• Directly Represent What Ad Promotes
The landing page should match the ad – it should contain the same keywords. Write a short
review or article about the product you are promoting. Put text links inside the article to the
merchant page.
Example promo written for domain name of myangeltattoo.com:
The Ebony Angel Tattoo by renowned tattoo artist Cherise is truly a work of art. The ethereal
glow of the angel wings gives the tattoo the look of a living, breathing creature. Crimson etching
shadowing the wings lend an aura of dangerous power… more
The hyperlink for the word ‘more’ leads to the merchant page. The phrase ‘Angel Tattoo’ and
other keywords, (tattoo, design, etc) should be bold and can also be hyperlinked to the sales
page. This text can be a two to three paragraph article or a short introduction.
Your landing page must hook and hold viewers attention in just a few seconds. Product image(s)
should be placed to the left side of the page.
Other Landing Page Contents
A free newsletter sign up form should be included on the page. This is often in the upper right or
left corners of the page. Many web hosting services that feature website builder software also
provide easy to use forms to include on pages. Some web hosts also include a free autoresponder
to handle the signups.
Contact information should reflect the email address you set up with your hosting provider or a
free email address that you will check frequently.
Opinions vary on how many products to feature on a page. Since the angel tattoo, fairy tattoo and
dragon tattoo are all tattoos; all three could be featured on the same landing page. In this case, an
article or product review would be done for each tattoo.
You can keep the landing page fresh and continually updated by grabbing an article feed and
having articles about tattoo related topics showing on the page. These should be positioned
below your tattoo promo material.
Using RSS article feeds
Ezinearticles.com and other article sites allow articles to be used as long as resource boxes are
included. If you are using the ezinearticle.com feed, you don’t have to worry about anything
except making sure the feed works. Ezinearticles.com has a high ranking, another good reason to
have them linked to your page.
To get an ezinearticle.com feed, go to www.ezinearticles.com/rss. There you can scroll down to
the ezinearticles.com arts and entertainment - tattoo section. Click on the orange feed button. The
copy and paste the address shown at the top of the page. It will end in xml. In this case it is
http://ezinearticles.com/rss/Arts-and-Entertainment-Tattoos.xml
This will be the feed address needed to add the feed to your landing page. If the website builder
software that came with your webhosting doesn’t allow easy, automatic feed insertion, there are
many free RSS tutorials online.
Search engines like fresh content and a feed that updates daily is fresh content you don’t have to
be doing manually.
Landing Page Do’s
Do deliver what the ad promises.
Do include ad headline in landing page headline.
Do limit or remove navigation
Do use the search terms at the top of the landing page so that viewers know they’ve landed on
the right page.
Landing Page Do Not’s
Do not use the same old boring text.
Do not clutter the page.
Do not make it easy for the customer to leave the page. (Keep navigation bar a simple one –
home and about.)
Google Adwords Budget
The simplest way to begin an Adwords campaign is to set your daily budget at $5.00. You can
watch daily to see if your ads are drawing clicks. It’s been estimated that 95% of those who lose
money on pay per click advertising do so because they fail to keep an eye on not only the daily
budget but the results of ads.
Often the most popular keywords will be entirely too expensive to bid on. This is where a long
keyword list can come in handy. Try using more of the words that cost less, in addition to
phrases and terms.
When ads are producing clicks that result in product sales, you can cut your bid amount in half or
even by two-thirds and still get traffic.
Google Adwords Sign Up
Google Adwords Help Center
Pay Per Click Advantages
When used correctly, pay per click ads get immediate results.
Pay per click ads give you the power to test a business idea and find out if there is a market for it
before investing a lot of money.
Pay Per Click Do’s
Do research keywords carefully.
Do use specific, focused keywords.
Do monitor ad campaigns closely.
Do set a budget and stick with it.
Do shoot for a position somewhere between 3rd and 7th.
Do know your profit margin and conversion rate.
Do include keywords in ad titles.
Do consider current event keywords.
Do consider buzz keywords.
Pay Per Click Do Not’s
Do not automatically bid for the highest spot.
Do not ignore budget.
Do not forget to keep an eye on ads & monitor their performance.
Do not put off turning off ad campaigns that are not getting results.
Do not get involved in bidding wars.
Do not use direct URLs to the merchant site.
Pay Per Click Ads
Typical pay per click ads consist of a heading, a short summary and the URL where customers
who click on the ad will land. Some pay per click providers allow more words per ad, some
allow less. The rules regarding terms and descriptions used vary from provider to provider.
With some pay per click providers, your ads will appear instantly. With other providers, you
must wait until your ads have been approved.
Once you’ve written an ad, try creating different versions of it. Don’t be afraid to tweak ads and
try them again.
ROI, or return on investment is what matters. To determine the ROI of an ad, subtract the cost of
running the ads from the amount earned from the ads. If the ROI is low or is a negative number,
it’s time to stop the ad and change or delete it.
Keywords
The success (or failure) of your ad relies very much on your selection of keywords. Keywords,
the words customers will use to find your ad, should be as focused as possible. The more focused
the keyword, the more the ad can potentially earn.
Keyword Do’s
Do Choose Keywords Carefully.
Do Use Specific, focused keywords.
Do use more than one keyword tool to build the best selection.
Do Set Negative Keywords.
Keyword Do Not’s
Do Not Use broad keywords.
Yahoo Search Marketing
Yahoo Search Marketing (formerly Overture) operates much like Google and other pay per click
programs. Ads appear on pages in the Yahoo Search Marketing directory area. Yahoo’s help
section features frequently asked questions and topic search options.
Cost to get started is a $5.00 deposit (used as bid credits). Although the fine print states that you
may be charged 10% more than the budget amount that you set, this rarely happens. Yahoo does
automatically charge your credit card every time you run low on funds. Other pay per click
providers do not charge your credit card and add more credit to your account until you choose to
do so.
When signed in to Yahoo Search Marketing, you’ll see id ranges, estimated clicks and estimated
share of clicks. You can change your maximum bid to see how this affects expected traffic and
anticipated costs.
Remember that it isn’t necessary to be in the #1 position. It’s often better to be at #2 or #3 than it
is to be at #1. What matters is that you are on the first page of search results.
Relevant, well-written ads can result in a high click through rate (CTR) and a higher quality
scoring. Ads that score higher often get discounts on click costs.
Where Google lets you choose exact, broad or phrase matching, Yahoo offers standard and
advanced. Ads set for standard match will show when keywords match the exact terms being
searched, in addition to singular, plural and misspelled versions of your keywords. Advanced
matching displays ads for broad range matching.
Yahoo offers standard and advanced match listings. Standard listings can actually appear above
advanced ones when the standard listing search terms more closely match the words being
searched.
Microsoft Ad Center
Microsoft Ad Center’s distribution area is more limited than that of Google and Yahoo, although
it is growing. Signing up is simple, a help center and ad tools are provided.
One neat tool that the Ad Center features is an actual ad writer. You type in the URL of the site
you wish to promote. The program will show you potential ads. You’ll find a long list of helpful
tools here that you could also use while writing ads for Google Adwords and other programs.
Other Pay Per Click Providers
There are many other pay per click providers. Smaller pay per click search engines often feature
keywords at lower bid costs. This is because less people are using these engines. The cost to get
started varies from company to company. Here are a few of the popular ones, in alphabetical
order.
ABCSearch
Enhance
ePilot
Espotting
FindWhat
GoClick
Kanoodle
Looksmart
Lycos
Miva
Search123
SearchFeed
7Search
RESOURCES
Affiliate Networks
www.advertising.com
www.affiliatefuel.com
www.affiliates.befree.com
www.clickbank.com
www.clickxchange.com
www.clixgalore.com
www.cj.com
www.commissionsoup.com
www.linkshare.com
www.performics.com
www.primaryads.com
www.quinstreet.com
www.referback.com
www.search4clicks.com
www.shareasale.com
www.websponsors.com
Financial Formulas
Conversion Rate: How many visitors (clicks) are needed to sell one item.
Number of visitors divided by the number of sales = conversion rate.
Ex: 100 visitors divided by 1 sale = 100
Visitor Value: How much a visitor is worth
Net profit per sale divided by conversion rate = visitor value
Ex: 23.32 divided by 100 =.23
Each visitor is worth 23 cents.
Net Profit: How much you make when you sell an item
(Gross Revenue – total expenses) divided by total sales = net profit on sale
Tools
There are a huge variety of tools available for pay per click affiliate marketers. Many tools are
based on finding keywords. There are also companies and software programs created to manage
bids, ads and everything related to writing ads and promoting products.
Keyword Elite: keyword tool
Nichebot: keyword tool
Wordtracker: keyword tool
ppcToolkit: various tools
Googspy: keyword tool – see what keywords a site is bidding on
GLOSSARY
Ad Campaign: Set of ad groups based around one website, project or product line.
Ad Group: Individual ads based on each part of a product line, website, etc.
Adwords: Google’s Paid Search Marketing Program.
Affiliate Marketing: Act of selling products on a commission basis. Commission may be
percentage or flat rate.
Auto Bidding: your keyword bid is automatically changed by 1 cent if your closest competitor
changes their bid.
Bid: the amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
CPM: cost per 1000. The cost of 1,000 ad views or impressions.
CTR: Click through rate. Number of viewers who clicked on ad.
CPC: Cost Per Click The amount you pay when someone clicks on your ad.
Conversion Rate: (the number of click throughs divided by the number of purchases) The
higher the conversion rate, the more successful the ad.
Hits: number of times a web page is viewed.
Impression: web page view.
Keyword – the word, term or phrases users type into the search boxes. A pay per click campaign
can use a few keywords or a few thousand keywords, depending on size of campaign.
Keyword Bid – The maximum amount you’re willing to pay every time someone clicks on your
ad.
Minimum Bid - The minimum price required to bid on a keyword or phrase.
Page View - The number of times a web page is viewed.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising - A marketing method where advertisers pay when viewers
click on their ads.
Return on Investment (ROI) –
Unique Visitor - The number of people who view a web page. If one person visits the same web
several times, they will be counted as only 1 unique visitor.
ROI: Return on Investment. How much money is left after deducting expenses from income.
PAY PER CLICK AFFILIATE MARKETING CHECKLIST
o Product Chosen.
o Keywords:
o Domain Name Reserved:
o Web Hosting:
o Landing Page Created:
o Main Search Term for Ad Headline:
o Emotional Appeal Benefit Keyword(s)
o Factual Appeal Feature Keyword(s)
o Destination URL: http://
Index
Ad Sample................................................. 13
Adwords
Rules ..................................................... 14
Affiliate Link
Example .................................................. 8
Affiliate Networds
Signing UP.............................................. 8
Affiliate Network
Clickbank ................................................ 7
Commission Junction.............................. 7
Paydotcom............................................... 7
Affiliate Networks
List ........................................................ 21
Top Networks.......................................... 7
Anti-Virus Protection.................................. 5
Budget ....................................................... 10
Checklist ................................................... 23
Clickbank .................................................... 7
Commission Junction.................................. 7
Email Providers
gmail ....................................................... 5
Hotmail ................................................... 5
yahoo....................................................... 5
Formula
Conversion Rate.................................... 21
Net Profit............................................... 22
Visitor Value................................... 10, 22
Google Adwords ....................................... 11
Ad Specifications .................................. 12
Landing Pages....................................... 14
Keyword
Do Not's ................................................ 19
Do's ....................................................... 19
Explained ................................................ 9
Keyword Research Tool
123Promotion.......................................... 9
Good Keywords ...................................... 9
Google Adwords Keyword Tool............. 9
SEOBook Keyword Tool ........................ 9
Wordtracker ............................................ 9
Landing Pages
Creating................................................. 15
RSS ....................................................... 16
Pay Per Click
Ad Writing ............................................ 18
Budget ................................................... 10
Defined.................................................... 8
Do Not's ................................................ 18
Do's ....................................................... 17
Free Ad Writer ...................................... 20
Writing Ads........................................... 12
Pay Per Click Programs ............................ 11
MSN Ad Center .................................... 20
Yahoo Search Marketing ...................... 19
Pay Per Click Providers ............................ 20
Paydotcom................................................... 7
Payment Processors
Paypal...................................................... 6
Paypal.......................................................... 6
Products
Deciding what to sell .............................. 6
Locating .................................................. 7
Promoting Products..................................... 6
RSS Feeds
Using on Landing Pages ....................... 16
Yahoo Search Marketing .......................... 19

Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success

Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your SuccessUltimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your SuccessUltimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your SuccessUltimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your SuccessUltimate Guide To
Online Profit Series – Volume 1

Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
For example, as a basic rule, as you plan and design your website, you
should be looking at other sites that are in the same genre as yours.
Maybe they offer similar or complimentary services. Maybe they provide
information about the same topic. Try to build relationships with the
operators of these sites. Leave comments on their blogs and participate in
forum discussions, leaving a link to your own page in your signature.
You may want to consider adding a blog to your website. Create an RSS
feed that notifies subscribers whenever you have updated information. Be
diligent about keeping the content on your page fresh and you will find
that you begin to get repeat traffic. Others will begin to link to you from
their own pages and list you as a valuable source of current information.
Just as in any traditional business format, building relationships and
networking will be vital pieces of your success.
The important thing, as you are beginning, is that you have a strong
understanding of the fact that it takes some work. The traffic flow at
your website won’t happen by accident. It takes careful planning
and sharp execution to make that hit number go up. In this book,
we are going to show you how.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 6
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 2:
Free Traffic vs. Paid Traffic
Due to the rapid usage of the Internet becoming a norm throughout the
globe, various groups of people are now able to market their products and
services by setting up a website. However, the best-designed web site will
not produce income unless there is traffic directed to it. There are a
couple of options to obtain website traffic. One is through free traffic
and the other one is through paid traffic. Let’s examine the differences
between the two. You can then decide whether the former or the latter is
a suitable choice for your website.
Free traffic, as the name suggests, implies that you traffic to your
website free of charge. The most common method of obtaining this
involves using Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques. When you
optimize your website, search engines view your site as being useful and
relevant. This in turn, leads to increase in rankings for your keywords.
SEO methods are great for obtaining free traffic in the long term but it
might take as long as six months to a year to see full results.
Alternatively, you can use strategically written articles and get them
published at article directory sites that have high volumes of traffic. This
works to bring in organic search engine traffic within a week. However, as
your article moves out of the main pages of the article directories, your
traffic is likely to taper off in two to three weeks. Writing and publishing
articles once a week should keep free traffic to your site from dropping
off. Free traffic can also be obtained through various traffic exchanges.
Traffic exchanges can quickly bring in a lot of traffic but will most likely be
untargeted.
The other option of getting visitors to your website involves paid traffic.
If you need immediate traffic to your website and have some money to
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 7
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
spend, paid traffic is a very good option. However, careful planning is
required to ensure the greatest return on your investment. The most
common and immediate method of obtaining paid traffic is through payper-
click listings with all the major search engines like Yahoo, Google,
Miva etc. Depending on the amount you are willing to spend as well as
your target keywords, pay-per-click traffic can bring in some of the best
results due to precise targeting of visitors to your site. The advantage of
paid traffic is that you are not affected by search engine algorithm
changes and as long as you have money to spend, you will gain traffic to
your website.
The best thing to do would be to use a combination of both paid
and free traffic. Optimize your website to bring you traffic over the long
term and to position your website really well in the search engines. For
the short term, get your traffic through a combination of paid searches
and article marketing. In time, you will be able to obtain almost all of your
traffic for free and you can slowly phase out of your paid traffic options if
you so choose.
However, the aim of this book is to teach you how to get free
traffic to your website. If you have a limited budget, targeted free
traffic will be the only option for you and that is not a bad thing if you
have a good roadmap. This book will be your roadmap when it
comes to free traffic generation because it blends time-tested
techniques with the brand-new techniques of 2007.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 8
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
..:: PART 2 ::..
BEFORE YOU BEGIN
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 9
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 3:
Understand How Your Traffic Campaigns Perform
In today’s information economy, it can be said the person with the
most information wins. The same would hold true if you want a
successful website; you must have information to analyze if the things
you’re doing to promote it are effective. But what are the types of website
analysis systems are available to you, and which of them will best suit
youy needs? Is there an analysis technique that is more accurate than
others in helping you decide which promotions are actually getting
results? Should you use your web host’s default statistics program, or are
there other services you should consider? This chapter will give a brief
overview of web analytics and their uses in the measurement of your
website elements’ contribution to your business objectives.
There are basically two types of website analysis in wide use
today, log file analysis and page tagging. Log file analysis reads the
logs a server records on every transaction, but this might be inaccurate
due to the widespread use of page caching. The desire to outsource web
analytics and expand the available data has led to page tagging, which
basically uses a JavaScript (PHP or ASP in some cases) to count the
number of times an image (which may be invisible) is served to a visitor.
This JavaScript can also pass along information about a particular page
and the visitor.
Many web hosts offer a default statistics program to provide you with
basic information. Awstats and Webalizer are most likely the most popular
stats engines available today. Keep in mind your web host may update
different types of information at different times, so if you want a complete
picture of what has been happening at your site you may need to wait for
information which is a few days old.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 10
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
A recent trend has seen a move away from these systems in favor of the
more detailed information available through Google Analytics. Google
Analytics is located at https://www.google.com/analytics/ and as you
have probably guessed, is operated by Google. This system offers a wide
array of analysis tools, including reports for Marketing Optimization and
Content Optimization. Would you like information to help you understand
how your marketing efforts are working, and where there might be a link
in your funnel? It’s all there, and it’s all free.
With any of these services, you will at least consider tracking your
referrers. After all, once you start promoting your site, you’ll use
different methods and it is important to track which ones work
and which ones don’t. With that information in mind, you’ll then repeat
the steps that lead to success and stop spending time for strategies that
don’t get results.
Remember, the player with the most information wins!
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 11
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 4:
Monitor Your Server Downtimes
It certainly is irritating when your web server is down, because
you simply lose visitors and potential customer. But did you realize
you might be losing more than visitors and potential customers when your
web site can't be accessed? According to Vanessa Fox of Google, “If the
host is down when Googlebot tries to access your pages, then those pages
may disappear from the index until Googlebot can crawl them again.” But
how do you know your server is down without constantly checking your
sites? This chapter will share a few free services to help you evaluate your
downtimes. From there you can decide if it’s time to look for another
server solution.
Unless you have no life and want to monitor your web site by hand, hitting
the refresh button every five or ten minutes, you will probably be
interested in a tool to monitor the process for you. Fortunately some great
tools exist to do just that, and the best of them are free. These free
services can monitor your downtimes 24 hours a day and 7 days a week
and they will let you know if there is a problem either by email, RSS or
even on your cell phone through SMS.
Here are some of the best free services to monitor your server downtimes,
in no particular order:
 h ttp://www.siteuptime.com/
 h ttp://host-tracker.com/
 h ttp://www.mralert.com/
 h ttp://www.montastic.com/
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 12
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Once you know there has been a downtime issue, you can check in
Google’s free webmaster tools to see if the Googlebot had tried to index
your site while it was down. Google webmaster tools are at
http://www.google.com/webmasters/ and provide a variety of other useful
services as well. Simply click on the Webmaster Tools link and register
your site if you haven’t already. Once registered, you can check the “crawl
errors” link to see if there have been any problems. You can also check
the frequency of visits by the Googlebot to see how long the windows are
between crawls; if you site is not being crawled frequently, obviously you
won’t have to worry about occasional short downtimes.
You don’t have to worry too much if the Googlebot does happen to miss
your site on a particular crawl because the site was down. Vanessa Fox
also stated that Googlebot will give your site a few tries before actually
dropping it from the Google search result pages. But even though it isn’t a
true hit and miss issue, you will still be wise to monitor your server
downtimes and make adjustments when necessary.
It is obvious that if your website is down, people will rarely give
you another chance. If your website gets down too often, it will be in
your best interest to move your website to another host before you start
active promotion.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 13
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 5:
Keep Traffic by Performing Website Maintenance
In order to protect your home do you spend time making sure everything
is in repair? If you ran a shop would you take extra time making sure all
your equipment is operating correctly? Operating a website is no different
than maintaining a shop or taking care of your home, except for the fact
that you’re expecting thousands of important visitors every day. But what
makes for a “ship shape” website? Is there some sort of routine
maintenance you should perform? This chapter will cover a few tips to
make your site run smoothly and let your visitors feel comfortable
enough to stick around.
One of the common problems site visitors come across is old,
broken links. If you have linked to an outside source you might do well
to check from time to time and make certain that link is valid. This is
especially true if your link is to a particular page or a blog entry as these
are famous for getting switched; the site and the entry might still be
there, but if something about the link changes your visitors won’t be taken
where you wanted them to go. Some types of web sites are more likely to
come and go, so you’ll have to judge from experience how often to check
for broken links. Internal links are just as likely to break, especially if you
have links to photos or audio files; when you make a change to some
element of your web site, think through the links you might have affected.
There are several online tools that can help you to check for broken links.
Two of them are free and they provide a great service. You’ll find them at
http://validator.w3.org/checklink and http://www.dead-links.com/
If you’re interested in a free software that works on your desktop, you’ll
find Xenu’s Link Sleuth™ at http://home.snafu.de/tilman/xenulink.html
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 14
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Another way to maintenance your site is doing what we’ll call
“fixing leaks in the pipe”. It’s likely that you have certain things you
want your site visitors to do, whether it is to visit an affiliate link, your
own product, or sign up for a newsletter. The route from a customer’s
arrival at your site to the action you want them to perform is often called
your “pipeline”. Check for leaks in your pipeline since a leaky pipe could
provide a place for you to lose potential customers.
Here are a few places your visitors might leak out from and never return
to your site:
 Do each of your subscription forms lead back to your site?
 Are you using custom “thank you” pages or depending on autogenerated
ones? Auto-generated thank you pages might not lead
back to your site.
 Have you customized your error pages with links back to working
parts of your site? If a customer finds a missing page and ends up
on a default “404 error” page, you may never see them again.
 Are you giving away your traffic to web rings and link exchanges
that don’t have easy-to-find links back to your site?
Keep the little maintenance tasks under check so you don’t miss
any visitors and never underestimate the power of these little
tricks. After all, competition is high on any traffic building campaign and
it is small details what makes a difference.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 15
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
..:: PART 3 ::..
SEARCH ENGINE
OPTIMIZATION
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 16
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 6:
What Is Search Engine Optimization?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is something that many people have
heard of but few people really and truly understand. This is very
unfortunate because as an internet marketer one of the best things you
can do for your business is to thoroughly understand what Search Engine
Optimization means and how you can go about becoming an expert at it.
The single biggest way that Search Engine Optimization will help
you is in generating targeted traffic for your website. Not just traffic
mind you, but targeted traffic. This means that people that visit your
website will actually be looking for what it is you have to offer and you can
probably understand conceptually how that is going to be much better for
you than non-targeted traffic. In addition, if you have a website that is
properly optimized for use in the search engines you are going to save
money because you will not need to spend as much on other methods of
traffic generation like pay per click advertising.
Now that you understand how Search Engine Optimization is going to be
useful to you it is time to get into some of the basics of the SEO process.
There are generally two parts to SEO that you want to be aware of,
“on-page” optimization factors and “off-page” optimization
factors.
On-page optimization factors are things that you can change on your
website in order to make the website more friendly to search engines.
These are things like keyword density within paragraphs as well as
keyword placement within the title of the webpage, Meta tags and the
bolding, underline and italicizing of keywords within the webpage. These
are all factors that affect how search engines view your webpage and
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 17
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
getting these just right is one of the keys to proper Search Engine
Optimization.
While onpage factors are important, anyone that has done SEO work
before will be able to tell you that it is the off-page optimization factors
that really make the search engines love your page. In terms of off-page
optimization, the primary thing I’m talking about is link building.
Whenever another website links to your page they are in effect casting a
vote in favor of what your page has to offer. The more websites that link
to your page, the more votes you get and therefore the more favorably
many of the search engines look at your website. There are entire online
courses dedicated to the concept of link building as it is truly one of the
most important parts of proper Search Engine Optimization and if you get
just one part of the whole picture right; make sure it’s this part.
Recent trends in Search Engine Optimization have been set in by a lot of
search engines in order to combat the “black hat” techniques many
dishonest marketers have been using in order to get their websites good
rankings. These trends have made it much more difficult to get your site
well-ranked in search engines and indeed it can take months before you
even get a sniff of the top. One way to combat this is to use blog posts
regularly or make entries on web 2.0 sites (Craigslist, Digg etc.) as these
posts get indexed on a daily basis by search engines. You can then place
links on those posts that point back to your website and get it indexed
that way.
SEO in 2007 also looks like it’s giving way to SMO (Social Media
Optimization). With the growth of social networking sites like MySpace,
Facebook etc, it’s important to increase the interactivity of your site by
offering integration with social networking technologies. This will help your
site in search engine rankings as web 2.0 gathers momentum.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 18
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
There are a number of ways to make Search Engine Optimization work
with you and one of the keys in doing so is to be creative. You can never
rely on the search engines making it easy for you and for that simple
reason you need to be continually thinking of new and innovative ways to
get your websites indexed and placed high in search engines. In many
different ways it is really you that determines the potential of your site.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 19
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 7:
How To Increase Traffic Through On-Page SEO
The concept of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) has been around since
1997 with the rapid adoption of the Internet and its most popular search
engines. In the early days of SEO, webmasters inserted keywords in the
meta-tags of each HTML page they authored for Internet search engines
to index and rank. Over time, webmasters discovered they could
artificially increase a page’s rank by inserting irrelevant yet popular
keywords into the meta-tags. This abuse forced the search engine
companies to adopt new ways to index and rank web pages and to reduce
the dependency on the meta-tags inserted into the web pages. Most
modern search engines now scan, index, and rank web pages
automatically using automated crawlers with sophisticated algorithms. The
search engine companies do not disclose their algorithms in an attempt to
curb artificially high page rankings. In order to rank highly in most popular
search engines today, webmasters must develop content that incorporates
certain SEO techniques to take advantage of these new methods of page
rankings.
Keywords are the single most important aspect of on-page SEO for
the Internet. Therefore, before writing a single word of content, it is
extremely important to develop a list of keywords that potential readers
will be use to find the web page. Keyword lists on a variety of topics are
easily found online. However, brainstorming keywords based on the
subject of the written content can be just as effective. The importance of
picking the right keywords is paramount to producing high-ranking web
pages and should not be overlooked. The prominence, order, and density
of keywords on the web page are vitally important in how search engines
ultimately index and rank web pages. The title of the web page is the
most important attribute of the web page and therefore should include
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 20
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
one or more keywords. Next in importance for the use of keywords are
any headers or bolded words in the content. Finally, keyword density
within the body text should generally be roughly between five to twenty
percent depending on the subject matter. Pages that contain keywords
that are located close to each other also tend to rank higher.
The next most important factor affecting page rank is the usage of
hyper-links within a web page. Links should be relevant to the content
and care should be taken to choose relevant keywords to describe the
links. The actual length of the hyper-link and filename can also affect the
relevancy of the link to the web page. It is obvious that dead links should
not be used, but often overlooked is the need to return to web pages after
a certain time has passed to ensure the links still point to their original
location.
As essential as the use of keywords and links are, there are penalties for
use of “bad” keywords and links. Any vile language or ethnic slurs will
definitely have a negative effect on page ranking. The practice of ‘keyword
stuffing” should be avoided as most search engines can detect when
keyword density has exceeded a certain threshold for a particular topic.
Any links to inappropriate content and excessive use of cross-linking will
also severely downgrade page ranking.
When attempting to maximize the amount of traffic to a web page, the
importance of a web page’s rank within the Internet’s top search engines
cannot be over-emphasized. While there are many SEO techniques to
improve a page ranking, on-page content is certainly the easiest to
control. Through the careful choice and placement of keywords and hyperlinks
when developing content, a Webmaster can create consistently highranking
web pages. Care must also be taken to avoid the pitfalls of
keyword and hyper-link usage to minimize penalties assessed by most
modern complex Internet search engine algorithms.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 21
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 8:
Off-Page SEO Methods For Your Website
With thousands of new sites coming online everyday, webmasters are
getting more sophisticated in using on-page SEO tactics to rank favorably
with search engines. Many also use dubious, “Black-hat” strategies in an
attempt to fool search engines into thinking that their sites offer valuable
content to human users. In order to combat the abuse of on-page SEO,
search engines now give a lot of importance to off page SEO methods.
Off-page SEO refers to all the optimization techniques done off the
website. This means search engines will rank your site on the basis of
who is linking to your website. Gone are the days when all you had to do
was exchange links with a couple hundred sites and your website would
sky rocket in rankings. For good off page optimization, you need to plan
carefully.
To begin with, try to obtain one way links to your website from
respected or authority sites. These sites have a very good page rank
factor with search engines. Page rank is a relative rank awarded to
websites. A high page rank or PR is very valuable and obtaining one way
links from these sites can be the single biggest boost to your off page
optimization efforts. Try to find authority sites with a similar theme to
your website and try to obtain a one way link to your website. You might
have to pay them for this service, but it is well worth it. Try to also
exchange links with a few carefully chosen sites that are related to your
site in terms of content. It is also important to be linked with a number of
sites of varying page rank. This proves to the search engines that your
link building goals are based on getting relevant links to your website and
are not determined by page rank alone.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 22
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Whenever you exchange links with a website or try to obtain oneway
links, make sure you vary your linking text. If you use the same
text, search engines will assume that you paid to have pages link to your
website, or worse, will assume that your site is a Spam site. Getting
plenty of content on your websites is also a great idea, as this allows deep
linking to your site. Deep linking is when a site links to not just to the
index page of your site, but also to several pages within your site.
You can greatly boost your off-page optimization efforts by using
article marketing. Well-written articles can provide you one-way links
from authority sites in a matter of days. If your articles provide links to
inner pages of your website with varying link text, you can also achieve
the goal of deep linking and varying link text. In order to get the best
results using article marketing, write at least eight different articles, each
targeting a different major keyword and each containing varying link text.
Distribute these articles to a few major article directories over a period of
three to four weeks. This will bring in organic traffic to your website and
boost your off page rankings, all at the same time.
Search engines also value the length of time taken to build links. If
you get all your links in one day, it signals a red flag with the search
engines. Take your time building quality links to your site. Spread your
article marketing over a few weeks. Try to get listed with free directories.
These directories take several months to approve and post your site, so
that helps towards slow link building.
Finally, make use of web 2.0 technologies to get links to your
website. There are several sites like Digg, Delicious, Facebook, MySpace
and even Craigslist. These sites also provide a lot of human traffic and are
great ways to get your website listed for off page optimization as well as
gain traffic. Be careful and follow the rules when you post on these sites
to avoid your post being deleted. It is well worth the effort.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 23
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 9:
Building Links to Build Traffic
It sounds like the simplest thing in the world. Just find someone with a
site that has content similar to your own and strike a deal, “You place a
link to me on your web site and I’ll place a link to you on mine.” There
was a time when this could be an effective way to generate traffic to your
site as well as improve your search engine ranking. But for the most part,
those times are gone. Unscrupulous web masters figured out how to
abuse the system by creating link farms and other schemes with
absolutely no benefit for the site visitors, and search engines got smart
and put an end to the whole thing. So can’t we benefit from reciprocal
links anymore? Sure we can, but with a few caveats. This chapter will
explore how safe linking practices can still help your site gain traffic, and
do better in the search engine results pages.
So as you may have already guessed, search engines like Google,
Yahoo and MSN are skeptical about two-way links. Due in a large
extent to manipulation of the system, these search engines have
programmed their bots to penalize sites for unethical linking practices,
even if there is only the suspicion of wrong doing. Where at one time a
site looked popular if it was linked to by many sites, now that is a red flag.
The search bots actually follow the links these days, and evaluate whether
or not the content on both ends of the links is related. If it is related,
everything might be fine. If it isn’t related, or the bots aren’t able to see
the relationship, your search engine placements might be effected.
Basically, if anything you’re doing even looks the least bit like you’re
trying to manipulate your search engine placements, you’re likely to get
dinged. So do you have to worry that a site links to you if they aren’t
based on a related topic? Technically that shouldn’t be a problem; usually
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 24
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
only the site placing the link will be penalized for an irrelevant link.
Otherwise, it would open the door to a whole realm of sabotaging other
sites by linking to them.
So if you want to avoid the famous “Google Slap” where you get knocked
off the top of the search engine placements for what Google interperets as
foul play, what is a safe linking practice? The answer is simple, “think
naturally.” Set up linking arrangements that appear natural and ask
yourself, “Would I place this link if the search engines weren’t a factor?”
Chances are, if you’re only linking to improve your placement then you
could be asking for trouble. But if the link is there to truly serve your site
visitors, then go for it.
After all, isn’t that what it is all about?
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 25
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
..:: PART 4 ::..
CONTENT IS KING
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 26
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
CHAPTER 10:
Get More Traffic By Giving More Information
Everyone has heard the saying, so there is little disagreement that we live
in the information age. It's also a well-known fact people look for
information online more than ever before. In fact, searching for
information on the internet has become so common that the name
"Google" has become a verb; when you want to learn about a topic you
simply "google" it. Also, people have a fairly open mind about where their
information comes from; they're going to be interested in reading articles,
blog entries and reports from just about any source, and you can be the
source they look to.
"But wait," you say. "I'm not trying to be an encyclopedia. I just want to
sell my product."
The truth is if someone wants to buy a product, they're not likely to go
surfing the web. They're going to visit Amazon, eBay or one of the other
well established online retailers. Unless you have the advertising budget of
a small nation, you’re not likely to pull too much business from those
firmly established sites. So how do you get people to buy from you?
Should you throw in the towel and surrender to the big online retailers? Of
course not, and this chapter will show you one way to overcome
competition from the big boys of the net.
So if people want information, and they’re willing to get it from
sites just like yours, then by all means give it to them. Give the
people articles, give them blog entries and give them news. Tell them
everything you know and then look up something more to tell them.
Remember what was said, this is the “information age” and not the
“product age”. Give the people all that information, and while you at it
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 27
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
give them information about how much they need your product. Tell them
about designer jeans and let them know you sell designer jeans at rock
bottom prices. Tell them about planning a garden and let them know you
sell an info product about planting bulbs.
Don’t try to “sell” anything, but just let people know you have
something to meet their needs. If they don’t yet realize they have that
particular need, then give them all the information to let them understand
their need. If someone wanted to buy, they’d go to one of the major
online retailers and look for it. But if someone wants information, they will
search the web and if they happen to find you, give the customer what
they want.
Search engines love content, and so do your visitors! Fresh content
will keep your visitors coming back to your website at their own will and
you’ll naturally get higher results at search engines. As the saying goes,
“Content is king” and it will your best friend when it comes to traffic
generation.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 28
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 11:
Everybody Wins With Article Marketing
Who knew writing a few articles and giving them away for free could be
one of the best things you could do for your own web site? This is the
precept behind article marketing, and comprises the ultimate in
“white hat” or honest and straightforward marketing techniques.
With article marketing you provide what other web sites need, you give a
reason for the search engines to send traffic your way, and most of all you
give readers the information they seek. This chapter will briefly outline
how article marketing works and what it can do for your web site.
There are two primary factors affecting your place on the search
engine results pages, how relevant your page seems to a
particular search and the number of quality links coming to your
page from other sites. It is obvious a search engine wouldn’t stay in
business long if someone searched for “roses” and was led to a page
about “muscle cars”, so the more clearly your page can position itself as
relative to a particular search term the better. Incoming links to your web
page are seen by search engines as popularity votes, so the more you
have from related sites the better.
But the key to both of these factors is found in the word “relevant”.
Posting an article on your web site that is optimized for relevance to a
particular search term will go a long way in convincing the search engines
to include you in the search results for that term. Submitting articles to
related web sites with a link back to your own makes you appear popular
with the right crowd, the “in” crowd of relevant web sites. Did you notice
both of these activities involved the use of articles?
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 29
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Article marketing is the practice of providing articles you’ve
written (or had written on your behalf) to other web sites, blogs
and ezines. These articles are provided for free, and in return you are
allowed to insert a short bio and a link back to your web site. This bio is
usually at the end of the article. Now if that link back to your web site
leads to great content that is related to the article, you’ve just managed
to kill two birds with one stone; you’ve shown your site is relevant and
you’ve made a link to it from a related site so you’ve created the
impression your site is popular within that niche.
Viola! You are on your way to being recommended by the major search
engines and because of that, building traffic.
Article marketing truly creates a win-win situation for everyone involved
and if you want to get your share, here are some of the top article
directories you will submit your articles to get free traffic and backlinks to
your website:
 http://www.ezinearticles.com
 h ttp://www.goarticles.com
 h ttp://www.articlecity.com
 h ttp://www.searchwarp.com
 h ttp://www.articledashboard.com
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 30
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 12:
Build A Blog To Build Site Traffic
Not too long ago, the question seemed to be “To blog or not to blog.” But
now the blog has truly established itself as a formidable web presence and
the question has become, “To blog or not to be.” But it can be a lonely
feeling when you write a blog and nobody is there to read it. How do you
create a blog, but more importantly how do you create one people will
actually read? This chapter will introduce you to the common everyday
blog and show you how it can carry you to uncommon and exceptional
heights.
Just in case you haven’t heard, the term “blog” is short for “web log”
(leave it to a bunch of computer geeks to squeeze a couple of words
together and make a new dictionary entry). Originally blogs were similar
to an online diary, or a log of places you visited on the web. But today the
blog platform has emerged as a content manager, an easy way to create a
web site and manage your articles and other posts. A blog is a great way
to easily post the latest information, and that is why the search engines
love them.
Whenever someone says “search engine” and “loves them” in the same
sentence you should pay attention. Yes search engines love blogs because
they are a constant source of new and changing information, and that’s
what search engines seek. I not only recommend that you start your own
blog, but I recommend that you start two. Here’s why:
Use one blog as a content management system. You can build an entire
website on a blog platform like WordPress (http://www.wordpress.org),
and if you have a web host with cPanel access and Fantastico, you can
create a WordPress blog in a few clicks. If building your own blog from
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 31
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
scratch seems a little overwhelming at first, you can get a free WordPress
blog at wordpress.com and you won’t even have to host it.
Create second blog and use it as a true web log. Journal all about your
online activities and refer to the articles and posts in your first blog. Each
time you link to your first blog, you’ve just helped your search engine
results. Build this second blog at http://www.wordpress.com or give
http://www.blogger.com a try. Blogger is operated by Google and it is
believed that “search engine” really “loves them” (remember what I said
about those phrases together?
So as I already said, link between these two blogs often. You can create a
little network of related blogs, all linking to each other, and each helping
the other with search engine placement. Here’s an important tip: use
keywords in all your blog names, URL’s, post titles, article titles and in all
of your links; when the search engine spiders follow your links you don’t
want there to be any doubt what those links are about!
If you have an existing web site you want to promote, link to it whenever
possible in all of your blogs. Talk about new features and offers at your
site; the more you can log on your blog, the better.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 32
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
..:: PART 5 ::..
VIRAL TRAFFIC
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 33
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 13:
Gain Web Site Traffic through Tell-A-Friend
Scripts
Your website is finally starting to get a little traffic. The results are in and
your visitors think your web site it great. You’re beaming with pride as
you tell them, “Be sure to tell your friends.” Certainly a few of your
visitors will tell a friend or two, but what about all the other visitors who
love your site so much? Have you made it easy for them to share your site
with others? Have you provided a real reason for visitors to take a minute
from their busy day and tell a friend about your site? This chapter will
share a few tips and techniques for getting site traffic to really
snowball by enlisting an army of people to spread the word, an
army made up from your current site visitors.
If you want your site visitors to tell their friends about you, you
have to make it easy. Actually you can't just make it easy; you have to
make it super easy. Tell-A-Friend scripts are one way to make that
happen. These scripts are simple and do not require complicated
programming. As a matter of fact you can usually copy and paste a script
right onto the intended page. Tell-A-Friend scripts are available in many
shapes and sizes, but you will be better off if you locate a script with the
ability to subscribe people directly to your opt-in email list. A few other
things to look for in a TAF script are the ability for full customization,
sending to an unlimited number of target recipients, recognizing and
blocking invalid email addresses, and one that provides detailed usage
statistics.
If you are looking for a PHP or ASP based Tell-A-Friend script, you’ll start
your search with http://www.hotscripts.com because this is a great source
for both free and paid solutions. This website is very huge though.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 34
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
To find a reliable PHP based TAF script, you will check:
http://www.hotscripts.com/PHP/Scripts_and_Programs/Site_Recommenda
tion/index.html
If you are looking for an ASP based TAF script, you will check:
http://www.hotscripts.com/ASP/Scripts_and_Components/Site_Recomme
ndation/index.html
Finally, if you are interested in hosted services, You will check:
http://www.hotscripts.com/Remotely_Hosted/Site_Recommendation/inde
x.html
So now that you’ve got all your ducks in a row and have installed the
perfect tell-a-friend script, let me ask you an important question. Why
should someone tell their friend about your web site? Maybe the answer is
obvious to you, but is it obvious to your site visitors? Will they do it just
because you asked them to? It’s likely your visitor isn’t thinking of the
benefits your site might present for their friends, so it’s your job to tell
them about it. I’m not suggesting you offer people some sort of bribe like
a free ebook; you can do that if you want, but it probably isn’t necessary
and might not attract the kind of traffic you really need. But you could
simply say, “Tell your friends about our newsletter about XYZ because it is
interesting” or “Tell someone about the ABC newsletter because it will
save them time and money”.
If you make it easy for your visitors and give them a good reason,
you might be surprised how quickly the word spreads about your
site.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 35
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 14:
Build Traffic Giving Out Free Reports
Everybody loves to get something for nothing, don't they? So offering a
report or ebook for free on your web site is simply giving people
what they want. Oh sure the technique is as old as the hills, give away
an ebook or report in exchange for joining your mailing list. But do you
know how to get your free report into the hands of people you might
never otherwise be able to contact? Do you know how to make people
really want to pass your report to their friends? This chapter will share a
few tips and techniques for giving away free reports and ebooks to build
an email list of loyal customers.
So you might already understand the basic concept but I’ll cover it
here briefly. You offer a free ebook on your web site, and all people have
to do is add their email address to your list. You post a sign up form to
your autoresponder (also called an opt-in form) and setup automatic
delivery of the ebook or a download link when someone submits the
information. But does it have to stop there? Should you be satisfied with
just that one email address? Absolutely not, I say.
Another part of the old technique is you’ll include affiliate links
within your report. Sure, we all know that; you sign up to be an affiliate
for products related to your report, put the link in your report and get paid
a commission when people buy those products. This will get you a little
further than just a plain old report, but wouldn’t you like to kick that
process into a higher gear?
What if you give away that same free report with those same affiliate links
in it, but make those links customizable? You can use a special software
known as “PDF Brander” which will allow someone to change the links you
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 36
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
specify, exchanging their affiliate link with yours. ViralPDF
(http://www.ViralPDF.com/) is one of the most well-known
software for that purpose.
Now you’ve given that person a real reason to pass your report along,
they can make money by doing so. Since that person might not have
already been an affiliate of the products you refer to in the report, you
could still collect a second-tier commission because they become an
affiliate “under” you. Not only that but if you leave a couple of links back
to your own web site within the report, you’ve just gotten your link in
front of another potential site visitor.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 37
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 15:
Build Traffic Through Giveaways
If you wouldn't mind indulging me a moment, I'd like you to think about a
virus. What does a virus have to do with anything of interest to you? Well,
a virus is something that enters the body as a microscopic germ and
spreads until it virtually takes things over. Doesn’t that sound like the
perfect internet marketing campaign? How would an internet germ get
through? You can start a viral marketing germ with a free tool,
service, template or report, and if conditions are correct it can
spread like wildfire. This chapter will share a few ideas about how
offering a free product can perform wonders for your online business.
It is a well known fact that everyone loves free stuff. If the free
stuff is something useful like a tool, template, service or valuable
information, then so much the better. But many of us have a large section
of our hard drives full of things we’ve downloaded for free and will never
use. The original idea seemed good and we probably exchanged our email
addresses for these bits of hard drive clutter, but something about them
just didn’t pan out. Maybe they weren’t what we expected.
So if you’re going to give away something free, and your motive is for it to
create a viral marketing effect and be passed around the internet, you’re
more likely to be successful if you give away something that’s really
useful. What can people within your market really use? If your free
giveaway is just some gimmick or even worse just an attempt to sell
another product, it isn’t going to get passed around.
But even if you do offer a true quality giveaway, what will make it go
viral? You could have the greatest free tool which anyone can use, but
what is going to make anyone take the time to pass it on to a friend? Can
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 38
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
you simply ask them to? Maybe, but what if you gave a real reason to
pass it?
Are there any affiliate links in the product? It may seem like this only
applies to an ebook or report, but sometimes a tool will have a link to the
author’s web site. A free template will usually have a link somewhere
around the copyright notice. What if these links were to an affiliate
program, and what if the person who passed your free offer on could
replace the link with their own affiliate link? Wouldn’t it motivate someone
to pass on a nice tool or template if they thought they might make a little
money from it?
If you want someone to perform an action for you, you’ve got to show
that person what is in it for him/her.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 39
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 16:
Social Bookmarking To Build Site Traffic
Early in the days of Internet browsing, someone got the bright idea of
keeping placeholders, or bookmarks for web sites we’ve visited and
enjoyed. It was a great way to keep track of things. Before long, someone
else got the brilliant idea there should be a way to share these bookmarks
with our friends. Suddenly, a world of social bookmarking came into
existence. But how can you, the internet marketer, tap into this social
network? Is there a way social bookmarking can build traffic for your site?
This chapter will discuss a few methods of putting social
bookmarking to work for you, bringing new visitors to your site.
Since any web page can be bookmarked, any web page can be
shared with friends. This is the premise behind using social
bookmarking as a marketing technique. As you may have guessed, the
idea is to get people who visit your site to bookmark and share it. Of
course your visitors could simply email a link to their friends, but they
might not think of that option on their own. It is not only your job then to
remind them of this option, but to make it as easy as possible for them to
do so.
Fortunately, since the entire blog community has a long and rich history of
sharing links, with millions of “check this out” type posts, there have been
several tools to help you make it easy for your visitors to share a link to
your site. For example, if you happen to build your site on the WordPress
blog platform you can find half a dozen excellent programs which provide
a “share this” link with every post you make.
Not only will most of these plug-ins allow your visitors to email a link to a
friend, they can add your site to the major social bookmarking sites like
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 40
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Del.icio.us (http://www.del.icio.us), Digg (http://www.digg.com),
Technorati (http://www.technorati.com), and StumbleUpon
(http://www.stumbleupon.com).
At these social bookmarking sites your visitors can also post reviews and
say just what they like about your site, thereby attracting others who find
the information.
Now, who is to say that you can’t post your own articles, blog posts and
web pages to these social bookmarking sites yourself? If you post your
entries, you expose it to thousands of visitors at the social bookmarking
sites who might be interested in what you have to offer.
If you have an exceptionally interesting post, and place it on a
social bookmarking site, you open the door to a viral marketing
effect and free exposure you probably could have never otherwise
afforded.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 41
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 17:
StumbleUpon Is Social Bookmarking On Steroids
Social bookmarking is the big buzz term among internet marketers these
days, but up until now it has been fairly static. You could make
recommendations to friends through places like Del.icio.us
(http://www.del.icio.us), Digg (http://www.digg.com), Technorati
(http://www.technorati.com), and you could search for sites in a
particular topic area. But StumbleUpon (http://www.stumbleupon.com)
gives you all that and a little bit more; this site actually learns what you
like and makes recommendations. What are the implications for web
marketers? What do you have to do if you want StumbleUpon to
recommend your site? Can this service generate free traffic to your site?
All these questions and more will be covered in this chapter.
Just like any social bookmarking site, visitors can connect with friends and
share sites. They can meet people with similar interests and check out
what other people are discovering. With StumbleUpon you can “channel
surf” the best-reviewed sites on the internet. It is a “collaborative surfing
tool for finding and sharing great sites.” Just add a toolbar to your
browser and you can give a review for any site you happen to land upon.
So this is where the internet marketer comes in. As you probably already
guessed, it can be beneficial to the health and future of your web site if
several people give it good reviews. If one of your visitors already has the
StumbleUpon toolbar installed, and finds your site, they could get the ball
rolling for you. But if you’re like most marketers, you’re not going to want
to leave all that to chance. Just like what people have already been doing
with sites like Digg and Technorati, there is no reason you can’t review
one of your own web sites. As a matter of fact, why not review them all?
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 42
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Once your site has been reviewed, StumbleUpon will start to do a little of
the work for you. Since the site actually makes recommendations to its
members, telling them about sites they might be interested in,
StumbleUpon just might recommend your site to a few people. The more
popular your site becomes, which it looks like is determined by the
number of positive reviews you receive, the more your site will be
recommended to others. Before you know it, and with very little extra
effort on your part, you could have gained a steady stream of free traffic.
What could be better than free traffic, coming from the
recommendations of people you have never contacted in places
you’ve never heard about? All this just because a few people voted for
your site and said it was good. Of course, this isn’t likely to happen if you
don’t run a strong web site with excellent content, but that’s what you’re
already doing, isn’t it?
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 43
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 18:
Use Viral Videos To Build Web Site Traffic
Imagine a world without television. Can you do it? Chances are if you
were born in the last 40 years or so, you can’t. Everywhere we turn we
are bombarded with video images, first on television, but now on
everything from desktop computers to cell phones. In fact, videos are so
popular online they sometimes are passed around and create a viral
marketing effect; that is what makes them interesting to marketers. This
chapter will share a few ways you can jump on the band wagon and use
these viral video techniques to bring traffic to your site.
A popular way to get into the world of viral video marketing is to
build a blog and frequently add videos. Use amusing video clips,
interactive Flash games and moving images since these are most likely to
catch your visitor’s attention and be shared with others. The Dancing Bush
2001 interactive game brought massive attention to what eventually
became the largest private entertainment site on the internet. Sunsilk hair
products gained attention when a YouTube (http://www.youtube.com)
video “Bride Has Massive Hair Wig Out” went viral. Companies the likes of
Halo, Blair Witch Project, Xbox 360, The Ring Movie, Sony, Playstation and
FX Networks have all benefited from viral videos.
One effective way to make sure your video draws attention to your
web site or brand is to include the site name (and URL) within a
video as part of the entertainment. The more integrated the inclusion,
the less your video is going to look like an advertising ploy. Of course, you
might want to refer to your site or brand more than once, but don’t go
overboard. On the other hand some successful viral campaigns, like
Burger King’s “Subservient Chicken” didn’t mention a web site or brand
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 44
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
anywhere; but people knew where the video came from and it attracted
massive attention on the web.
Another way to make sure your viral video drives traffic to your
site is to include a link close to the video on YouTube and Google
Video. This will allow viewers to easily identify the source of the video
and find their way to your site.
So once you have all this traffic on your site, what are you going to do
with them? Well first off, be sure to encourage visitors to pass your
video to friends. Then if at all possible add some means for the
video to be emailed or added to a social bookmarking site. If you
have built your site on a blog like WordPress, there are plugins to add that
functionality to your site for you.
So get out there and start spreading a virus, a video virus that is.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 45
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
..:: PART 6 ::..
ONLINE MEDIA
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 46
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 19:
Stop The Presses With These Professional Press
Release Tips
Stop the presses! Or at least put them on hold because you've got
something to say and you want the world to hear it. But how do you
present your big story to the media without being ignored? A press
release is a written or recorded statement to the media for the purpose of
proclaiming some newsworthy story, but how should it be formatted and
what should it contain? This chapter will walk you though some pressrelease
terminology so you can write press releases that will, as you may
have guessed, stop the presses.
The first important thing to realize about a press release is that
you’re not submitting a finished story. Finished stories are what
journalists do, and the job of a press release is to catch a journalist’s
attention. A press release is an entirely different thing from a news article.
While a news article is a grouping of facts, developed by journalists and
published in the news media, a press release (also called a news release)
is sent to journalists to entice them into developing an article on the
subject you’ve submitted.
So what does that tell you about your press release? It simply has
to sell the idea of a story to a journalist. You have to show your story is
newsworthy, something that will interest the journalist’s audience. As you
may have guessed, your press release can’t be a sales letter for your
newest product or service disguised as a “story”. Such a thing might be
considered the journalistic equivalent of spam and the media can
recognize these veiled sales letters a mile away. You need to show the
human interest behind your story, the benefit to the reader, and of course
the benefit to the journalist for developing the story into an article.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 47
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
So now that you’ve got all that in hand, how do you format your press
release? Here is a list of the major elements of a professional press
release:
1. Headline: Grabs the attention of journalists and briefly summarizes
the news.
2. Dateline: Contains the release date and usually the originating city of
the news.
3. Introduction: First paragraph in a press release giving basic answers
to the questions: who, what, when, where and why.
4. Body: Further explanation, statistics, background, or other relevant
details.
5. Boilerplate: A short "about" section with background on the issuing
company, organization, or individual.
6. Media Contact Information: Name, phone number, email address,
mailing address, or other contact information for the PR or other media
relations contact person.
If you include these elements and make your story sound truly
newsworthy, your press release will establish you as a professional and
help you gain the respect of the media and get more visitors. Without
these important elements, your press release is likely become nothing
more than wastepaper basket fodder.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 48
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 20:
Free Advertising At Free Classified Ad Sites
Everyone knows how important it is to advertise. It’s what sets the
chicken apart from the centipede; the centipede lays a thousand eggs in
silence while the chicken lays just one but squawks about it. Which one is
better known as an egg layer? The chicken is, of course. But unless you
have the budget of a small nation, advertising expenses can be an
ominous prospect. So where are some places you can advertise for free?
What are the advantages, disadvantages and legal issues? This chapter
will cover a few places you might consider for free advertising.
Two of the most common places people go for free advertising are
CraigsList (http://www.craigslist.com) and USFreeAds
(http://www.usfreeads.com).
CraigsList, as you may already know, is a recent phenomenon of the
internet world which lets you advertise the sale of just about anything and
all for free. USFreeAds has actually been around longer than CraigsList,
since 1999 in fact, but isn’t quite as well known. Both sites allow you to
post ads for free, but these sites do have a few limitations and regulations
you will have to follow.
CraigsList has the advantage of being totally free, but since it is free it
carries one major hurdle to the internet marketer. That hurdle, as you
may have anticipated, is that they do no allow affiliate ads. In other
words, you can’t run an ad with the purpose of linking to an affiliate
product. Up until very recently, marketers have found ways to work
around this. But CraigsList has become more aggressive about their
regulation. Either way, if you’re in this business for the long haul it is wise
to follow the rules.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 49
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
USFreeAds does offer a free account, but it carries limited functionality.
However they offer two types of paid accounts; the Gold Membership for
only $10 a year and the Premium Membership for $9.99 a month. Of
course the two levels of paid membership increase the features as you
pay more, so you will have to decide which membership will serve your
needs. You might be wise to start out with the Gold Membership and do
some testing before you dole out for the monthly Premium membership.
USFreeAds is generally open to posting affiliate links, but maintains a
family-friendly policy and so they will not allow ads leading to Adult
content.
General experience with these types of sites is that the general clientele is
looking for really good deals, and generally consider the good deals to be
something for free. eBay has somewhat of a reputation for this as well,
the reputation that its clients want something for nothing, and my
experience has been that it holds true even more for free ad sites. Of
course this type of client might not be the right fit for everybody, and
there will always be exceptions. So in the long run it remains for you to
test out these options for yourself and decide if they work for you or not.
But what the heck, as long as it’s free you can’t be out too much more
than a little of your time.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 50
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 21:
Create a Squidoo Lens And See New Traffic
A short time ago word started spreading about a brand new site
called Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com/). It sounded like an
interesting concept, a little like a blog and a little like an "About Me" page,
they asked you to sign up and create something called a "lens". It was
certainly a unique idea, and everyone wondered if it would catch on. Now
more than a year later the true benefits of making a lens at Squidoo are
clear. It is a great place to create a new site about your hobby, passion or
business, but even more it is a great place to promote any existing web
site you may have. Not only can you tell Squidoo visitors about your site,
but a lens gives the search engines another reason to place your site
higher on the results pages; a Squidoo lens is a perfect place to build
"backlinks" to your blog or web site.
When making a lens at Squidoo you have the option to display RSS feeds
from other sites. Place an RSS link on your lens and suddenly the site
publishing the feed has a new set of backlinks from a popular and relevant
site. That is just what the search engine spiders love to see. What other
RSS feeds could you place on Squidoo? Do you submit articles to an
article directory, and if so does that directory offer an RSS feed of your
articles? If you operate an eBay Store you could post its RSS feed.
Of course an RSS feed isn’t the only way to promote your site on Squidoo.
You could create static links to specific pages on your site. Write a
summary of one of your articles and link to that article. Write some
information about an ebook you’ve written or promote and link from
Squidoo. You could also simply place a list of links back to different pages
of your website. The possibilities are only limited by the ideas you can
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 51
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
come up with, but one important tip: don’t just link to your site’s main
page, make keyword specific links to particular pages within your site.
The general consensus among internet marketers right now is that
Squidoo is slipping a little in the search engine results pages.
Squidoo recently made some changes in their templates, and so over the
last few weeks it seems to have affected their search engine optimization.
Marketers are reporting a definite slip in their SERP (search engine results
page) placement. Even so, creating a lens at Squidoo is a profitable way
to promote just about site you own.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 52
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
..:: PART 7 ::..
OTHER METHODS
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 53
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 22:
Build Traffic With A Contest Or Challenge
"And the winner is . . . !" People thrill at that statement, and just
about everyone loves to win. How many times have you given your
name, telephone number, and maybe even your email address away just
to enter some drawing? Sure you figured someone would probably call
and try to sell you something, but you probably took that chance anyway,
didn’t you? Contests and challenges are a great way to build the contact
or email list for your business, as well as a great way to build excitement
about your product or service. This chapter will discuss a few ideas about
how a contest or challenge could be a great promotional tool for your
business.
Obviously, you’re going to need some way to contact the winner of your
contest. Everyone knows that, so there isn’t going to be much of a
problem about asking for an email address or phone number. Those who
don’t want to give out their information simply won’t enter your contest.
The same applies for a challenge as well; if someone wants the prize for
winning the challenge they’ll have to be contacted. This makes holding a
contest or a challenge a perfect way to build your list, but it doesn’t stop
there.
Everyone who enters a contest or challenge wants to see who the
competition is. Even something as simple as a coloring contest can drive
us to size up the competition. “My entry is better than that” or “That entry
looks like trouble” are common to the competitive spirit in many people.
So why is it a good idea to stir up all the rating and ranking? Some people
will visit your site to see the competition and others will visit just to see
what was entered. People are likely to tell their friends about the contest,
either to check out their own entry or to get their friends to enter too.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 54
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
But if you want all that traffic to translate into increased sales of your
product or service, you’re going to want it to be as targeted as possible.
Promote your contest or challenge at a site related specifically to your
topic. If the contest requires a little talent or expertise in your subject in
order to win, then your traffic will be even more targeted. Even if you only
have a few entries, there could be many others who want to see the
entries.
Are exhibitors the only people who look at entries in the county fair? No,
there are many others who just like looking. Holding your own contest will
not only bring exhibitors but others as well. Either way, all that looking
around translates into traffic for your site.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 55
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 23:
Promote Within Your Niche At Forums And News
Groups
It seems like a brilliant idea; join a few forums and newsgroups
then just tell them all about your great new product or web site.
Everyone will want to know because it is just so new and so hot, or they’ll
at least admire your self-promotion efforts, right? No, that couldn’t be
more wrong. Online forums and newsgroups are usually tight communities
of like-minded people. You can network, build relationships, learn and
grow your business through online communities. But if you spam these
loyal and tight knit groups, you had better be ready to run for cover. This
chapter will share a few tips about posting on forums and newsgroups
without being accused of spam.
Today’s online forums and newsgroups are communities centered
on a common interest. Most often people come to these web sites to
learn and share, or sometimes they just want to hang out. But because
these sites feature such a high concentrate of potential customers within a
defined niche, they are also the frequent target of spammers. Often of
course, these spammers don’t see themselves as such.
So we’re all on the same page, let’s take a minute and review just what
spam is. Spam is simply an unsolicited advertisement. You didn’t want it,
you didn’t ask for it and you will probably hit the delete button as soon as
possible when you suspect it. In a forum or news group spam is a
message that tries to sell something or promote a web site, when nobody
asked for such a thing.
But what about all those targeted forums out there serving all those
wonderful niche markets, isn’t there some way to reach them? Sure you
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 56
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
can reach them, but since these sites form virtual communities you’re
going to have to be accepted into the community first. That doesn’t mean
you can just join and post a few times then expect people to do cart
wheels when you announce your product or site. You’re going to have to
be an active participant, establishing your reputation and giving back to
the community.
Even then, most forums and news groups have rules about posting links.
It is always a good idea to read the site rules before trying to promote
anything. Some forums might have a special area where you can
announce new sites and products, or even directly solicit your wares.
Many sites will allow you to place discrete links in an area called you
“signature”.
Are these types of sites good places to promote your product or
service? You bet they are; you might find some of your most loyal
customers in an online forum or news group. But for that to happen you’ll
have to exercise patience and follow the rules.
Whatever you do, avoid being labeled a “spammer” as much as
you would avoid the plague.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 57
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 24:
Give Your Opinion And Make it Count
I have a friend who once told me, “Everyone has a right to my opinion. So
who am I to withhold it from them?” Of course he was joking (to some
extent) but there is an element of truth for anyone in that statement. If
you have had an experience with a product or service online, there might
be a thousand other people who are thinking about buying that product or
service and would like to know what you thought about it. But did you
know you could post reviews on sites like Amazon
(http://www.amazon.com), Barnes & Noble
(http://www.barnesandnoble.com), and Epinion (http://www.epinion.com)
and help yourself while you’re helping others? Posting reviews gives you
an opportunity to establish yourself as an expert, and it allows you to
build links back to your web site. This chapter will cover some ground
work about sharing your opinion by writing reviews, and set you on your
way to giving everyone what they deserve out of life, your opinion.
So, you may be wondering why you should bother writing reviews.
Most likely you’ve already heard about writing articles to promote your
web site or affiliate product. You probably already know how those articles
will not only bring direct traffic to your site but will increase the
“backlinks” and therefore improve your search engine placements. But
product reviews at sites like Amazon don’t get listed on Google by
themselves, and the only people likely to see them are people who
happen to be shopping for that particular product, right? Bingo! You’ve
just hit the nail right on the head; people reading your review on Amazon
are looking for that particular product. If your own web site is related to
that product, then you might just have found yourself a new site visitor.
Not only that, but you’ve found a site visitor who already knows you are
familiar with products just like the ones they are shopping for.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 58
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Now that probably doesn’t sound too exciting, does it? It may seem like a
lot of work for gaining a few new visitors to your site. You’re likely to be
thinking there must be a more efficient way to build traffic. If that’s what
you’re thinking, you’re right. But if you look at the big picture, you may be
terribly wrong. In the big picture, yes you’re bringing a few visitors to
your site but you’re also creating backlinks from some of the largest sites
with the heaviest traffic on the internet. What does that do for you, you
ask? The answer is simple: it makes your site appear relevant. Here is one
of the biggest sites on the internet and they’re linking to you, and that’s
the sort of thing which really impresses search engines like Google. Your
relevant back link from a major web site will do wonders for your search
engine results page placement.
So now are you starting to believe there are more people who should be
hearing your opinions?
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 59
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 25:
Get New Visitors By Answering Questions
I’ve heard it said that one of the deepest desires of people today is the
desire to feel important. One easy way to make someone feel important is
to give them attention and show you care about the things they care
about. Be there when that person needs you and help that person when
they need help, and you’ll be satisfying the deep desire to feel important.
Now if you can make your customers feel important, do you think they’ll
be interested in buying from you again? When you’ve bought from
someone who truly seemed to care about you and think you were
important, didn’t you feel a certain loyalty? This chapter will show one
way to build a base of loyal customers by answering questions at
places like Yahoo Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com) and
Answerbag.com (http://www.answerbag.com) especially if you own a
service oriented business.
Sites like Answerbag.com and Yahoo Answers have become very popular.
People can ask questions on just about any topic and end up with at least
one answer. When users on Answerbag were recently asked why they
answered questions, the responses included:
“I have made new friends here at Answerbag, and I like to share my
knowledge with them.”
“I love sharing views and opinions.”
“In helping others, it seems to help me. Feel better about myself.”
“I want people to answer my questions, so I will answer theirs.”
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 60
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
So what does that have to do with you, an internet marketer? How could
that possibly help your online business? Do you notice the words “friends”,
“sharing”, and “helping” in the comments I quoted? These are all
relationship words, and creating relationships is the key to building a loyal
customer base.
Once you’ve started to build a releationship with someone on one
of these Answer sites, you’ve started to open the door to doing
business with them. If you gave a truly helpful answer, and as I said
earlier made someone feel important by helping them, you’ve created a
powerful emotional attachment with that person. Once you have this
attachment you can carefully introduce the fact that you have a business
related to the topic you helped that person with, and that you may be able
to help them even more through your business.
Although most of these Answer sites are limited in how they can allow you
to link back to your web site, there is usually some place to put a little
description of yourself in a profile. Be sure to mention the fact that you
own a web site on a particular topic, and you may create a bit of traffic
from your profile. But remember we are talking about a relationship-based
type of marketing, and as with any relationship you have to give it time to
grow before you can expect someone to jump on board and buy your
product. However with a little patience, you can be well on your way to
building a loyal base of visitors by making them feel important.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 61
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 26:
Maintain An Email List And Maintain Your Site
Traffic
You’ve probably heard it said, and it is very true, that it is cheaper
to keep a customer than to get a new one. But have you considered
how that saying still holds water when you’re talking about traffic to your
site? Once you get someone to visit your site, the expensive part of the
transaction is over. But what is next? Once they’ve visited, how do you
keep your visitors coming back? Once they’ve made a purchase, how do
you keep them as regular customers? This chapter will share a few tips on
how to keep the traffic you already have by building an email list.
If you want your visitors to come back, take a minute to consider
why they came to you in the first place. Was it for your great content?
Was it for technical help or some other service? Was it to get something
for free? Whatever reason brought your visitor the first time could be the
key to getting that all-important repeat visit. But how will your visitors
know they can return and get more of what they want? You’re going to
capture their email addresses so you can tell them so, and you’re going to
tell them over and over again.
Maintaining an email list of previous site visitors and customers is
an integral part of building your online business. Through your email
list you can keep these clients informed about new and exciting offers,
information, and freebies you’ve placed on your web site since their last
visit. Your email list will be the tool you use to keep your site in the
forefront of your clients’ minds.
There are two basic types of tools internet marketers use to manage an
email list, an autoresponder or a broadcast script. An autoresponder is
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 62
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
just like the name sounds, it automatically sends responses to someone
who has subscribed. You can have these responses timed to just about
any interval and you can set them up in advance to send out messages for
days, weeks, months or years to come. A broadcast script is used to send
out emails to your list as you write them; you could use this to send out
announcements on a sporadic basis, or you could publish a regular
newsletter. Some online autoresponse scripts allow you to perform a
combination of these tasks, sending out regular pre-written emails
through the autoresponder and adding occasional broadcasts whenever
you want.
Hotscripts.com (http://www.hotscripts.com) is a good source if you are
looking for PHP or ASP based e-mail list scripts.
Most internet marketing gurus recommend using a hosted service like a
hosted solution with it’s own mail servers, then you’ll consider using
Aweber (http://www.aweber.com/) or GetResponse
(http://www.getresponse.com/) because these services have an excellent
track record of actually delivering emails. With the proliferation of spam
filters, it can be difficult to get emails through, even to those who actually
want to hear from you.
A free option would be to send out broadcast emails by starting a private
Yahoo Group (http://groups.yahoo.com) or Google Group
(http://groups.google.com).
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 63
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 27:
Submit Your Site To Web Directories and Build
Targeted Traffic
Everywhere you turn these days you’re hearing about Search Engine
Optimization. It’s “SEO this and SEO that” until you might start to think
there is no other way to get traffic. But did you know there is a whole
different world of places people go when they’re looking for web sites just
like yours? This is the world of web directories, the smaller and more
personable cousin of search engines, where your web site is actually
viewed and indexed by human eyes and not by search engine spiders. But
how do you let the web directories know you exist, and which directories
are worth dealing with? This chapter will give a brief overview of the best
directories and how you can make certain they know all about your web
site.
Although many web directories supplement their listings with search
engine feeds from places like Google, the primary method of getting
yourself listed with a search directory is by telling them about your site,
also called “submitting” your site. You can submit your site to the web
directories by hand or there are software solutions to do the work for you.
If you are looking for paid and free directories, you’ll check these lists to
find suitable web directories for you:
 h ttp://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
 h ttp://www.best-web-directories.com/
 h ttp://info.vilesilencer.com/
 h ttp://top.seo-links.org/
 h ttp://www.web-directories.ws/
 h ttp://webseodesign.com/resources/free-directory-listings.htm
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 64
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
 http://ask-dir.ir.com/Directories/
 h ttp://www.seocompany.ca/directory/free-web-directories.html
 h ttp://www.directorycritic.com/
Many of the smaller web directories focus on a particular niche. Just
because they’re small, don’t rule these directories out. If you want
targeted traffic who was already looking for a web site or a product just
like yours, these smaller web directories are the place to find them.
But on the other end of the spectrum there is an array of large web
directories covering almost every topic under the sun. Probably the most
well known of these large directories is actually DMOZ
(http://www.dmoz.org) which calls itself the “largest on the web” and is
constructed and maintained by a “vast, global community of volunteer
editors.” Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com) is another well known
web directory. Although Yahoo! is best known as a search engine, they
are also a web directory where you can submit your site for listing.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 65
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 28:
Discover If Traffic Exchanges Are For You
Just imagine, you could have five thousand visitors to your web site in the
next 48 hours. Does that sound wonderful or what? And all this just for
visiting a few sites yourself and “exchanging” traffic. Sounds like a low
cost way to generate some sales, doesn’t it? The only investment is your
time.
Traffic exchanges are an interesting concept about bringing visitors to
your website, but are they effective? You might receive traffic, but will
that traffic generate sales? This chapter will explore the basics of traffic
exchanges and a few strategies to apply if you think that route is for you.
Basically it's an "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" concept. Traffic
exchanges allow web site marketers to earn credits and have their sites
advertised to an entire community consisting of several thousand
members of the same exchange. Webmasters earn credits by surfing
through other websites within the traffic exchange system. On the surface
it sounds wonderful, doesn't it? You can go from being an obscure little
web site nobody has ever heard of to having thousands of hits on your
page in a very short time.
The question you have to ask yourself, as you should with any traffic
generation scheme, is will that traffic bring any new customers? You'll
have people clicking into your site, but will they stay long enough to read
your great content or hear about your valuable offer? Well, let's look at it
another way.
You'll be earning points by visiting the web sites of other traffic exchange
members. The more sites you visit, the more points you'll get for
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 66
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
exposure of your own site. So will you be spending much time at each of
the sites you visit? Will you be reading all the articles and examining all
the special offers you'll come across? Or, will you be clicking on as many
web sites as you possibly can so you can earn more and more points and
exposure for your own site?
I’m not saying there might not be traffic exchange programs out there
which will be good for your web site. What I am saying is you should think
through what is being offered. Are there real testimonials you can validate
of people who actually made more sales because of a traffic exchange
program? Sure, they might have had tons of new visitors, but what is the
bottom line? Was it good traffic that spent money?
Is the investment of your time worth the return? Only you can decide.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 67
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 29:
Use An RSS Feed To Build Site Traffic
It wasn’t all that long ago you could say the term “RSS” and get blank
stares from just about anyone. Okay, so there are still hoards of people
who wouldn’t know an RSS if it bit them in the face, but with the
proliferation of blogs and other sites offering an RSS feed the term is
becoming more and more common. But what’s the point? Will an RSS feed
really do anything to improve your web site traffic, or is it just a fancy
feature nobody really cares about? This chapter will bring you up to speed
about RSS and help you decide if it might be a good addition to your
traffic building strategy.
Although it sounds as intimidating as any techno babble out there, RSS is
just an acronym for “Really Simple Syndication”. As the name implies, it is
a method for syndicating the content of a web site. An RSS file is really
just another version of your web page, written in a code meant to be read
by a program called a “parser”. You could write an RSS file by hand, just
like you could write an HTML page, but since the purpose of an RSS file is
to provide quick and up-to-date information from your site, most RSS files
are built by a website’s content management system.
So what are we supposed to do with an RSS file? Read it in an RSS
reader, of course. The real beauty publishing an RSS file for your web site
is in this; it allows your visitors to read your site in an RSS reader. Don’t
worry; it is often possible to include your Adsense ads in your RSS feed,
so you don’t have to give up that revenue source. But the true benefit is
that some site visitors are more likely to regularly read your posts if they
can read them in an RSS reader. Most of these people will read the feeds
from several sites every day, and isn’t that the kind of site visitor you
want to cultivate?
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 68
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
But while you’re at it, there are a few other useful things you can do with
your RSS feed. First, you can offer blog updates by email if a person
subscribes to your feed through a service like FeedBlitz
(http://www.feedblitz.com) or FeedBurner (http://www.feedburner.com).
Second, you can send broadcast emails to your mailing list by attaching
an RSS feed to your autoresponder. Using this method you can actually
publish a newsletter based solely on your blog posts, scheduling a
broadcast each time you have a certain number of new entries.
But above all, the key benefit of RSS feeds is convenience. If you make it
easy for your site visitors to keep reading your content, and the content is
good, you’re more likely to keep them around. We all know it is cheaper
to keep a customer than to get a new one, and an RSS feed provides an
easy way to keep those visitors reading your site.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 69
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
Chapter 30:
Translate Your Website For Global Appeal
Ethnocentricity isn’t only the domain of English-speaking people, but we
do have a pretty good hold on it. We sometimes forget that not everyone
speaks English, and even if they do it might be nice to browse a web site
in their own language. The internet is a global phenomenon, and so
recognizing that fact and embracing it can go a long way to boost your
presence on the web. But don’t you know how to write your content in
several languages? Can’t you tell the difference between French and
Chinese? This chapter will share a few facts about web translation services
and how they can benefit your web site.
So as you may have ascertained from my introduction, there are services
on the internet which will translate your web site for you. Of course, all of
these services are mechanical so you’re not going to get the flow you
might from hiring a native to that language. How well the translation
comes out, even with the top of the line and most expensive commercial
translation programs will depend to a large extent on both the source and
the target languages. The closer the two languages are to each other in
grammatical structure, the better. Also, some ideas might not survive the
translation if they are too culturally entrenched; so you will do better with
a text that is free from local colloquiums. One of the better translation
engines is actually operated by Google, so it is easily available.
And speaking of Google, did you know translating your site into other
languages can do wonders for your search engine placement? If you
happen to translate you pages into let’s say nine languages aside from
English, you’ve just multiplied your content by a factor of nine. What’s
more, the search engines will see all those new pages as fresh new
content; even if you started out with PLR articles it isn’t likely all of those
Online Profit Series – Volume 1
Page 70
Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
articles will be translated. Even if they are, they won’t be translated
exactly the same by two different engines, so you won’t be dinged for
duplicate content. Not to mention, if you happen to have Adsense ads on
your site, they’re going to be present on all of your new pages as well.
Since your articles will have new keywords from other languages, your
Adsense ads will be targeted to those non-English speaking audiences.
So as you can easily ascertain, the web is one place you don’t want to be
ethnocentric. It is a global marketplace, and you’ll do well to make certain
you run a web site with global appeal.
Online Profit Series – Volume 1

Ultimate Guide To Free Web Traffic For Your Success
RESOURCES
This ebook will teach you all the basics and more on traffic. If you want a
deeper understanding of how traffic and list building works, we strongly
recommend you to check this:
List and Traffic
How to Grow and Profit from Opt-In Lists and Web Site Traffic
Online Profit Series – Volume 1