There are pros and cons to both ways. Obviously, the paid traffic generation methods cost money but on the positive side, they get you fast and often targeted results. On the other hand, the free traffic generation methods do not cost money but on the negative side, they are generally slower and may not produce much targeted traffic.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to traffic generation. Every method works to some extent, so you need to choose which ones suit you the best. But generally, traffic generation is a numbers game. This means the more you do it, the better results you get in the long run.

If you can afford it, it’s better to start promoting your website with paid traffic methods. This includes Google Adwords, Yahoo Search and MSN Adcenter. These three major search engines work roughly the same way. You design your advertisement according to the search engine’s specifications and specify certain parameters like the countries you want to advertise in and the dollar limit on advertising you want to spend in one day. Generally, you are billed for the number of clicks on your advertisement. Each click brings the searcher to your website where they are presented with your product. Some will buy and then you profit.

As you can tell, there is a danger of losing a lot of money in these paid advertising methods when lots of people click but no one buys. To reduce the possibility of this happening, there are two things to do. Firstly, put your long tail keywords into your advertisement. This ensures targeted visitors going to your website. A targeted visitor is one who has been looking for a solution to his problem that your product gives. Such a visitor to your website is much more likely to buy your product than a less targeted visitor.

Secondly, avoid advertising in certain countries known to have lots of browsers but not many buyers. Two of such countries are India and the Philippines. Chances are, you will get lots of clicks from these countries but few sales.

Besides text ads, you can also make image ads on the paid advertising networks of the search engines. Image advertisements consist of banners of certain sizes specified by the search engines. Image ads are not as popular as text ads so that makes it generally cheaper. But they work fine and are certainly worth a try.

The reason it is better to go for paid traffic generation methods first is because with paid advertising, you can get quick results. You also can determine which keywords produce good ROI. Once you have carried out paid advertising for a few weeks, you can switch to free advertising using the same keywords that have produced good results for you.

Free traffic generation methods will be the topic for the next article.

Despite the attractions of affiliate marketing, selling physical goods on the Internet is actually one of the easiest ways to actually turn a profit if you have the right kind of product.

Some people will make and sell their own products thru on online auctions – products such as clothes, fashion goods, jewelry and accessories, hand crafted cards, woodcraft items, toys, games, handy inventions and so on.  If you are already making a product and looking for a source for marketing it an Internet business will be one of the quickest and easiest ways for you to find an outlet for your products.

If you want to escape from your day job or simply want to earn some extra cash without having to leave the comfort of your home then setting up a home based business on the Internet might be the answer for you.

There are several options for setting up a home based Internet business. When you are just getting started it is probably wisest to choose just one option and work on it until you are making money from it. Once you are in profit, expand your field of activities by adding more products or by finding a different way to promote your business that will complement what you are already doing.

If you do not have a product of your own to sell, don’t despair. If you live in a place that has special or regional products unavailable elsewhere then you could offer those on the Internet. In this case, you would buy either from local shops or from the manufacturers and resell the goods online.

When you have something to sell, the quickest way to get it online is to offer it on an auction site such as EBay. This is also a useful way to test the market. If the item sells quickly and if you can make a good profit then you will want to repeat the process and also set up a website of your own to sell from.

Setting up a WordPress blog or website is not expensive nowadays. Web hosting costs less than $10 a month, and a domain name costs around $10 a year. With WordPress and the many free and premium themes such as ShoppersPress available that enable a techless person such as me to build a very professional site of their own.

Finally, set up an account with an online transaction service such as PayPal, AlertPay or MoneyBookers so that you will be able to add “Buy Now” buttons to your site.

The next step will be to start marketing your goods. The good news here is that on the Internet this can be done either free of charge or on a shoestring budget.

You can promote your website by setting up a blog and posting articles about your products and related topics on it. Write articles and post them to online article directories. A fast way to bring traffic to your website is to spend some money on Google’s Adwords program and set up some pay per click ads.

When orders start to come in you will of course have to fulfill them promptly. You may find yourself getting very busy as you will need to contact your customers to update them on their order status, pack and post the orders, and either make or purchase new stocks of items and packaging materials.

In short, you will have set up a successful home based business on the Internet. Good luck!

The biggest mistake you can make is to set up a website, write about your ebook on the website and expect people to visit your website in droves and buy your ebook. It does not work that way. In other words, if you think you can ‘create it and they will come’, you are mistaken. Even with targeted keywords, great website design and a killer product, hardly anyone will find your website if you do not promote it.

So there are a few more steps to take before you will see your first sale.

Firstly, you need to design your website. In the past, you could get by with a simple two page website – a sales letter and a thank you or download page. As recently as 4 years ago, such simple websites would still get ranked by Google. Actually 4 years is a long time in Internet marketing and a lot has happened since then. The most significant development was the Google Slap.

The Google Slap is the term used to mean that Google now wants your website to contain quality content and not just a sales pitch. These days, if you just put up a 2 page website without good content, Google will not rank it well. In other words, you will find your website in page 1,245 in Google’s search results or something like that.

So when you design your website, you have to make sure that it has more than just a sales page. There are many ways to design a website and each person has his or her own preference. A good practice would be to make your website have at least 8 pages – a home page, a sales page, a blog, a thank you or download page, a privacy policy, a disclaimer (especially if your product is connected with making money), a contact page and an about us page.

Briefly, a home page would contain a welcome message and an introduction to your website. It should also contain an opt-in box where you collect the names and emails of visitors so that you can build your list. To incentivize visitors to give you their names and emails, you need to provide a freebie like a short report, video, audio or a newsletter. Make your freebie connected to your niche topic.

A blog would contain the latest news in your niche, interesting articles or your personal teaching on your niche. Many Internet marketers and webmasters put their blog in a separate directory on their website. That means the blog URL would be http://www.mydomain.com/blog. Alternatively, you could purchase another domain with the same domain name but different extension as your blog. Then you could link your blog to your main website. This gives your main website added ‘link juice’ in Google’s eyes.

‘Link juice’ is the term referring to how many links are pointing to your website. The more links you have, the better it is for your website. You need both external and internal links for your website. External links are other websites linking to yours and internal links are internal pages of your website that link to each other.

All the other pages of your website are self-explanatory. Once you have your website up, the next thing you want to do is promote it. That will be covered in the next article.

The first thing you have to settle within yourself is whether you are looking to build a business with Internet Marketing or merely engage in it as a hobby. A business means that you intend to make enough money through Internet Marketing to at least replace your day job income. If it is a hobby then you are looking to Internet Marketing as a part time activity to supply you with some extra pocket money. This decision is the basis of everything else you do because it determines the amount of time and effort you put into it and also the actual structure of your business or hobby.

If you intend to make Internet Marketing merely a hobby, then you do not need a website, a product, a list, any JV partners or affiliates. You can do basic affiliate marketing by selling other people’s products. You need to sign up with an open affiliate marketing website like Clickbank. An open affiliate marketing system practiced by Clickbank is where you do not need your own website and there is no application process to become an affiliate. Without your own website you would not be able to be an affiliate with closed affiliate systems like Commission Junction (they have an application process that requires a website).

In Clickbank, there are thousands of products you can sign up as an affiliate for. You will be given an affiliate link and all you do is to get people to click on your link. You can do that for free by setting up free websites on Web 2.0 platforms like Squidoo or Hubpages or Blogging platforms like WordPress or Blogger. You can do a search on these and you will get their websites where you can create your own website or blog. Yes, a website set up this way is your own but you are limited in some functionality because these are free websites hosted on the platform’s servers. Nevertheless, they are good enough to drive traffic to your affiliate link.

All you do is design your website or blog with some good content related to the affiliate offer you are marketing and insert your affiliate link into your content. Some web 2.0 platforms like Hubpages have strict rules about the number of affiliate links you can have in your content, so just make sure you abide by their rules.

Internet Marketing is a numbers game, so the more of such websites and blogs you create to drive traffic to your affiliate link, the better it is. Sooner or later, some people will click on your links and if they buy the product that you recommend, you get your commission from it. That’s all there is to making some spare cash through Internet Marketing.

You may want to start your Internet marketing journey this way. But after sometime, if you want to progress further and do Internet Marketing as a business, then it becomes another ball game altogether!

(Please see Part 2 in this series.)

Market research can be divided into two parts – finding a profitable niche and finding long tail keywords within that niche. The good news is that there are many free tools available to do this. Some of the best tools are provided by Google itself. So the first thing to do is sign up for an account with Google. Once you have done that, go to Google’s search-based keyword tool at www.google.com/sktool. Type in the words ‘buy, purchase, order, get’ (without quotation marks) into the search field. The sktool will list out 800 words or terms that contain these buying keywords together with other useful data like level of competition, searches per month etc. All you have to do is choose the term that you feel is most suitable for yourself, preferably one that has at least 2,500 searches per month.

Next, click on the icon that looks like a magnifying glass next to the search term that you have chosen. This will take you to Google Insights for Search, another free tool from Google at www.google.com/insights. It will automatically search the term that you have chosen and produce the relevant data at Google insights. Scroll down to the bottom part of the page and you will see other related search terms. Take note of all the related search terms that you find.

Now you would have about 10 buying keyword terms in a particular niche. This basically indicates that there are people searching for information to solve a problem or meet a need in this niche. Next, you should investigate further into how big a market this niche is and get more keyword ideas.

Go to amazon.com, ebay.com, magazines.com and clickbank.com. Put the main keyword of the niche into the search field and see if there are products that are listed in these websites within this niche. Chances are you will find products in all these websites pertaining to your niche. Briefly review some of the products for ideas – both keyword ideas and product ideas. The next step is to find long tail keywords.

To do this, go to Google’s external keyword tool at https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal. Type in your 10 keywords and it will generate a list of related keywords. Take note of the keyword phrases with at least 3 words in them (long tail keywords) and that produce at least 2,500 searches per month.

Now go to the Google search engine at www.google.com and type in the main keyword in quotation marks. As you are typing, Google will give you related search terms. Take note of the long tail keywords. Once you hit the search button, Google will list out all the websites related to your keyword (this is called the SERP or Search Engine Results Page). Take note of the number of websites listed (it is listed at the top right hand corner of the page). You are aiming for keywords with a maximum of 1,000,000 websites. If it is significantly higher than 1 million, then the keyword is too competitive. Do the same thing with each of the keywords that you have and choose those which have less than 1 million competing websites.

For each of the keywords you type into Google, look at the bottom of the SERP and you will find more suggested related keywords. Click on them and you will find even more keywords. Drill down into the keywords as deeply as you can until you find long tail keywords with less than 1 million competing websites.

If you have done your market research well enough, you will now have identified a niche with ready buyers and the long tail keywords (about 10 will do) they use to search in the search engine for information on a product to buy. The next step would be Product Research and Creation which will be covered in the next article.

First, you should register a domain name. Go to namecheap.com or godaddy.com. Choose one with your long tail keyword inside. If the exact long tail keyword has already been taken, try adding another word that makes it attractive, such as ‘best’, ‘tips’, ‘online’, ‘center’ etc. For example ‘organic farming’ can become ‘organicfarmingtips’.

As for the extension to choose, go for a .com if possible. If that has been taken for the domain name you want, take either a .net or .org. The next best option other than these three would be a .biz or .info. These are the common ones considered to be search engine friendly.

The reason why you should register a domain name now is that it takes 24-48 hours to propagate, and you will only be able to upload content into that domain after it has propagated. So by registering a domain name while you work on product creation, you save time.

The second thing you should do while creating your product is join relevant forums in your niche. Every niche has forums where people interested in their niche hang out. To find these forums, type the name of your niche followed by the word ‘forum’ (without quotes) at the end into Google’s search engine. So, for organic farming, it would be ‘organic farming forums’. Join at least 4 forums.

Joining a forum is easy. Just go to the sign up page and fill up the required fields. Every forum allows you to insert a signature. Here’s where you should put your website URL with some catchy statement. If your website has not been set up yet, you can add your signature later.

One feature to utilize in your signature is BB Codes. BB Codes is like html. For your signature you only need to know 2 BB Codes – the one for hyperlinking and the one for making your words bold. To hyperlink your words to your website URL, the opening BB Code is [url=http://www.yourdomain.com] and the closing BB Code is [/url]. For example, if you want to hyperlink the sentence, ‘Secret Tips to Organic Farming for Good Health’, type [url=http://www.yourdomain.com]Secret Tips to Organic Farming for Good Health[/url] in your signature column. Now anyone who clicks on that sentence will be directed to your website.

And if you want to bold your words, just add the bold BB Codes which are [b] and [/b] at the beginning and the end of the string of code above. So it would appear like this – [b][url=http://www.yourdomain.com]Secret Tips to Organic Farming for Good Health[/url][/b]. Most forums have BB Code on by default. But check just in case.

For more BB Codes, just Google it.

It’s important to join forums as soon as possible because it takes time to build relationships. So post anything you want into these forums everyday (take 30 minutes a day). If you aren’t very knowledgeable in that niche, just post intelligent questions. The more posts you make, the better your standing in the forum. The relationships you make in these forums will be very valuable to you when your product is ready.

Another important thing to do while at forums is to look for the most frequently asked questions and most common problems faced by the members in the forums. Take note of these because you want to include these into your product.

Now for product creation. The easiest way to create your product is to go to Amazon and type in the main keyword for your niche. Amazon will probably produce a list of books on that topic. Find one you like and look into the contents page. Copy the contents page and re-write the chapter titles the best you can. Also include the questions and problems that you found in the forums into the chapters.

The fastest way to produce your product is to outsource it. Go to elance.com or guru.com and post a job for a researcher to research the list of chapters you have compiled. This person only has to cut and paste information from various sources according to the chapters you give him. It should not take more than 2 or 3 days.

Once you get the research back, look for a writer to re-write the research materials into an ebook of 80 to 100 pages in length. This should take no longer than a week. You can find good writers from the Philippines who work at cheap rates. Be prepared to pay about $100 for the researcher and $200 for the writer.

So in about 10 days you should have your product ready. Now you need a designer to design your ebook cover and website. What to do from here onwards will be covered in the next article.

If you want to keep your Blog fresh and interesting, then you need to post often. You can create different types of posts to keep your readers interested. This will also keep you from getting bored with your own Blog. Whether blogging to make money directly from the Blog, or blogging to drive traffic to an Affiliate product, you should keep these five types of Blog posts in mind.

1. The Review Post

Review blog posts can help you to monetize your Blog. You will take a close look at a product and give a review of it. This can include an affiliate link to the product. When reviewing, be sure to mention BOTH positive and negative comments about the product. Even if you totally loved the product, keep your review balanced by mentioning a few things that could have been improved. Your readers will appreciate your honesty and be more likely to trust your recommendation.

2. The Quick Tip Post

In between your longer posts you can do a “quick tips” type of post. These are normally 150-250 words. Sometimes we have a lot of information about our niche that we want to share but it may not be worthy of a full length post. In that case, post a quick tip. This should be focused on ONE key area of the niche. For example, “How to Plant a Tulip Bulb” would be a quick tip article for a gardening Blog.

3. The List Post

Blog readers love lists! The most popular Blogs make good use of lists. You can create lists that fit with any topic imaginable. This is a great way to convey information online because it can be easily scanned by web readers who are “skimmers.” You can also create lists of different ways to accomplish a goal in your niche. “10 Ways To Prepare Your Soil For Planting” would be a great list for gardeners.

4. The Interview Post

Interviews will require some preparation, but they are very valuable to your Blog. Interview someone in your niche and then share the results of that interview with your readers. This will not only provide valuable content for your Blog, but will also bring more traffic. Most likely, the person you interview will also publicize the event on their Blog or Website, directing traffic to your Blog.

5. The Instruction Post

This is similar to Quick Tips as you are providing your readers with valuable information. However, these Instruction posts will go into much more detail on a certain topic. Sometimes your instructions can even be divided into two or three posts or courses. Look at comments and questions from your readers to find what topic would be most beneficial to your readers.

As you Blog, remember that your readers like variety. Do not always write the same type of post. Put a little variety in your Blog to keep it fresh.

Here’s a “simple” explanation of what can be a difficult area to understand.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is the process of improving a web sites placement in the free listings of the search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN/Bing etc. These free listings are also known as “organic” listings.

SEO involves:

1. On-Site Optimization – making changes to the HTML code on the pages of your web site to:
a. improve the relevance of certain key words/phrases on each page
- both in the content and meta tags of a page, and within the links on your site to that pages.
b. fix any problems which may stop the page being indexed by the search engines
- looking at your site navigation structure and wording of links.

2. Off-Site Optimization – getting back-links from other relevant sites, preferably using key words (or “anchor text”) in the links themselves – e.g., links from directories, through article marketing, or even paid links on relevant sites.

The key to successful, long-term results with SEO is doing things within the guidelines suggested by the major search engines. In other words, using ”white-hat” tactics.

Sneaky tactics (”black-hat”) will usually result in penalties being applied by the search engines – i.e., your rank may be reduced, or more likely, your site may be totally removed.

Black hat tactics include (but are not limited to):
* link farms (groups of web sites that link to one another in their hundreds)
* keyword stuffing (hiding lots of text/keywords on a page to influence search engines) or
* page cloaking (showing different pages to search engine and human visitors)
So if anyone suggests doing this to your site… heed the words of Elmer Fudd! “Be very, very careful”

Even though “white-hat” tactics are easy to implement, most people still overlook the basics of SEO. So if you make small changes to your pages, it can result in a huge improvement to your overall position in the organic search engine results.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

SEM aims to create additional traffic to websites by increasing their visibility on the search engine result pages (SERPs).

This is where things can get confusing… because SEM can include tactics to improve your results in the ”organic” listings, as well as other tactics which cost money to implement.

To avoid confusion, it’s probably best to leave any discussion of “free or “organic” traffic to come under the realm of SEO.

And think of SEM or Search Engine Marketing as those marketing practices that COST MONEY to generate the traffic – i.e.,

* buying placement in search listings (paid inclusion) where your paid listing appears before the free ones,
and/or
* Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising (i.e. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing) where the advertisements appear alongside normal search results, or on relevant pages on other sites.

Companies offering Search Engine Marketing services usually perform a range of BOTH SEO and SEM activities including:

* optimization projects on client web sites,
* managing paid listings at search engines,
* submitting client sites to directories,
* developing online marketing strategies for clients.

Now, you CAN do all this yourself if you have the time and the knowledge. If you choose to do that, you simply MUST become very familiar with PPC programs before you start. If you don’t, your expenses can be potentially quite large from making newbie mistakes with such basic things as the wrong keyword selections!

If you don’t have the time to DIY, and want to use a firm to do Search Engine Marketing for you, it also doesn’t hurt to better understand what happens before engaging someone.

That knowledge will help you choose a reputable SEM company over the less desirable ones in this industry!

If you are still wondering what blog is, a blog is simply a special type of website. It has features that set it apart from other websites such as: the content entries (posts) are generally arranged in chronological order with the newest content at the top; reader comments are usually an important part of a blog; a subscription system called RSS is usually offered so readers know when the blog has been updated; and the posts are arranged into some type of archive system so readers can find information easily.  You can also set up a blog that looks like a typical website should you choose!

1. You don’t need any programming skills. You can use a free blogging platform like Blogger.com or WordPress.com, or a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress.org/. With any of these you can have your first site up and running in a few hours and future blogs up within minutes and at no to little costs. Simply select a theme and start entering your information. If you want to make money with your blog it is not necessary to but you might want to get your own domain name, decide on a market niche, and focus your content to match that audience.

2. With a blog you can add content easily and often updating your site yourself is a cinch. Adding content to a blog is no more difficult that typing a Word document and hitting save. In the case of a blog, though, when you hit publish your information is immediately available to the whole internet community.

3. Search engines love blogs because they are looking for fresh content everyday. If you work at adding new content on a consistent basis Google and other search engines will reward you with free traffic.
4. Blogs can be used to build communities. Blogs are a great way to interact with your visitors. In fact you can do so many cool things with a blog that the really good ones make the visit so enjoyable people actually want to come back again. You can interact with your visitors by adding a place for them to post comments on your blog articles.
5. You can monetize blogs easily. Whether through Google Adsense, Yahoo! Publisher, or affiliate links, monetizing a blog is one of the easiest ways to begin making money online.
6. You can easily add free things such as polls that make it fun for others to see what people are voting on.

7. Do you like videos? You can add those that you make and relate directly to your business or the theme of your blog. If you do not know how to create a video you can go to You Tube and copy some simple code for free and place it in your blog.
8. You can sell products on your blog. This is so easy that anyone can do it as well. Start by placing a banner for your favorite affiliate program on the sidebar. Then add text link ads for more products you sell in the content of the blog articles themselves.

9. Do you operate an off line business? You can promote that business on the internet either locally or globally a great free way to advertise.

10. You can sell advertising to others promoting their business or products for them. Another huge revenue stream for top bloggers is selling advertising. Did you know you could earn from a few to thousands of dollars a month with pay per click advertising such as Google Adsense ads on your blog or promoting products and services listed on free sites such as Click Bank?
These are 10 top reasons to start a blog and there are many others!

Google Analytics tracks visitors from all sources, including display ad campaigns, PPC (pay per click) campaigns, organic searches from search engines, email marketing, bookmarks, websites that have your inbound links, and other digital sources like URLs embedded in PDF files or Power Point slides. It designed for online marketers who want to track visitors to their sites for improving user experience and conversions.

Why do you want to use Google Analytics? There are several reasons for that.

You want to know if your marketing campaign is going in the right direction or not. For example, if you are doing article marketing to drive traffic to your site, you want to know the article directories that are the most effective in sending visitors to your website.

You don’t want to waste your time submitting articles to directories that are not sending you any traffic or a very low amount of traffic. You can write more articles and submit to only those directories that are sending you a good amount of traffic.

If you are using a pay per click (PPC) marketing campaign, you should use split testing to test the effectiveness of different ads. You want to know which ads are performing better than the others in terms of conversions. If you integrate Google Analytics with your AdWords PPC campaigns, you will be able to track the effectiveness of each ad you are using in your PPC campaigns.

Using data from Google Analytics, you will be able to find the pages that are getting the most traffic from search engines, bookmarks and inbound links. Knowing this information helps you spend time on optimizing only those pages that are getting the most traffic.

You can work on providing improved user experience of your site on those high traffic pages. Make it easy to navigate those pages from anywhere in your site. Place a “What is new” about your site on those pages.

If you’re selling ads on your site to advertisers directly, you need a visitors portfolio of your site. This portfolio contains information about the number of monthly unique visitors to your site, visitors’ geographic locations, the number of page views per visitor, the bounce rate of visitors, etc.

The more information about your visitors you can provide to your prospecting advertisers, the better is your chance of commanding a premium price for advertisement spots on your site. Google Analytics will help you develop a visitors portfolio of your site.

Even if you are not going to use visitors data immediately, you can still sign up for Google Analytics and let the tool start collecting visitors data about your site. When you need those data, you will have them in your Google Analytics account.