Internet Marketing – Getting Started the Right Way pt 5

Now that you have your product ready and your website set up, it gets more exciting because it is time to promote your website. In other words, it is time for traffic generation. There are literally tons of ways to drive traffic to your website. But broadly, they can be divided into two main kinds of traffic generation. You can either pay for it or get it free.

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.

Legitimate Ways to Make Money from Home

The Internet has developed  into an extension of our everyday lives, legitimate work from home jobs have flourished; and each of them can serve as a fantastic income stream of its own.

If you enjoy using the Internet socially there is certainly nothing stopping you from also starting a blog and using it to produce income. The great thing is that there are several legitimate work from home jobs that are worth considering and it cost little to nothing to put them to use.

Best of all, you can use WordPress along with free or some great low cost premium themes such as some of my favored themes offered by StudioPress, ShopperPress and DirectoryPress, all quality themes that can be used to help you develop a stream of income.

Let’s take a look at a few of these legitimate work from home job opportunities:

1. Auctioning products. You can earn some profit as early as tonight with highly popular auction sites like eBay and Yahoo! Auctions. Just look for an item you can sell, prepare a sales page, and wait for any of the 12 million people who visit auction sites on a daily basis to view and purchase what you have to offer. Do this on a grander scale and you will be able to discover the full earning potential of auction sites.

2. Become an affiliate. As an affiliate, you will be tasked to sell a merchant’s products. There are no membership fees or upfront costs required. Online affiliate programs will allow you to sell – and earn – based on your own ability to market products and services. You then earn a commission based on the sale of the product that was sold through your referral link. There are many companies offering affiliate programs. Just do an Internet search to find out your options.

3. Freelancing. Got a special skill you can extend to other people through the Internet? For example, can you ghostwrite for another person? Can you create software programs in accordance with their specifications? Can you prepare web graphics that they are sure to love? Render your service for a fee. You can try out Website like Rentacoder.com, Elance.com and Scriptlance.com to find an abundance of potential clients ready to pay you for assisting them with their projects.

4. Create Website and monetize them. You can develop niche-focused Website and enroll them under pay per click (PPC) programs like Google AdSense. PPC programs will send contextually-relevant ads to your web pages and you will get paid every time a visitor clicks on the link. If your Website becomes popular, you can sell advertising space as well.

These are just a fraction of the many Internet earning opportunities you can pursue. There are definitely more, and such is testament to how viable the web has become in being an earning avenue for people who wish to find legitimate work from home jobs.

Getting Started in Internet Marketing (part 2) – Market Research

There are many ways to make a living online. But no matter which route you choose, it all begins with market research. You have to find a group of buyers who have a common problem or need. Then all you need to do is sell them things that solve the problem or meet the need.

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.

Getting Started the Right Way in Internet Marketing (part 3)

Now that you have identified your target market and gathered your 10 or so long tail keywords, it’s time to create your product. Product creation may take you anywhere from one day to two weeks so during this period, it is wise to put some other steps into action also. Here are 2 things you should do simultaneously with product creation.

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.

Using WordPress to Create a Directory of Websites

People go to Google to search for web sites that have content on a certain topic that interests them. Once a keyword is entered and the Search button is clicked, Google returns a list of web sites that contain the keyword. It is not unusual for Google to get millions of web sites with that keyword. It is always assumed that the very first site on the list will contain the most relevant content. That way, one would click on the web sites listed on the first, second, or third pages, rarely venturing beyond the tenth page.

However, some surfers complain that many of the sites they have visited contain only ads and very little content. Most sites sell products, and any information one can get will be about the goods being sold. Many are becoming frustrated; even if the Internet contains a lot of information, sometimes it is difficult to find the information you need. One way to mitigate this growing frustration is to build a large directory of web sites that your visitors might enjoy. For example, if you are targeting visitors who want information about back aches, you can then create a web site directory full of links to similar sites.

As I have told you in the past I am Techless Terry and always looking for ideas that work great with WordPress. Recently I found a free WordPress directory theme bDirectoryPress, created by a great guy by the name of Mark Fail, who is also the creator of ShopperPress and other great WordPress themes. Mark also has premium themes but the free themes are great too! Since discovering DirectoryPress I have started building a couple of directories and have upgrraded to the premium theme for some extra features.

Anyway, if you want to check the DirectoryPress theme just CLICK HERE and if you decide the purchase the premium theme this tired old man will make a couple of dollars to put into my grandsons college fund. If you take advantage of the free DirectoryPress theme I will still be happy for you have taken my advice and are trying something new.

What are the advantages of creating this web site directory using WordPress? Will, if you have been reading this blog you already know that WordPress is great but here are a few more advantages:

1. Your visitors will save time searching for web sites they will enjoy.

If you can write descriptions to the sites in your directory, your visitors will have an overview of the sites they plan to visit. That way, they can zero in on the sites they need much faster.

2. Your visitors will bookmark your web site instead of the individual site they will visit.

The list in our Bookmarks begins to get cluttered once we add more and more sites. If surfers can have a “jumping board” where they can go to other sites, they will be saving that site. This will mean surfers going to that site again and again.

Your web site directory can be that “jumping board” to a particular niche. You will then be getting traffic from users looking for information on your niche.

3. You can monetize your directory.

You can design your web site such that ads from AdSense will blend naturally with your site. You can also include affiliate links in your directory. However, ensure that you do not overdo this, as surfers might think your directory contains only advertisements. Provide good content, such as descriptions of the listed sites, as mentioned above, and your visitors will often return to your site.

By creating a directory of web sites you do not only help your visitors save time searching for information, you also have that opportunity to earn some money from your site.

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