Frequently Asked Questions
Affiliate Marketing | Article Marketing | Blogging | Ezine Advertising |General Questions |Joint Ventures | List Building | Mindset | Technical | Traffic Generation
Affiliate Marketing
Question: I understand how to receive an affiliate link to promote a product using Clickbank, but how do I add that affiliate link to my blog or website? I was hoping you would cover that also!
Answer: If you’re writing a review blog, it’s simple. Just write your review of the product, and hyperlink a keyword for the product or the product name itself by selecting the words, and then clicking on the “chain” icon in your Visual editor. Plug the Clickbank hoplink in there, and your link will be live. Always use a smaller link for your hoplinks. You can make a smaller version of the link at http://BudURL.com and track the clicks you get on your link there, but there are many other link shortening URLs, such as TinyURL.com, SnipURL.com, and ShortURL.com
Question: How do I find products to promote as an affiliate?
Answer: Once you’ve decided on a niche, it’s easy to find affiliate products, and you can do it one of three ways. First, you can check Clickbank.com to see if they have any products that might fit your potential customers. For example, if you’re selling golf clubs and you find a product that improves someone’s golf swing, it would be a good match. A product on Internet marketing would not. Be sure your product matches your market.
The second place to check for affiliate products is a Commission Junction or http://cj.com where there are many products from large and small manufacturers.
The third way to find affiliate products is by searching for a keyword for your niche in Google or another search engine, like this: keyword +affiliate. Overall, the results should show sites with affiliate programs. If there’s a product you can stand behind, become an affiliate and offer it to your list.
Question: The statement was made that when we send one of our prospects over to the sales letter of our affiliate, that you should retrieve the prospect’s information for our own use. Obviously, that is an important thing to do. But, from a technical point of view, I don’t understand how to do it. That is, keep the information and pass the lead on to my affiliate’s sales letter in a single action.
Answer: When you’re working as an affiliate, the easiest way to capture a lead’s name and email address is by using a squeeze page. Have them opt in to your list and set up a redirect at AWeber. In List Settings, when you’re setting up your web form, you can redirect people to your affiliate sight as the “Thank You Page,” if you aren’t concerned about confirmation. It’s generally a good idea to use a page that says, “Thank you for opting into my list, you will receive a confirmation message from (Your Company). Be sure to click on the link inside to get the information you requested,” for your thank you page, or something similar.
If you choose to have people visit your affiliate page after optin in, at AWeber, in the “Verified Optin” tab, set your “Confirmation Success Page” to your affiliate link.
Question: How can I sell affiliate products from my blog?
Answer: There are several different ways you can sell affiliate products from your blog. Here are some of the most popular, as well as a “secret strategy” very few bloggers use.
First, you can always include links on your blog to affiliates products. It is recommended you use anchor text as much as possible.
For example, if you were promoting a weight loss product, the link on your blog would say, “Click Here to Learn How to Lose Up to 30lbs in 30 days.”
When they clicked on the link, they would go to the product your are promoting, via your affiliate link.
Another popular method of promoting products is to do “Product Reviews” on your blog.
Have a section on your blog where you do product reviews and write posts that review products. Of course, when linking to the product, you’ll link to it with your affiliate link.
Finally, the “secret strategy” that few bloggers use…
Email Marketing
If you aren’t already, you should be collecting the information of your blog visitors with an opt-in form.
Rather than using your blog to sell and promote products, focus on giving great content and building a relationship with your audience to begin to know you, like you, and trust you.
If you accomplish this goal, people will be more than happy to opt-in the your email list where you can email them anytime you update your blog.
You can also use email to send direct affiliate promotions to your list.
Email marketing is the most powerful form of marketing online, and is overlooked by many bloggers.
Question: What does it takes to become a super affiliate?
Answer: That’s a great question, and it really depends on the market you’re in or the person you’re dealing with, how many sales they consider normal.
A lot of times, the fact that you’re even willing to become an affiliate people give you preferential treatment or they take requests. Even if you’ve never made a sale for someone before and you contact them and say, listen, I’m interested in promoting our site as an affiliate, but I’m not really comfortable with your sales process, or I’m looking to get higher commissions, can you arrange higher commissions,” they’ll just do it for you.
In some cases, if you contact someone and make that request, they’ll laugh you in the face. You really don’t know until you contact that individual website owner.
But if you want me to throw out just a general number, I’d say to get someone’s attention maybe if you do around, say, 500 to $1,000.00 in product sales in a month. That’s going to at least get their attention.
Article Marketing
Question: Is it necessary to put the articles you submit to enzine and isnare on your blog too?
Answer: You should never put the same article into Ezine Articles, iSnare, and on your blog at the same time. That’s known as duplicate content, and only one piece of that content will be given credit for it. Instead, put unique content in all three places. Or, rewrite the article and then, put it into another place.
Question: I’m not sure how often to post articles and if I should post the same article to different directories.
Answer: There is no set standard for article submission. If you submit one per week, at the end of the year, you’ll have 52 articles published. If you submit more, you’ll have more. You shouldn’t post the same article to your website as you submit to article directories because the search engines will consider it to be duplicate content. You can use unique articles for the directories, or you can rewrite the article on your blog or website and then submit it to article directories. Just be sure that’s it’s radically different from the article that is on your site.
Question: Article Submission: Do you use any article spinner or submitters to help facilitate this
process?
Answer: We don’t use article spinners because they do little more than substitute synonyms for the words in your article. When the articles are spun, they often come out unreadable. It’s better to rewrite paragraph by paragraph in other words. Just take the gist of the paragraph and write it another way.
We do use submitting software, but for subsequent versions of an article. So, for example. You submit the first one to Ezine Articles. Then, you rewrite another version and submit it to iSnare.com and have them submit it to directories and ezines for $2. Or, you can use submitting software. It’s been our experience to use Article Submitter Pro. iSnare is just faster.
Blogging
Question: I am wondering if I try to change my theme on my wordpress blog after I have already started blogging, will I lose the content that I already have. Is it best to just start another blog from scratch or a trick to switching themes with no incident. I am currently using the standard theme and my branded name is outgrowing it I think..or should I say hope?
Answer: No, changing the theme will not lose your content. Themes are easy to switch in WordPress. Just go to “Appearance” and “Add New Theme.” You can search for the theme you want, download it and install it all from your blog. You will have to fill in the username and password for your FTP account when requested, however. But, you can still change your theme the old-fashioned way. (See Lesson 2, Step 11a in The ListBuilding Club.) and it won’t affect your content at all.
Question: Does the WordPress Blog have to be on your own server? What if I am an independent rep with a replicated site that is hosted by the company?
Answer: Yes. If you want to make money online, you should follow what we teach in the ListBuilding Club. It’s the only way we can assure your success. A replicated web page on someone else’s server will not help you to build your list. A blog is a great way to drive traffic, and having it on your own server is the only way to guarantee that you can do what you want with it. Most hosted solutions do not permit commercialism, nor do they allow optin boxes. If you want the ListBuilding Club to work for you, follow our instructions to the letter, and you’ll see results.
Question: I watched the video with Brian on creating the opt-in form for your blog. I completed all the steps and the opt-in form is on the blog and works fine, EXEPT, it is so small that I’m getting complaints from people saying they can’t enter their entire email addresses. How do I make it larger? I’m starting to generate some decent traffic so please HELP ASAP!
Answer: Don’t worry! Though the boxes for entry might look small, they hold much more information. Just tell the people who ask (and we have run smaller boxes on many sites in the past and never had this issue) to keep typing… It will all fit!
Question: How do I change to capital lettets on my blog? my title on my blog is lower case, i dont know how to change it.
Answer: Easy! In WordPress, go to the Settings tab, all the way at the bottom on the left-hand side bar and click. The “General” tab will appear, and you can change your blog title there to anything you want. However, remember that your title should include a keyword for your niche.
Question: Can I set up more than ONE blog in wordpress on different niches?
Answer: Yes! You can have as many WordPress blogs on your hosting account as your plan allows. Notice the MySQL database limit. This will determine how many blogs you can have. If it’s unlimited, as it is with HostGator, you could have 1,000 blogs in different niches and it would
be fine.
Question: I have a hosted domain with WordPress installed. I have 2 questions; Can I place a squeeze page on the same domain/blog site, or should I have a separate domain? If on the same domain/blog site, how do I use wordpress to do that?
Answer: You can have a squeeze page on the same domain, if you put it into a subdirectory. It would look like this: http://yourdomain.com/squeezepage. You wouldn’t use WordPress to do that, as WordPress is really a separate application on your hosting account. Use your FTP client to create a new folder inside your public_html folder. Name this new folder what you want the squeeze page to be titled. For example, if you’re in the do training niche, you might use the label “training.”
Then, upload your squeeze page to that folder and title it “index.html.” The resulting URL from that action would be http://yourdomain.com/training and that’s where you would send people to opt in to your list.
Question: I have installed my Word Press, but it is in the wrong directory. How do I move it, or delete it and start over again?
Answer: Deleting the blog would be the easiest thing to do. Then, you can reinstall it in the proper directory.
Question: I tried to go into my c-panel to set up WordPress from video #4. You went right to the exact site needed for word press. When I attempted to use my domain name and cpanel it came up URL not found.
Answer: You must change the nameservers from the place where you bought the domain (GoDaddy or another registrar) to your hosting account. Watch the videos in the ListBuilding Club in order and they will give you the appropriate steps to follow.
Question: When starting out my blog I deleted my about page. I don’t know how to get that segment back so I may add it. Is it possible?
Answer: Sure it is! All you have to do is go to your “Write” area, and instead of “Post,” select “Page.” Then, title it “About” and you’re all set.
Question: I cant find the blogroll. the site has changed al little bit since this video was made. can you tell me where it is now?
Answer: After logging into your dashboard, click on Manage, and then, links.
Question: How do I delete the standard blogroll and add my own links to my blog?
Answer: Go into your WordPress blog dashboard, and to the “Manage” tab. There, you will see “Link Categories.” Just delete the Blogroll and add a category of your choosing. Then over to the right, you’ll see “Links.” Add any links there you wish.
Question: I just finished the video about changing the name of my blog. I’ve changed the name and made it more relevant to my market and according to some keyword info I have found, but now my URL doesn’t reflect the name of my blog at all. Is this a big problem and if so, what do I do?
Answer: Your blog’s URL should refelct your niche, as should the title and description of your blog. However, if it’s dog training.com and your niche is now quilting, you need a new domain.
Question: I’m not good at writing so how do I write a blog to post?
Answer: You don’t necessarily write to have a blog. You can make audio recordings and turn the blog into a podcasting blog. You can make videos and have a vlog or video blog. Or, you can hire someone to write posts for you at www.Elance.com.
Question: I can’t seem to find the general Option so I can edit the title and tagline of the blog.
Answer: In the WordPress left-side navigation panel, go to the “Settings” tab. The first tab that opens–General–will show the name of your blog and the tagline.
Question: Now that I have a second domain set up and a squeeze page set up on my new domain, you say that my blog is ready to direct trafic to my squeeze page. How does that happen? I post nearly everyday and can’t get people to opt in and I do not understand why.
Answer: Blogs are search engine friendly. If you post to your blog every day, using keywords appropriate to your niche, you should start showing up in the search engine results pages for those keywords after a while. Be sure to do some keyword research and don’t try to use generic terms as keywords. For example, don’t use “golf,” if you are in the golf niche. Find another keyword that has people searching for it, but that isn’t so competitive, like “leather golf shoes” perhaps, if that’s what you’re selling.
If you use those keywords in your blog posts, you should be able to rank in the search engine results, over time. It doesn’t happen in just a few days. You need to diligently post, using appropriate keywords.
A good keyword research discovery tools can be found at Google AdWords: Keyword Tool
Question: I have been building my site following your videos and I have come across a stumbling block trying to get API key with WordPress I keep getting a message daying that I have a WordPress account with WordPress.org is this the same as WordPress?
Answer: WordPress.com is a free hosted blog site. This is not what we recommend. WordPress.org is where you can download WordPress blog software, and install it yourself. (This is what you can install via Fantastico or Elephante, as well, with less trouble.)
You can also get new themes and plugins at WordPress.org. You may already have an account with WordPress.org, so try to retrieve your password by the means provided on that site.
Question: Do you have any other great ideas for pinging your blog when pingoat is down?
Answer: Yes! Try http://pingomatic.com
Ezine Advertising
Question: How much does it cost? how many should I start with to get a good test? Does this help SEO my website?
Answer: Ezines charge varying amounts to advertise, but you can get classified ads for as little as $25. Try not to pay more than $8 per thousand subscribers. Decide on a budget for ezine advertising and then, spend it in 3 – 4 places so that you can see what works best for your market.
Be sure to target ezines in your niche. Since most ezines are delivered via email, this won’t help your SEO. If the ezine has an online version, then the link pointing back to your website would be of benefit.
Questions: Would there be a free version of Directory of Ezines?
Unfortunately not. However, the site will save you lots of time in which you could be making money!
Question: As a newbie, how do I know what is a fair price to pay for ad?
Answer: You should generally pay no more than $8 per thousand for your ads, but in general, $4 – 5 is good. To find your cost per thousand (CPM), divide the cost of the ad by the number of subscribers to the ezine. Join the Directory of Ezines here.
General Questions
Question: I have put in my affiliate link to tiny url and it directs back to tiny url and you can see my affiliate link and my tiny url link. This is not what I want everyone on my blog to see. I don’t know how to get it not to show my affiliate link. I also cannot click on my link. Please help me to solve these problems.
Answer: If you go to the affiliate center at http://ListBuildingClub.com/affiliates/ and watch the video on making redirects. That will solve your problem.
Question: I keep hearing that GoDaddy will dump/keep/remove my domains if they consider anything might be wrong with the way they are conducted. Which other domain provider would you recommend?
Answer: Unless you’re planning to do something illegal or run an adult site, I wouldn’t worry too much abou that, but it is true and it’s also true of most hosting companies. We recommend HostGator, and many of us at OE use it for our own businesses.
Question: All i want to do is promote products how to make money online etc., how am i suppose to write an article or ezine if i dont know any thing about internet maketing?thats the only thing im struggling with at the moment.
Answer: To make money online, it’s very important to have people who trust you, and who will buy from you if they do. To get that list, you need to follow the steps in the list building club. You need to have a blog and you need to drive traffic to that blog by writing articles or paying to have them written. We’re giving you the stepping stones you need to follow in order to be successful online. It won’t happen just by joining an affiliate program.
But you shouldn’t start marketing in the “make money” niche, unless you have made money online and can show others how to do it because you have been successful. Start with a niche that you know something about. For example, if you’re a good dog trainer, that could be a niche where you can help people learn to train their dogs. You can certainly write articles and blog posts about something that you KNOW and LOVE.
Question: Just started the Quick Start Program and bought my domain in GoDaddy. Do I have to set up an email account with that domain name as well? How is this done?
Answer: No, you don’t have to set up an email account, but if you’d like to have email coming and going from your own server, it’s quite possible. You’d have to follow GoDaddy’s instructions, if you’re hosting with GoDaddy.
In HostGator (what we recommend), go into cPanel and click on Email Accounts. Then, at the top of the next screen, you’ll be able to select a name and password for your new email account. Once the account is created, you can click on “Configure Mail Client” to see if your mail service or the software you use to receive and send email is included there. You can also set up a web mail account through cPanel to check your email, if you prefer. Consult HostGator’s Help Guide for more Instructions.
Question: How many websites can you send to a hosting site?
Answer: You can have as many domains on your hosting account as your level of membership permits. Check with your hosting company for their current policies.
Questions: As per your advice when I click web hosting in host gator, it offers linux web hosting and when i click the Windows web hosting the message displayed is “Coming soon.” Please clarify
Answer: Linux web hosting is what you want. It allows you to add MySQL databases, which blogs are based on and most tracking and affiliate programs, as well. Windows hosting doesn’t depend on the type of computer you have, it’s the type of server.
Question: If I happened to have couple of domain names in the future, can the same hosting account handle those two domain names or do I have to buy another hosting acount?
Answer: It depends on the level of hosting account you choose to buy. For example, at Host Gator, the “Hatchling” account only allows you to have 1 domain, whereas the “Baby” account allows you to have “unlimited” domains hosted there. So, check with your hosting company. It’s always better to go for the multiple domain account because your business is bound to grow and change over time. That’s why
we recommend getting the “Baby” account to start.
Joint Ventures
Question: Being a newbie, if I could come up with an e-book and a program and a Web site with a good sales letter on it, would I be able to attract people like Tellman, Matt Bacak, and Shawn Casey to JV with me?
Answer: Very highly doubtful.The reason is because you can’t offer anything to help them in their business yet. You’re focusing on your own business, which you can do, but that’s certainly not how I started. I started only doing affiliate marketing, promoting other people and learning how to get really good at promoting other people so I could develop that skill set first before I focused on telling the world how smart I was.
So, it depends on your goal. If your goal is to sell an e-book, great, but if you made your information available for free, couldn’t you get really good at selling other people’s products or services in your niche?
And couldn’t you turn around and; and do joint ventures with the people in your niche? Absolutely.
List Building & Email Marketing
Question: Please teach us how to use ad swap to grow our list quickly. Where and which forum to go to find the JV partner to do that?
Answer: An ad swap is when two partners team up to send each other’s messages to their lists. For example, your partner sends your email to your his or her list and you send his or her email to your list. You can find the JV Forum in the ListBuilding Club under the “Community” tab in the top navigation bar.
Question: Please explain the relationship between an opt-in page like your My First List page and a long sales page?
Answer: The squeeze page (such as the one you arrive at when you go to MyFirstList.com) leads to the sales page. The URL to your sales page
should be the address that you redirect customers to once they have opted into your list. You set this “redirect” up in your autoresponder
when you are filling in the information needed for your web form. In AWeber, it will be the “Thank You” page.
Question: How can I ensure that the largest percentage of my e-mails possible get delivered to their intended recipient?
Answer: Use AWeber for your autoresponder. They have the best deliverability rate. The only drawback is that if you use another service, it’s very hard to import your list into AWeber, unless you have a very small list. Plus, they will have to re-verify that they have opted into your list, even though they already did it twice in the past. Many of your leads could remain unverified. Still, if you have a small list, think about switching to AWeber. It will help with deliverability and get your messages delivered. In the long run, it could help you to communicate with your list and make more money, too.
Question:How do you build a list when you don’t have a product yet?
Answer: When you’re building your list all of the traffic that comes to your website, should be focused on building your list.And you can really do that just by giving away something for free or giving away something of value.
When you’re giving away something of value you don’t even have to have a product. You can just put together a special report, even the simple incentive like offering someone a subscription to your newsletter if your newsletter is focused on your niche. “Subscribe to our free newsletter” is sometimes all it takes to get someone to opt in. Really, ideally, you want to sell the opt-in, and you want to really give them a reason other than just, “Sign up for my list” and that’s by giving away something for free.
One great way of creating a valuable resource to give away is to find a bunch of articles, maybe five or ten articles, related to your topic of what your website is. You’re free to publish articles in your websites, in PDF reports and anywhere you want (usually) as long as you include the author’s resource box. One of the things we talked about with the List Building Club is actually writing articles ourselves and putting them out there in ezine articles and other areas and having your own resource box.
But also, on the flip side of that, is we can use other people’s articles. So, here’s a great strategy which works really well in terms of giving something away. Find a couple articles that have really good headlines in them. You know the importance of headlines. Your headlines are really the ad for the ad. A great headline makes a great bullet point. Find the ten best articles you can find with great headlines and put them into a PDF document. Make sure you include the author’s resource box, as long as it’s okay for you to do that. If you’re selecting articles from a free web directory, that’s usually the case.
Then when you’re writing your sales page or your squeeze page where you’re offering a free special report your bullet points for your free pecial report you’re giving away are just the titles of the headlines of the articles that are included. And that’s a great way to come up with something free to give away that you can give away on your website, in giveaways, or as an incentive just for joining your list.
Mindset
Question: How do I pick a niche?
Answer: This first step to having a profitable internet business is to pick a market, and more specifically a niche within that market. This is a
step that many people get caught up on, but really shouldn’t. Picking a niche is really simple to do. The key is to find what I call your “profitable passion,” that is, find something that you’re passionate about that can potentially make you money.
Here are some tips on finding out where your passions lie, as well as how to determine if there is a profit potential: Brainstorming your passions:
- What are your hobbies?
- What do you like to do?
- What are you good at?
- What do you read about, talk about, watch about on television?
- What experiences do you have? (work or personal)
- What do you like to learn about?
Determining the profitabilty:
- Do keyword research to see if other people are searching for niche topics, are other people searching for this information?
- Search Google: are there existing sites related to the topics you’ve brainstormed
- Check PPC ads: are others advertising anything related to the niche
- Check other sources: are there products or services related to your niche being sold or advertised on Ebay, Amazon, in magazines
and newspapers?
If the answer is yes to any of these questions, that’s a good sign there may be profits in the niches that you’ve identified that you’re
passionate about.
Keep in mind though, the emphasis should be on your passions… you’ll find out soon enough whether or not it’s profitable.
Technical
Question: What exactly is hosting a website? What does that mean?
Answer: Hosting means pretty much what it says. Hosting companies have many different servers. These are computers that communicate with the Internet. When you buy a “hosting” account, that means you’re buying space on the company’s server, where your domains and web pages are stored.
Question: At the end of the re-direct video. he states to just upload this file (re-direct file that i edited and re-saved with new filename ) into the folder that you want to re-direct to on your site? then test it by browsing to that folder with internet explorer… and it should re-direct to the page that you targeted as your url…. ok… so I am having a Brain fart here ! Help please…. upload this newly created file to what folder ? where on my site? how do i find this folder? where is it?
Answer:When you create a redirect, you upload the new
folder to your root domain via FTP. Open your FTP program, and you’ll see “public_html.” Open that and upload the new redirect folder there. Don’t forget to change the redirect .html document to “index.php,” then, you’ll be able to test the page by going to “http://yourdomain.com/name_of_the_folder_you_uploaded.” If it works, you’re all set. If not, you made an error somewhere and you should retrace your steps.
Question: The “Set up WordPress blog video stops around half way through and I’ve had the same thing happen on another one as well. I don’t think it’s an issue with my computer because it does not do it on all the videos.
Answer: It’s probably your connection. You need to wait until the entire video loads. It stops because there is only that much of the video downloaded into your computer. You can pause the video and wait until the whole thing downloads and that way, there should be no interruptions.
Question: What is a squeeze page and how do I make one?
Answer: A squeeze page is a specific page on your website (in many cases the home page) that is used to collect the information of the people visiting your website. The information you collect can be anything, including first name, last name, email address, home address, phone number, etc.; but usually just asking for the visitors first name and email address is adequate. As a best practice, the ONLY purpose of the squeeze page is to collect the visitors information, therefore you shouldn’t have any other links, buy buttons, or any other actions your visitors can take… they either opt-in to your squeeze page or leave. There are several ways to set up a squeeze page, here are the 2 most common:
1. HTML: you could create a squeeze page using straight HTML programming.
2. WYSIWYG Editor: another more common method is to use a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor such as Microsoft FrontPage, Nvu, Kompozer, Coffee Cup or Dreamweaver.
This is an easier option for most people, and you could also use pre-existing templates to edit an existing squeeze page to meet your needs. Don’t forget you’ll want to use an autoresponder service to integrate into your squeeze page. AWeber and GetResponse are popular options for internet marketers. ( See Lessons 8 and 9 in the video section, which explain squeeze pages in depth.)
Question: How do I get an opt-in box onto my blog?
Answer: This is a great question. If you don’t already have an opt-in box on your blog, then you’re missing out on the opportunity to get
subscribers and utilize the power of follow-up marketing… Generally, all this requires is getting the opt-in code from your auto-responder and putting it onto your blog. The specifics of this will be determined by what blog platform you are using. The List Building Club recommends using a Word Press blog over any other blog platform. If you are using a word Press blog, then it is really quite easy to get your opt-in form on your blog, and in an optimal position. Simply log-in to your Word Press back office and click on the Presentation tab. Then click on the Widgets Sub-category.
Once you are at that screen you will see a Sidebar list and a list of available Widgets. Drag a Text widget into the Sidebar area (we recommend putting it into the top position). Now you will need to add your opt-in code to the text portion of that widget. Save those changes and your opt-in box should now appear at the top sidebar of your blog. (See “How to Add the Optin Form to Your Blog” in Lesson 1 for complete video instruction)
Traffic Generation
Question: How do I get traffic to my squeeze page?
Answer: There are several ways to drive traffic to your website and squeeze page. Though there are potentially hundreds and hundreds of ways to do this, we have identified 17 specific ways of driving profitable traffic to your website. The key is to use the resources your have available, whether it be a specific skill, a lot of time, or a lot of money. Here are three of my favorite ways of driving traffic utilizing each of these resources:
1. Using a specific skill: Article Writing If you’re a good writer, then article marketing is one of the best ways to get traffic to your website. Articles are a great way to demonstrate your expertise as well as get good rankings in the search engines and have links pointing back to your site. Other skills you may have to drive traffic include podcasting if you’re good at talking your ideas and thoughts out loud and creating videos if you’re good at video and editing.
2. Time: Forum Posting If you have a lot of time, then there are various things you can be doing on the internet every day to drive traffic to your website. One of my favorite things to do is find forums related to my topic / niche, and post to them. I like to participate in controversial topics, as well as answer questions that other people have. The benefit is you can have a signature file that links back to your site. Other ways to get traffic if you have time are to write blog posts on your blog, visit other blogs and comment on those blogs, and answer questions on sites such as Yahoo! Answers.
3. Money: Pay Per Click Advertising If you aren’t on a tight budget or have set aside some money for paid marketing, then Pay Per Click Advertising is a great way to drive traffic to your site. The good thing about pay per click is you can set a daily budget that you don’t want to go over while you’re testing new ideas. Other paid methods you can use that are effective are ezine advertising and co-registration. You can also outsource a lot of traffic building activities which were mentioned above. When it comes to driving traffic to your site the key is to focus on just 2 to 3 methods, become very good at them, then expand out. If you try to use too many traffic tactics at one time, you’re results may not be effective at all.
Question: I’m starting a membership site, and I was just wondering what are some of the best ways I can bring some traffic in to my site to have members join?
Answer: There’s really several different ways ? there’s tons or ways to drive traffic to your site. Tellman himself has identified at least 17 highly effective ways of driving traffic to your website. Of course, there’s many other ways outside of those 17. Find a form of traffic that you like, that you’re interested in generating, and that really comes down to your likes. If you like writing, writing articles can be a great way to generate traffic. If you’re good at writing small, classified-type ads and you’re good at testing and tracking and tweaking different types of copy for small
ads, pay-per-click may be a way you want to go. Search engine optimization is a great way to get traffic if you like that and you’re good at it.
Identify the areas that you enjoy studying about and you enjoy learning about in terms of traffic, and then focus on just those areas. One or two at first, master those, and then go on to find other ways to generate traffic and master those areas. Trying to generate too much traffic in too many different ways, all by yourself especially, aren’t going to generate the best results.