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EARN
MONEY ONLINE
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Market your SiteMany young Internet entrepreneurs naively believe that once their website is uploaded to the server, millions of people will flock to their site, and the cash will start rolling in. Unfortunately, this is a common myth that will destroy your business. The proper promotion of your website is critical. Good promotion does not necessarily mean spending a lot of money. After all, you can spend lots of money on web advertising, but it probably won’t prove cost-effective. Instead, you must use proven strategies for generating site traffic and getting orders. Through my experience, I have found the following strategies to be the best ways to optimize the success of an online business. So, roll up your sleeves, and let’s get started Use Keywords to Increase Search Engine Rankings As mentioned throughout this resource, keywords are essential to boosting your rankings in the search engines. When we talk about keywords, we are talking about the search terms potential visitors will type into a search engine when looking for information related to your content. Keywords in Content Be sure to use keywords in the body text of your pages both frequently and in the best locations. For example, if you are selling information on making money in foreclosures, you should have the word “foreclosures” in numerous places throughout your body text. Beyond frequency, most search engines will rank your website based on the location of keywords in the body text. Therefore, it's helpful to place keywords near the top of the page, such as in the headline or the first few paragraphs. One of the best tools available for optimizing the keyword content of your web pages is Trellian Keyword Analyzer, a part of the Trellian SEO (Search Engine Optimization) Toolkit. Keywords in TITLE Tag The first and perhaps most important place to include keywords is in the TITLE tag. Many search engines use the words in the TITLE tag to rank your website. Plus, all major engines will use the TITLE text as the title for your web page in the listings.
Each page on your site should have a unique title, containing slightly different keywords. Such diversification will lead to better rankings. Keywords in IMG tags Although HTML links work best for embedding keywords, you should also include keywords in each IMG tag, using the alt attribute.
Keywords in META Tags META means "about." Consequently, META tags, appearing just below the TITLE tag (within the <HEAD>), give optional information about your web page. There are numerous META tag attributes to choose from, but we only need to worry about two of them with regard to search engines: description and keywords. Optimizing your website’s META description and keywords will enhance your position in the search engines. The META tag description attribute should be a clear and concise description of your website. Be sure to include keywords with the most important keywords appearing near the beginning of the description. Each page on your site should have a unique META description, containing slightly different keywords.
The META tag keyword attribute should be a comma-delimited list of keywords. The keywords should be arranged in order of importance. Keep all keywords lowercase and do not repeat a keyword more than three times. Each page on your site should have a unique set of META keywords.
Submit your Web Pages to the Search Engines After you have optimized your keywords, you are ready to begin submitting your web pages to the search engines. In the early days of the Internet, submitting your site was free. These days, only a handful of search engines accept URLs (for free) from commercial websites, and oftentimes these URLs are never included in the database. Below are links to some of the free “add URL” submission pages. Perhaps the best search engine on the Internet is Google, so be sure to submit your site to Google as soon as possible.
Obviously, submitting your website to a few “free” search engines is not going to generate sufficient traffic. As a result, I recommend the following:
Monitor your Search Engine Position Once you have submitted your web pages to the various search engines, you must continually monitor your site’s position. Since most search engines only list ten websites per results page, appearing on the first page is a real challenge. But this is where you want to be, at least in some of the engines. To accomplish this task, I recommend using Trellian BeOnTop to continually monitor your website’s position in the top search engines. If your position is weak in a particular engine (for a particular search term), you must do some research. Find out which sites are positioned on the first page (where you want to be), then analyze their content and TITLE and META tags. Finally, make the necessary changes to your web pages to improve your site’s position. It may take a a week or more for your modified pages to be re-indexed, so you will have to be patient to see the results. No matter how well you optimize your keywords, some search engines, such as Google, won’t rank your site very high unless you have high link popularity. Link popularity refers to the number of links to your website (from other sites). The more websites linking to your site, the greater your link popularity. Link Exchange The best way to build link popularity is to exchange links with other websites. Simply search the Internet and find other websites with complimentary subject matter. Next, contact these websites, preferably via email, and request a link exchange. Obviously, you will need to create a Links page on your site, where you can categorize and store reciprocal links. When exchanging links, you will typically provide your page title, URL, and a brief description of your website. Most websites will be very receptive to link exchange offers, since the benefits are mutual. Building link popularity through link exchange is hard work, but the results are well worth it.
Free-for-All Links Another way to build link popularity is through free-for-all links pages. Free-for-all links pages are everywhere on the Internet. These sites let you instantly add your website’s URL to a free-for-all links page in specified categories. Newest links are typically added to the top of each category, encouraging you to keep coming back to maintain a high position. By frequently submitting your site to these links pages, you will build link popularity, but it's a VERY time consuming endeavor. As a result, I always recommend using SubmitWolf for this purpose; SubmitWolf will submit your URL to over 500,000 links pages in just a few minutes. Create your own Autoresponder Program Most web surfers won’t order anything - especially an online membership - on their first trip to your website. And many of these visitors will never return, limiting your number of sales. Create a Free Report As a result, you must attempt to capture as many visitors’ email addresses as possible on their first visit. This is best accomplished by offering a free report in return for their email address. For example, “Sign up for our free report, 7 mistakes you must avoid to make money in foreclosures.” You will write your free report once, organized into five to seven parts. Each part will represent a single email message. Each message will contain the promised “free” information, but also the key features and benefits of your service. These email messages, sent over the course of several days and weeks, will build up your company’s credibility and lead to an increased number of sales. But how can you possibly send out all of these reports (in multiple parts) to each visitor? The answer is simple: autoresponders. There is a company called Aweber Systems that specializes in the automatic distribution of email messages. You simply place a button on your website, such as “Get your free report now!”, and Aweber will do the rest. They will collect and store you visitors’ email addresses in their own secure database and send messages based on your specific timing model. For example, you can send message one immediately after a person signs up, message two four days later, and message three five days after that. The beauty of an autoresponder program is that it responds to customer inquiries automatically. Once you create the series of email messages, your work is done. Your visitors will receive a steady flow of seemingly personalized email messages and the sales will start flowing in. It's this kind of repetition and branding that fuels the advertising industry. I have found that by the time a person receives the fifth to seventh email message, he will order a membership. Create an E-zine Beyond autoresponders, Aweber will also permit you to send other email messages to your list members. For example, why not send a bi-weekly newsletter (commonly called an e-zine) to everyone on the list? This will increase your sales even more. On each of my websites, I enjoy a noticeable spike in sales following the distribution of my bi-weekly newsletter. People love the free information and are ultimately persuaded to become paying members.
Click Here to learn more about Aweber's autoresponder program! Post Messages in Usenet Newsgroups Posting to Usenet newsgroups is another great way to promote your website. Newsgroups, or electronic bulletin boards, pre-date the Internet. In 1979, a group of university students pioneered newsgroup technology, creating a mechanism for people to post and read articles on their computer. Today, there are over 40,000 newsgroup categories (e.g., biz.marketplace.web-design, rec.pets.dogs.info, soc.history.ancient, etc.) and 700 million posts. You can browse a complete listing of the Usenet newsgroups by visiting Google Groups. Don't get Flamed These highly targeted newsgroups are a great place to promote your website; however, you must be tactful. Certain newsgroups, such as .biz groups, will welcome the promotion of your commercial website. However, many others will have little tolerance for such behavior. As a result, you have two options when posting to non-commercial newsgroups:
How to Post Messages You can post messages using Google Groups or a more cumbersome newsreader program, such as Microsoft Outlook Express. Although it's less fluid than Google Groups, I have had the most success posting messages using Outlook Express; Google Groups tends to filter their postings. To configure the Outlook Express newsreader:
Offer your Customers Free Email @YourDomain Offering free email @YourDomain is a great wait to keep potential customers coming back to your website. I have enjoyed tremendous success with sponsored email, since users return daily to login to their email accounts. Over time, many of these free email users become paying members. While this may seem difficult, if not impossible, to implement on your site,
Everyone.net
Everyone.net If you want to increase your membership sales by approximately 33%, I recommend implementing your own affiliate program. An affiliate program, or associate program, is a revenue sharing program. You authorize certain websites (affiliates) to place one of your ready-to-use advertisements on their website, and you agree to pay them a commission for every membership sale that originates from their site. This is commonly called pay-for-performance advertising, since no money is exchanged until a sale is made. It’s a win-win situation for both you and your affiliates: you get incredible exposure on a multitude of websites with virtually no risk, and your affiliates get to partner with a premier website and make money at the same time. Building your own affiliate program - by yourself - would be a nearly impossible endeavor. But thankfully, there is a company that offers a premier, easy-to-implement affiliate tracking and management solution: My Affiliate Program. They will give you everything you need to create a first-rate, revenue-generating affiliate program. To ensure your success, I always recommend Successful Affiliate Marketing for Merchants. There are many pitfalls that befall many young affiliate program managers; this book will help you avoid them all. Click Here to learn more about MyAffiliateProgram! Create a Custom 401 Error Message Usually, when a curious visitor clicks on a password-protected directory and clicks Cancel, a sterile 401 error message is displayed stating Authorization Required. Go ahead and try it on your own website, so you can see exactly what I mean.
Clearly, this is not the best way to sell a membership to a curious web surfer. Wouldn’t it be better to direct him to the join page? Using a bit of advanced trickery, we can instruct the server to display the join page when a 401 error occurs, which is guaranteed to improve your membership sales. Using an FTP program, such as Trellian FTP, you will want to modify the file named .htaccess located in the root directory of your web server. This file will not be visible in FrontPage (that is why you need to use an FTP program).
In my experience, web advertising should be avoided. When was the last time you clicked on a banner advertisement? Most people avoid them like the plague. Furthermore, many websites still charge per one thousand impressions (CPM). This is almost always a losing proposition, since you are charged for an impression even if a user does not see your ad. If you really want to advertise, I would only recommend advertising on Google. The Google AdWords program uses cost-per-click (CPC) pricing. This means, you only pay when users click on your ad. |
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