Website Marketing Resource

Quickly making money with a website is the dream of all new online marketers but can it be done and if so how is it done. This article tells what I did in order to start making money in less than 3 weeks with a brand new website in the competitive insurance industry.

The first step I took was to decide on a particular industry. Unlike many of the experts that advocate selecting a niche in order to exploit it, I choose the subjects for my websites based on the popularity of the subject matter in terms of consumer interest and of course profitability. For this particular website I chose to concentrate on insurance. This subject is very competitive and can be difficult to score well on in the search engines but to be honest that wasn’t my goal. Instead for every website I make I focus on having it make between $500 and $1000 within 6 months. The methods I use have made it possible to achieve this standard on 3 previous websites so I felt like I could do the same with insurance.

Have you ever wondered how some websites get so many hits, while you struggle to get even 10 a day? I used to think about this all the time when I first started my website. I looked all over the internet for ideas to promote my website, and I found that they all had one major thing in common. They all required that you spend money! Now I don’t know about your, but I don’t have money to spend, so I continued searching for a way to get people to see what I had to offer and eventually I stumbled across a very powerful tool that consists of two words.

"MAILING LIST."

For those of you that are unfamiliar with this term, a mailing list is exactly what it sounds like. It is a list that allows you to add email addresses to it, and then to send the people on that list a message with the click of one button. This is a very powerful tool I’m sure you will agree.

Every webmaster knows that the free search engines are a major source of traffic.

They also know that applying all the SEO techniques in the world will not in itself get their web pages spidered, indexed and listed. Yes, sure, a “perfect” page, once indexed and listed will surely rank high for its keywords but unless it is found by the spiders, it is pretty useless.

It is no secret that the process of a web page being found by the spiders can be helped by placing links to that web site on other web sites (e.g. by doing a links exchange with other web sites, by putting one’s URL in one’s signature file when posting on a forum, by writing and submitting articles for free distribution and placing one’s URL in the author’s resource block etc.) All of this will surely work but it can take months before anything happens. The webmaster has no option but to be patient and wait…and wait…and wait.

Now there is something very easy and very effective one can do to speed up this process. Actually, using this method, will get a web page indexed and listed in less than 48 hours. And the whole process is controlled by the webmaster. It is easy, fast in terms of setting it all up and what’s more it is free!

If you have a website but not making a lot of sales, I can understand how you feel.

So, I want to offer you 10 flaming, online advertising hot secrets to heat up your sales.

1. Create an email discussion list. The list should be related to your web site’s subject. Place your ad on all posts and it will remind people to visit your site.

2. Prove your product is a bargain. Add a lot of free stuff to your offer or, if you’ve sold the product for a higher price before, show them the difference.

3. Make your web site more useful. Sell ad space, generate hot leads, answer visitor questions, offer free content, be news friendly, etc.

4. Make the most of each visitor. Sometimes your price is to high. You should provide a variety of similar products at different price ranges.

5. Test and redesign your banner ads till you get your desired click through rate. Once you do, join many banner exchanges and buy ad space.

6. Use holidays as a reason to get free publicity. Write a press release or article about the current holiday. It’ll have a high chance of being published.

Directories are important to your ranking and success with Search Engines. In a nutshell, search engines are completely automated and usually there is no need to submit. Directories all have human editors who review your site and you do have to submit to them to be listed. But you must submit the right way or you are wasting your time.

If you think getting listed in search engines is slow, try directories. Getting listed in directories takes time but it is well worth it.

One of the good things about getting listed in directories is that Google puts a LOT of weight on sites that are listed in directories. DMOZ is the most important one to Google (and therefore should be the most important one to you).

Junk sites can get listed in the search engines, but try getting a junk site past one of the human directory editors. You can’t even get useful sites that are poorly designed past the “eagle eyed” directory editors. Maybe that’s why Google puts so much weight on sites that have achieved the status of being listed in directories.

There are a LOT of directories, but there are only a few that you should bother with now.

Let’s face it; the Internet is cluttered with all sorts of guides about increasing traffic to your web site. Unfortunately, most of these guides are outdated or incomplete. In fact, many of the techniques being touted in them will get you in serious trouble. Wouldn’t you like to build up quality traffic that will stand the test of time? The key phrase is "test of time". You don’t want to be a flash in the pan.

FIRST THINGS FIRST

Before you rush out to tell the world that your brand new web site is open for business, set it up properly. Do not even start to think about traffic if your web site still has broken links, empty content, and other unfinished business. While patience can be a hard thing to control, having some will pay off later. Once your web site is completely operational from top to bottom, you are ready to flood it with traffic.

SEARCH ENGINES

As a matter of fact, I recommend NOT wasting money on pay inclusion in most cases because it doesn’t offer enough of an advantage (and many times the fees give you absolutely no advantage - the only exception are the few sites that guarantee placement within a specific timeline). Focus your online marketing and gain positive and targeted traffic without paying out for “expedited listings” or “submission software.”

Submission software can appear to save time and effort, but in all reality, it doesn’t…

I suggest to clients that they don’t waste their time with submission software. No matter how good it sounds, honestly, the best way to attain and maintain strong search engine rankings is with a solid plan, time, diligence and staying active online. Search engine submission and optimization is a marketing strategy, and as such is not a one-shot process.

A plan that works…

The important thing is to use a good, strong and simple approach that really works and endures through the ever-changing standards in the search industry. There are some helpful free search engine submission tools, but the downside is, you get involved in several and you can duplicate efforts, which not only wastes time, but some engines and directories could mistake it for spam (I’ve seen this happen!).

Blogging is hot, and seems to be becoming hotter each month. Although blogging originally was dismissed, by many successful publishers and other online “gurus”, the truth is that now, a few years after the “blogging trend” began, there are actually more blogs and more bloggers online than ever before. Blogging, obviously, is “here to stay”!

Actually first documented in 1997, Web logs initially used the abbreviated version: wee-blog, with a Web log editor referred to as a blogger. Since then, all types of Web logs (blogs) and blogging software have emerged, giving rise to this lucrative and dynamic market.

Now, everything from advertising blogs to zoology blogs exist, with every topic in between apparent online. Political blogs are rampant, and groups of bloggers across the globe post regularly on every topic imaginable.

What does a blog supply that an e-zine, newsletter, or forum might not? What has skyrocketed the popularity of the blog over the past several years?

The answers are really quite simple:

1. Blogs are more highly interactive. Posters get to see the results of a post immediately, as the post appears simultaneously after posting. Posters also don’t have the usual moderation that appears in forums, where posts may be deleted without warning. Usually, in blogs, more freedom is given, and posts are usually accepted no matter what the content, or the topic.

You may have heard the expression that "content is king".

Yes, what type of content you have can impact your sales.

For this reason, learning how to re-cycle your content can help you improve your online marketing and promotion as well as your sales.

1. Repackage your web site content in to different products to sell. You could create speeches, audio books, classes, and video tapes with your content.

2. Divide your content up and use it for promotional articles. You could submit them to other web sites or ezines for publicity. Just add your resource box.

3. Allow people to link to your web site’s content. This is a fast way to get hundreds of people linking to your web site.

4. Add to your content and create an ebook to sell. You don’t want to sell your free content, but if you add to it you can. It’s an extra profit stream.

5. Compile it into a free ebook. You could submit it to free ebook directories. Use it as a bonus for when people subscribe to your e-zine.

Let’s face it. Getting webmasters to link to your site is difficult.

But a good linking strategy is necessary to build link popularity - a measure of the popularity of a website based on the number of other website’s linking to it. And at the same time it has become very difficult to compete on the internet with websites that have 1000s of backlinks, sites that have their carefully chosen anchor text firmly in place.

So let’s do the math. If you as a webmaster were to gain one new link to your site every day for one year you would only have 365 backlinks. Even with a more optimistic 2 links a day we are still only talking about 730 links. They may seem like a lot but in the real world of the internet and depending on the keywords you are competing for, you may need hundreds or even thousands more.

Why? Because link popularity is the ultimate tool in achieving ranking. Link popularity is measured by the number and quality of inbound links to your site. The more you increase the link popularity of your web site, the probability of maintaining a higher search engine position for a longer period of time becomes more likely. Inbound links help to attain high search engine rankings for your web site, while producing traffic from visitors clicking through on the links themselves.