Tag Archives: Prospects

Web Traffic: 7 Reasons Why Article Submission Will Increase Your Traffic

The key to success if you are trying to make money online is web traffic. There’s no point spending time and money building a website if no one knows that it exists. One of the easiest ways to increase website traffic is to use an article submission strategy. Here are seven reasons why you should submit your content to article directories. Read the rest of Web Traffic: 7 Reasons Why Article Submission Will Increase Your Traffic

The Top 4 Money Making Activities That Should Be On Your To Do List

Building an online business takes time and lots of effort, but sometimes you can have so many activities and ideas buzzing around your head that it’s hard to know just where to start. The secret to success is to break things down into manageable chunks. Here are four things that you should add to your to do list if you want to build a successful online business.

1. Developing an offer

The first thing you need to do is develop your offer; you won’t make a penny without one. The offer could be your own, such as an ebook or a membership site or even coaching or consulting, or it could be something you promote as an affiliate. Decide how you are going to generate income and then develop that offer.

2. Building a list

Everyone says that the money is in the list and they are right. Building a profitable list needs to be high on your to do list. Spend time thinking about how to attract subscribers, creating something of value to give them in exchange for their email address and then optimising your squeeze page.

You also need to dedicate time to creating a valuable newsletter or autoresponder course. You need to use your list not to bombard people with sales messages but to build a relationship and earn their trust so that they then feel comfortable spending money on your offer.

3. Generating traffic

Investing time in building an offer is pointless unless you then drive traffic to your website. Write articles, take part in forums, start an affiliate programme, find a joint venture partner; all of these things will increase traffic to your website.

4. Converting the traffic to sales

The final piece of the puzzle is sales conversion. You need to pump targeted traffic to your sales page so that you can then start optimising it for the best results. Think about the sales copy, the price point, whether you should add bonuses to encourage prospects to buy. These activities are key to ensure you make the most money from your traffic generating efforts, especially if you choose paid routes like Pay Per Click.

Make a schedule

Grab a pen and a piece of paper and write down two to three activities for each of these categories that you need to do this week and then take action. You should see results in a short period of time.

You might like to dedicate Mondays to offer development activities, Tuesdays to list marketing, Wednesdays to traffic generation and Thursdays to optimisation. Being methodical and taking action is the key to success here.

So in a nutshell, making money online comes down to: developing an offer, building a list, generating traffic and converting the traffic to sales. All you need to do is make a schedule and then take action.

The Seven Pillars to a Perfect Article

Article marketing is a great way to increase your credibility and increase your website traffic. But you can’t just submit any old rubbish to the directories. Here are the seven pillars you should consider every time you want to write an article.

1. Prepare

A good article requires research. Spend some time surfing forums in your niche, reading blog posts and comments and reviewing sites like Yahoo Answers. Look for problems that people have that you can show them how to solve in your article.

2. Produce

When you have your article idea you are ready to start writing. Your article needs to be well structured. Use the introduction to explain the problem and set the scene for the reader. Then break the solution down into a series of short paragraphs; walk them through it step-by-step. Finally you need to summarise the solution.

3. Polish

When you’re finished re-read your article. Does it provide the reader with useful information, but incomplete enough that they need to take the action. You need to spend time polishing your article. Make it shine. It has a specific purpose so make sure that it will achieve it.

4. Promote

Hopefully by this point your reader will be chomping at the bit to take action so now is the time to use your resource box to promote your offer. Give the reader what they want; a way to maximise the information you just gave them in the article.

5. Proof

If you want to encourage your reader to trust you enough to take you up on your offer then you need to present high quality information to them. That means that spelling mistakes and grammatical errors are a no-no. Ask someone else to check the article for you, a second pair of eyes is sometimes required to spot any mistakes.

6. Publish

Now it’s time to publish that article. Send it out to your favourite publishers. Submit it to the top article directories. And if you have your own prospects list don’t forget to send it to them too! There is no point spending time and effort writing a compelling article if you don’t put it in front of any readers.

7. Profit

If you’ve covered all the bases that I’ve mentioned then you should start to profit when your article is published.

Now you can just take time to be proud of your accomplishments, before you write another article!

The 3 Secrets Behind a Successful Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a powerful tool if you are trying to build a prospects list within your niche. Not only does it help you to collect names for your list but it is often your first opportunity to gain that person’s trust and start to build a long term relationship with them. Here are three things you should think about in order to build a successful squeeze page.

1. Offer value

Your squeeze page has the sole purpose of collecting the visitor’s name and email address. The page usually doesn’t have any content other than the opt in box and a short message, this is not the time or place to try and sell something.

In order to encourage the reader to provide you with their details you need to offer them something of value in return. You might decide to offer a free report, or an audio/video presentation. Remember you are trying to make a good impression here so take the time to create something valuable rather than just some recycled PLR you have on your hard drive.

2. Tell them why they should subscribe

Some squeeze pages simply have a headline and an opt in box. But you are more likely to get people to subscribe to your list if you flex your copy writing skills and convince them why they need your free report/audio. Let them know what problem it will solve for them and make the same effort to sell the benefits as you would if you were charging for it. You want to deliver so much value that the reader is surprised that it is free.

3. Keep in touch

Getting the reader onto your list is just the first step. Now you need to continue to add value to them by sending appropriate and useful messages to them over a period of time. To do this effectively you should sign up with a reputable autoresponder company. This will allow you to keep in touch with the reader and to continue to build a trusted relationship with them.

Not sure how this all works in practice? Here’s an example. Let’s say that you are have a book on dog care that you want to promote. You spend some time in a forum and see that many people have an issue with keeping their dog’s claws in check. So you write a short report on how they can overcome that issue. You write some copy promoting the report and add both to a squeeze page alongside an opt in box. When people sign up to receive the report then also subscribe to your list. From here you can use the autoresponder service to deliver a new email to them every couple of days and each one tells them how to solve another of their dog care issues. In the email messages you can also promote your dog care ebook and any other affiliate products that might be relevant.

The 3 Keys to Becoming a Successful Affiliate

Affiliates are a crucial cog in the wheel that is Internet marketing. Some people are born to create products that meet the needs of people in their niche, but they might not have the time it takes to promote those products. Which is where you come in.

As an affiliate you don’t need to worry about product creation or split testing sales pages, you just need to concentrate on traffic. The more traffic you send to the other person’s sales page the more sales they will make and in turn the more commission you will receive.

Here are the three secrets you need to know to become a successful affiliate promoting other people’s products.

1. Choose the right product

Your first step for success is to select the right affiliate product to promote. There are a wide range of products to choose from but that doesn’t mean that they all will make money for you. Before you even put any time and energy into promoting a programme you need to do some niche research.

Start with a Google search and look for blogs and forums in the niche. Are there lots of people talking about their problems? Make a list of the top ten issues you find in that niche.

Now you need to find a product that solves those issues. You might choose a digital product from a marketplace like Clicbank, or a tangible product from Amazon or from Commission Junction.

Make a list of four or five products that you could promote to solve the problems that you discovered. Then take a close look at the sales pages. Would you buy this product? Is it affordable? Does it really meet the needs of the niche?

When you have found a product that you would like to promote you might also want to check the commission payments and the stats about product sales and conversions.

2. Build a prospects list

It is possible to promote a product by driving potential customers directly to the sales page via your affiliate link. But if you want to be a successful affiliate you should actually capture that potential customer’s information on your own list first.

Think about it; let’s say you decide to promote a pregnancy product. That person not only needs to know about pregnancy and birth, but they’ll also need to buy baby products. Sooner or later they’ll be thinking about teaching their child to read, and then they’ll need school supplies. Don’t focus on the one product sale, think big picture. What else might this person need to buy?

By adding them to your marketing list you can keep contacting that person over time to sell them other products to solve their other problems.

Create a free report that you can use to encourage that person to join your list, and then you can send them onto the sales page. Not only do you have a potential sale in the here and now you also have a future prospect to market to.

3. Start building traffic

Now all that’s left is to start building traffic to your squeeze page. You could try article marketing, using the issues you discovered in the forums as a basis for your articles. Make sure you have a compelling resource box and include a link to your free report.

You could also think about creating a video that talks about a problem you highlighted and tells the viewer where to find the solution. You can include a link to your squeeze page in the video to encourage them to grab your free report and join your prospects list.

How to Make a Fortune Promoting Someone Else’s Products

Do you know the reason why some affiliates succeed and others fail? Why some make a moderate profit and others a substantial one? There is a reason. Super affiliates start, sustain and then strengthen relationships with subscribers. Their secret weapon is a prospects list; and here are the five steps that you need to take to just as successful.

1. Capture the opt-in

The biggest mistake most affiliates make is that they spend hours generating traffic which they then send directly to their affiliate link. What’s the problem with that? Well the most you will ever make from each of those visitors that you spent all that time and effort finding is one sale.

Think about what happens if you send them to your squeeze page instead. You can offer them something of value (such as a free report or mini-course) in exchange for their email address. Once you have them on your list they now become your asset; you can build a relationship with them and expose them to more than just that one offer.

You can even redirect them to the affiliate link after they’ve joined your list, which is where you were trying to send them in the first place.

2. Differentiate your offer

You’ve probably noticed that your affiliate manager has lots of emails and articles for you to cut and paste and send out to your list. That’s what’s so easy about affiliate marketing right? Wrong. It’s highly likely that your prospects are signed up to more than one email list, so the last thing you want to do is send them the exact same email message that they’ve already seen a dozen times. Doesn’t really do much for your credibility.

Instead you need to differentiate yourself from the crowd. Which brings me nicely onto our next point.

3. Speak from experience

Nothing speaks louder than actual results. If you want to lose a few pounds who do you turn to? Someone else who is struggling to lose weight, or someone you have seen drop 35 pounds? Exactly.

You can make your messages stand out from the crowd by speaking from experience. Tell them how the product you are promoting has been useful to you. Tell them about the results you achieved and what happened when you used it. Tell them about it warts and all; highlighting the downsides of a product can make you more credible. Don’t worry, people will still buy it; you did didn’t you?

4. Offer a compelling incentive

If lots of marketers are pushing the same product then it helps to give your readers a reason to click on your affiliate link. Offer them something of value, such as a special report or an audio recording or even a personalised consultation to show them how to get the most out of the product.

Think of something unique and useful to offer your readers to get them off the fence and to purchase through your link.

Don’t worry if you don’t have anything to offer either. Try one of these: hire a ghostwriter, conduct an interview, buy reprint rights to other products or take a stash of your articles and convert them into a private access site.

5. Look for residual opportunities

There are lots of products out there that pay you a one time commission every time a prospect makes a purchase. But the smart marketers look for residual income. Why spend time driving traffic to a one time commission when it takes the same effort to promote one that pays you month after month?

Look for monthly membership sites, hosting and autoresponder services, databases and other subscription-based services.

You want to promote a variety of different affiliate programmes and the ones at the top of your list should always be ones that pay you a recurring commission.

Becoming a super affiliate is so much easier if you build a list and it all comes down to starting, sustaining and strengthening your relationships with those subscribers.