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Stop Wasting Your Precious Time
Copyright© 2003 The Wealth Writer eZine. Reprinted in http://www.courses-free.com by permission from the author.
As webmasters and potential webmasters we all have the same on
going challenge - generating quality targeted traffic to our
websites. Site promotion is one of the webmasters most time
consuming tasks. I'm sure the last thing you want is to be ill
advised and unknowingly wasting your time promoting to useless
or near useless programs.
I have listed some wonderful traffic generation programs here
where you can waste hundreds of hours of your precious time -
the end result in quality traffic for all your time and effort
will be very few visitors or more likely no visitors at all.
Join a "Guaranteed Traffic" program.
Add your site to a "Web Ring".
Banner Exchanges.
FFA (free-for-all) pages.
Submit your site to millions of classified ad sites.
Submit to 120,000 search engines and directories.
Join a Button Exchange program.
Join a massive reciprocal linking system.
Submit to the major search engines using "ranking formulas".
Join a "Top Sites" program.
Don't forget to join a Pop-Up Window Exchange.
You could try a "Start Page" Exchange.
And don't forget to join "Safelist" email services.
The major disadvantage the above services have is they can be
easily cheated. It's not very hard to write scripts to reload or
refresh pages creating false page impressions where no real
persons are viewing the pages at all. To comply with the
requirements of the services, ads are hidden or placed at the
bottom of pages where they would be unlikely to be seen.
If you are lucky enough to get any traffic at all it will most
likely be untargeted traffic - it's not much use having a link
from a lonely hearts web site to your site when your site is
about internet marketing.
Of all the services above the one I thought had the most
potential was the safe list. A safe list is a database service
where people join and agree to receive email from each other.
The mail isn't spam as they have all opted in, and in doing so,
agree to receive mail from each other.
The problem with the safelist is people join, then they set up a
throw away mail account with Hotmail or Yahoo then send all
the mail to these accounts. Some of these safe lists can have
12, 18, 24,000 members. Is anyone going to sit there and read
your mail in amongst the other 23,999? I think not!
One thing I should make clear is that unfortunately, there
are no 'Secrets' that the 'Internet Marketing Gurus' know that
you are not privy to, but there are tried and proven techniques
and strategies which will work just as well for you as they do
for the Gurus.
To succeed at internet marketing or any other self employed
business opportunity, often the first obstacle on the road to
success, is ourselves. To succeed, we need to have a reason (or
reasons) compelling enough to keep us continually motivated and
focused, reasons that won't "expire over time".
Whether you would like to guarantee a secure future for yourself
and your family, or you simply want a better life style, it's
important to have a clear picture of the benefit you're seeking,
and to keep this picture continually at the forefront of your
mind while working towards achieving those goals.
The degree of success you can expect to achieve is in direct
proportion to the strength of your own reasons. If you can only
muster up enough motivation for one hours dedicated effort a
week, whilst someone else can stay focused and motivated enough
to work 12 hours a day, then guess who I'm going to put my money
on achieving the success they both desire. "Input equals Output"!
Now that we have the motivation thing happening we need to look
at promotion techniques that won't waste away the hours you have
decided to devote to achieving your goals. It's all well and
good having the motivation and desire to succeed, so long as the
time is invested in techniques that are going to produce the
best value for the time invested. Positive results for your time
input.
Submit your site to the search engines, I have written many
pages and articles specifically on the subject of search
engines. Getting your site right (optimized) for and listed in
the search engines is the most important web site promotion
technique available to any webmaster.
The first contact a potential customer is likely to have with
your website will most probably be from a search engine. It
matters little if your website is good or bad - if you're not
listed in the search engines almost no one will be coming to see
your site. Time spent getting your site optimized and listed
with the search engines will be money in the bank later.
Before you submit your site to the search engines I suggest you
go to:
http://www.netwealthgroup.com/se-promotion.php
<A HREF="http://www.netwealthgroup.com/se-promotion.php"> AOL
Friendly Link</A>
where you will find some useful tools to check your page
validation and also see how your pages will look to the search
engine crawlers or spiders.
Listed here in alphabetical order are the most important search
engines to submit your site to:
AAA Matilda, AltaVista, AOL Search, ComFind, DirectHit,
Dmoz / Open Directory Project, Excite, Fast / All the Web,
Galaxy, Google, HotBot, Inktomi, Jayde Online Directory
LinkMonster, LookSmart, Lycos, Nerd World Media, Northern Light,
OneKey, Overture.com, Scrub The Web, NBCi LiveDirectory,
Starting Point, Teoma, WebCrawler, WebDirect, WiseNut, Yahoo.
I recommend submitting your site manually to all of the above
search engines - some will penalize you if you submit using
automated software, also be aware some of the search engines use
meta tags while others, like Google, take little notice of meta
tags at all, so you should make sure your pages are right for
both types of search engine.
Another point to remember - some of the search engines place
considerable importance on 'off page' criteria, meaning things
like quality incoming links to your site, but don't even think
about submitting your site to link farms in an effort to quickly
generate incoming links because these links will result in very
little if any traffic.
There are two ways to find quality websites to exchange links
with, you can search the net to find websites that are targeting
the same market, though are not in competition with each other.
Try to create something unique that will make others want to
link to your site. Or you can use software specially designed to
automate this task like Zeus Internet Marketing Robot:
http://www.netwealthgroup.com/cgi/track/tracker.cgi?zeus
<A HREF="http://www.netwealthgroup.com/cgi/track/tracker.cgi?zeus
"> AOL Friendly Link</A>
Publishing your own eZine and writing articles - writing
articles isn't as hard as you may think. If you are connected to
the internet you can access the worlds largest research library.
I expect if you have a website, the theme of the website will be
a subject or product about which you have quite a bit of
knowledge.
Each day there are hundreds of eZine publishers looking for
articles to use in their publications. Some of the larger eZines
are mailed out to hundreds of thousands of subscribers each
week. As an added bonus most of the publishers archive their
eZines and articles online giving you a link for the search
engines to find - another bonus for you the writer of the
article, plus all the new subscribers who will sign up to receive
your eZine because they liked your article.
Your article is like a silent unpaid salesman, selling you and
your website 24/7. Imagine the power of this when you begin to
get your articles published in numerous places all over the
internet. If you're convinced you simply can't write your own
articles, you can still publish a periodical eZine using other
peoples articles which are relevant to the theme of your eZine.
This isn't the end of the benefits of writing articles. As you
write your articles you are also writing pages which can quickly
and easily be incorporated into an eBook, creating almost
automatically another powerful promotion tool. You can then
decide if you would like to give your book away free as a bonus
or sell it, giving you yet another income producing product.
The final promotional technique I want to discuss is the use of
affiliates to assist you in selling your products. Affiliates
are paid on results and can be a highly effective advertising
campaign costing you nothing unless the affiliate produces
results. Some of the super affiliates are so good at their trade
they can make a fortune online selling products for others.
The information above should give you ideas which will help you
manage your internet marketing time and hopefully save you
wasting hundreds of hours working with promotion techniques
which often look good but usually turn out to be almost useless.
Not too hard at all is it? :o)
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Article Written By
Kerry Harrington
http://www.wealthwriter.com
<a href="http://www.wealthwriter.com"> AOL Friendly Link</a>
Kerry Harrington is the publisher of The Wealth Writer
eZine - This interesting weekly eZine is known for it's
useful and informative articles, written in a personal
style by Kerry.
To subscribe by email simply click the mail link then send
mailto: subscribe@wealthwriter.com
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