HotBuys

Welcome To Some Finest Shopping Deals & Some Hot News From Internet

Saturday, July 30, 2005

Ways to Promote your Website

What are the ways to increase your traffic?

1. You need a very interesting content and also update your content. Search engine loves to spider website that updates it's content.

2. increase your content and number of pages. The pages will act as small gates way to your website.

3. Offer free or prizes for the visitors. This would make the visitor to advertise your website and make them return to your site.

4. Free link exchange with other website. Better if you exchange with similar website.The most popular way to increase traffic.

5. Pay for one way links to your website. One way is better than exchange link. Search engine recognize the one way link as special.

6. Creating Articles and submit it to other website. It would also work as a one way Link.

7. Post your website to Classified Ads. Some are still free.

Don't also forget offline advertising cause it is still very important.
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8 Easy Online Ways to Market Your Book For Free

Here are the top 8 ways I’ve marketed my book and seen results:

*Create a presence on the web. There are many ways to do this, but having your own website to promote your writing is the best way. There are lots of places that have free webpages, but Bravenet.com has everything you could ever want (webjournals, tell-a-friend service, guestbook, and mailing lists to name a few) and this includes free hosting.

*Sign other author’s guestbooks. The author is not the only one who reads the entries, and make sure you add your website address even if they don’t give you a spot to put it. Put it beneath your name when you sign your entry.

*Be a regular on message boards, answer newbie’s questions, and don’t forget to add your signature with your website address. The important thing to remember here is to pop in on a regular basis, otherwise it looks like the only reason you’re there is advertise, and participants won’t take you seriously.

*Join writers groups online and post, post, post! That’s not to say you should inundate any group with advertising e-mails about your book, but rather to participate in the discussions. If you have a signature line at the end of your e-mails this will do your advertising for you.

*Speaking of signature lines, create one and add it to all of your e-mails. This is one of my favorite freebies. People do read signature lines and I have actually ordered books because I found them via the signature line.

*Give away free PDF electronic versions of your book (not too many now, just 2 or 3) in return for reviews. This has worked very well for me, and I’ve gotten some good reviews from doing this. Readers like free and are usually more than willing to write a review in return.

*Trade electronic versions of your book with other published authors and do a review for each other.

*Once you have reviews post them on your website and anywhere else you can. There are many places to post reviews for free, just search on google for book reviews. See if your reviewers will post their reviews for you at these websites.
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8 Ways To Promote Your Affiliate Products

First, provide visitors of your website enough information about the product. Aside from your website design, the content of your web page counts a lot in capturing the interest of the guest. Your web pages must contain factual and objective articles on the product, such as product reviews. In the informative articles, state the products’ special features, benefits and advantages over other brands of its kind. Take note, you are not selling but informing.

You are trying to establish the value and desirability of the product and thus, convince the visitor that the product matches his needs and wants. He will then follow the link and complete his purchase. Spice up the content of your web pages with statements like “And not only that, there’s more..” that does not only create suspense but likewise hold the interest of the reader to know more of the product. There’s no perfect product, of course, so you can also reveal some of its negative attributes but don’t let them overshadow the good ones.

Second is through the use of testimonials and endorsements from respected or relevant individuals who are using the product. This sounds like a familiar marketing strategy but this still works. These testimonials validate the information you are presenting about the product; this way, you build confidence and trust of the client.

In addition, you exude an impression that you are an expert in the field since you are able to prove that the product and services you are offering really works as assured. Remember that your prospects are also conducting researches on their own so make sure you can back up every claim with facts and figures.

Next promotional strategy is through marketing banners. Make these banners attractive enough for visitors to click them. However, don’t overuse banners as they can make your site messy, too. Webmasters say users generally do not have negative remarks about banners. In fact, they appreciate that they can shop through the site they frequently visit.

Others, however, find crowded banner ads annoying, so limit your use of banner ads. The fourth is offering newsletters, which guests of your site can opt-in to. In the newsletter, you can place informative articles, advertisements, affiliate program links, news and features. In this way, you can regularly inform them of the hottest products available or you can get their interest to check your site every now and then.

You can add to your site a forced opt-in page, the fifth most effective marketing strategy. Here you may put an emphatic headline, a problem, an offer, which is a solution to that problem and an autoresponder opt-in box. As the visitor signs up, he is directed to the business site, while you increase your highly targeted mailing list.

Remember that signing up signifies his interest, so it’s not a waste of time sending emails to that possible buyer. Statistics show that most sales are generated from second and third mailings, so follow up. Using the same mailing list, you can also promote affiliate products through “thank you” emails.

If emailing doesn’t work well for you, then try the sixth way to effectively promote your affiliate products, using advertising services like Google AdWords. The Google AdWords helps you meet your marketing goals in a fast, effective and easy manner. Through this, your own ads are connected to a large number of users who are exactly in need of your products and services.

After you have created your ads, you can see them on Google right away and many buyers online likewise can. You get quick response to your ads and you get to advertise with Internet users who are actually interested in buying. You can also define or choose your target market area, allowing you to get the best possible results.

Although you are not involved in the actual selling process, you are responsible for referring a customer to the merchandisers’ business website and convincing him to buy so you are sure of your commission.

The seventh most effective way of promoting the product and compelling a visitor of your website to go to the merchants’ site and buy is to tell something about the price. Higher-priced items give you the most commissions but they are hard to market since customers always have the propensity to go for the lowest priced.

But you can work on this by breaking down the total cost and putting it in words to make it appear cheaper. Instead of stating the lump sum, state how much he has to pay in affordable installments or how much dollars or cents he has to spend everyday.

Lastly, you may want to be extra generous to your prospects by giving them bonuses. Add-ons and freebies are always inviting, especially when they match the interests of the buyer. It doesn’t have to be expensive; you can even just customize it, say a CD with freewares and tips and list on the best online resources on interesting topics. Make it unique so your prospects can’t easily price it and compare it to the offers of your competitors. Be creative and know what your buyers want. For sure, you’ll get what you want, too.
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Promotional coupon codes

Everybody is happy for a free gift or some discount and a lot of online marketers take advantage of this fact. So why don't make your customers happy too? There are many promotional coupon code directories on Internet. Put your coupon code to most of these web sites. Try combination of promotional coupon codes strategy and affiliate marketing. Give away to your publishers promo codes or special affiliate link. If the visitor click this link he gets some discount, free gift, free shipping or another benefits.
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Banner exchanges

You include a HTML code to your web site and each time somebody visits the site where the HTML code is placed a banner will be displayed and you get some credits (usually 1/2 - 1 credit depending on the exchange ratio). For each credit you "earn" your banner will be displayed on another banner exchange members page. This type of promotion is good for branding but it will increase your traffic just about 0,1 - 1 % only (depending on click rate of your banner) so always combine this method with another strategies.
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Pay per click (PPC)

There are several search engines offering pay per click program. Advertiser choose the keyword and the bid. If the visitor search for this keyword, advertisements targeted for this keyword are displayed. If more advertisers select the same keyword the advertisements are sorted by the bid (except google AdWords, there the advertisement position depends on the bid and click rate). The big advantage of pay per click system is the fact that you can start your campaign during a few minutes.
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Search engine optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization is one of the most effective (and one of the hardest) ways how to get the large number of very good targeted customers. If you are a search engine optimization specialist, make a SEO analysis and optimize your web site for some effective keywords. If you know nothing about SEO try to find some basic information on Internet and optimize for easy keywords or hire some SEO company. The advantage of search engine optimization is the fact that you get the visitors who want to buy the goods (or services) which you offer. The disadvantage is the long time necessary for successful
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Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing consist in relationship between web site owners and merchant. Web site owners put merchants advertisement (usually text link or banner) on their page and merchant pays commission from each deal to the site owner. The advantage of this promotion method is the fact that you can never loose your money for inefficient advertising because you pay only in case you earn some money. If you want to start your own affiliate program you can buy one of many available scripts or use some of affiliate networks like Link Share or Commission Junction.
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Affiliate Programs Guide-part1

What Are Affiliate Programs?

Welcome to the wide world of affiliate marketing!

Affiliate marketing (sometimes called referral marketing) is based business people.

So, what is an affiliate and what does he or she do?

The affiliate marketer acts as a “middle man” between merchant and consumer, but without adding anything to the consumer's cost.

Affiliates do not mark up or resell products.

Instead, the affiliate educates and directs the consumer to a product, and he receives a percentage of the sale in commission from the merchant.

The affiliate acts as an independent lead generator for the merchant by bringing in new customers.

This is a win-win situation for both the affiliate and the merchant.

The affiliate can reap a full-time income marketing a whole suite of products that he does not own. He doesn't pay for product creation, doesn't have to ship anything and doesn't deal with customer service issues or returns. The merchant benefits from the influx of new customers, the boatloads of cheap traffic and low cost advertising. Merchants get their product and their brand in front of thousands of potential buyers without paying a dime until someone makes a purchase.

It is truly a pay for performance arrangement.

Choosing The Right Program:

1. When and how do you get paid?
Find out whether the program pays you weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, etc. Most programs have a minimum payout amount, meaning that you don't receive your commissions until hitting a minimum number of sales for the pay period. You'll also want to find out whether the programs pays you via check, direct deposit, Pay Pal or any combination of the three. With our PushButtonHealthGuide.com, we are linked to clickbank.com, you will be rest assured that you will be paid accordingly twice a month.

2. How much do you make per sale?

Remember you'll be investing your own money into advertising and other expenses to promote these programs. Therefore, you should seek programs which reward their affiliates well. You'll also want to seek out high-value products. A fifty to sixty percent commission on a $100 product is very good, but it's not so hot if you're promoting a $15 product.

At the time of writing, we offer 75% of commission to our affiliate, which is the highest by the industry standard.

3. Is the program managed well? Is this a reputable company? Larger companies usually have “affiliate managers” devoted to maintaining contact with their affiliates. Even if you go with a smaller outfit, they should at least offer clear contact information. You might want to try e-mailing them at their contact address to see how fast they respond to you. Mismanaged programs are, at best, a sign of disorganization and, at worst, could indicate a company in trouble.

The last thing you want is to be sitting on a grand worth of hard earned commissions and see the merchant go out of business before paying you.

Keeping these factors in mind, here are some great places to seek out products you can promote:
www.clickbank.com
www.cj.com
www.linkshare.com

Commission Junction (CJ) and Linkshare provide affiliate hubs for major brand corporations and mid-sized businesses. Their focus is generally on tangible products and services. Clickbank is the leading source online for affiliates of information products like e-books, software and membership sites.
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Earn Income From Affiliate Programs

Affiliate programs are simple. You have a web site. You put the affiliate's link on your website, usually in the form of a banner. When people click on the banner and visit the affiliate's site from your link, the affiliate program owner will pay you. Many affiliate programs also offer additional incentives when those people actually buy from the affiliate's site. When you work with an affiliate program, you actually do little work. Once the banner is in place, the affiliate's product and reputation does the rest of the work to bring in people and make you money. Money, however, is not the only incentive to joining an affiliate program.

Affiliate programs offer a variety of tools to their affiliate partners. Affiliate programs provide tools that, bought alone, would be very expensive. These tools can make running a website much easier, and can make the website much sharper and more appealing for your visitors. Affiliate programs will provide website design tools, editor tools, and graphics. You will have access to tracking and statistics software to help you keep track of your earnings and success. These tools are updated and designed to ensure your complete success. Your success is imperative to the success of your affiliate program owner, because they depend upon visitors coming to their site from yours. They provide the best in website design tools so your website will be the best in the business.

Affiliate programs do not have to be run alone. You can use one website to run several different affiliate banners. Combining affiliate programs maximizes the money making potential of your website. Your products and services will bring in guests, who may then venture to the affiliate sites once their business with you is complete. In this way, you will be making money from your customers not once, but twice. You will benefit from the reputation of the affiliate program owner you work for, doing business together and gaining footing in the online business.
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Get Visitors For Your WebSite

Starting the Process

It is very important that the initiator work closely with the designer(s), copywriter(s) and developer(s) ensuring that they have access to all information regarding the project, including:

1. Target audience
2. Competitors
3. Technology to be used (XHTML, Flash, Java etc.)
4. Site Map, or basic structure of site including pages and on page requirements

Once an initial design has been produced it is advisable that a web analytics or user behavior expert be brought into the
discussion to ensure that the proposed design will convert as expected.

Visitors do not like to think when they are on a website. Present them with the content that they are looking for and make it easy for them to find related information or make the desired action such as purchasing, downloading or signing up to whatever it is that you wish them to do.

There are a few generic details to look out for to ensure that the design is on the right track, including:

1. Name of Site: The name of the site (and logo) should be clearly visible and legible within the header of the site. This instills brand awareness and if a catchy name and logo are chosen, you will mostly likely find that your return visitor rate increases.

2. Instinctive navigation: Is it always clear exactly where you are within a site when you are on any given page within the site?

3. Underlining of Links: Ensure that all links are underlined. This way the outgoing page path and related information is immediately determined and visible to the visitor on page load.

4. Actions: It almost seems redundant to say, but ensure the actions you would like your visitors to take are always clear. During a page heat map research project, it was proven that the most attention lies on the right hand side of the page. The top right corner being the most effective area for actions to take place.

The design is one of the first, but none the least the most important area of site production that needs to be taken into
consideration. Equal parts of design, development and content are needed to effectively prepare your site for visitors.

Having previously dabbled in all three of these areas myself, I can appreciatively say that developers prefer to be handed an
accurate story board of the site that they are intended to build, including a detailed page by page briefing. Just like site visitors, it is not in the developer's job description to determine where design meets copy or the initial ideas of the
initiator of the project.

Ensuring that the various departments converse at least once pre-site design is vital, and will ensure that the website
launched will depict the story board initially requested.

It was quite a change for me as a previous "old school" developer to change to the W3 Standards, but I must admit that
it really is the best way to ensure cross browser compatibility. No more having multiple browsers open to ensure the design is always standard. I will recommend this to anyone still developing "old school".

Ensuring content delivers the most effective message, capturing the audience whilst still enticing the search engines is the third part to the equation. Also confirm that your page titles accurately convey the message of the page.

Gone are the days of writing M-amount of key-words within content to try and push your pages higher. Content is king in the land of search engine optimization. You will often find that just by writing relevant, on-topic content the copy is optimized by default. Both spiders and visitors will appreciate this from your site.
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Do you want to make that RSS or XML orange box thing without an image button

"A lot of blogs have an orange box with RSS or XML written in it for people to subscribe to their syndication feed.

Here is a handy way to create that without using an image. Imagine if every website did this the total bandwidth that would be saved! Ha."

For Example :

XML

Here is the code:

<A title="Your Feed Name Here" style="BORDER: thin outset; PADDING: 0.02cm; FONT-SIZE: 8pt; BACKGROUND: orange; COLOR: white; FONT-FAMILY: Verdana; TEXT-DECORATION: none" HREF="Your Feed URL Here">XML</A>

More info here.
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google adsense reporting changed

when i logged into my google adsense account i found an interesting thing. It said that google has improved the adsense reporting for adsense members. Check it out here.
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I found two sites today that facilitate trackbacks

Searching throgh google i found that i can ping the trackback url even if my blog tool does not support it.
The two sites from where you can send the pings are:

1) aylwardfamily
2) kalsey

So if you use any of these features please leave a comment.
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Haloscan trackback added

Haloscan trackback have been added to this blog.
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