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Getting free web traffic to your site can be a great way of promoting your business,particularly if you are on a shoestring budget. There are quite a few different ways to generate free traffic. Although you can get heaps of free traffic in a variety of ways, there can still be a hidden cost. That hidden cost is your time and dedication,you have to be prepared to spend a little of both to achieve a good result.

If we ever heard the saying ‘ it is better to give than receive’ should have an idea of what to do here. Have lots of free gifts that your visitors can download for free. Some good information email courses of pdf files will keep people coming back for more. Its a great way to get more free traffic.

Now, doubtlessly one of the best ways of getting free traffic lies through search engines and search engine submissions. This way is very time consuming, requires much dedication, but it can be well worth the effort. To obtain such traffic you have to be able to optimize your web site properly for search engines to find it and submit it to the directories. You also need to be able to build up its ranking positions, because most sites found outside of the three first pages of search results never get any visitors from search engines.

So, you start with good content, proper keywords and go on with constant link building, which is free and may lead to the top positions in the search results. It is a never ending process, because you have many competitors and they all keep working on improving their sites’ positions. But the traffic you get from search engines is very targeted and can reward your efforts abundantly.

As with most types of businesses, it is always costlier to get new customers than to work on your returning consumers. Getting free website traffic is no different, you must continue to offer some great giveaways and more information for your visitors. Make sure to develop a mailing list. This will make it easier for contacting them and telling them about more of your special offers.

There are always more ways being developed to continue to get free web traffic. It is mainly a good idea to keep your eye on the ball and continue to monitor which methods work best for you.

The First Baby Step

When you haven’t yet developed your own internet marketing information, software or audio-video training products, affiliate marketing is the least complicated and easiest way to start earning an income online from your work-from-home office. Don’t be fooled by guru offers that tell you a website or web page is not necessary. To be viewed as a professional affiliate marketer, one or both is absolutely essential.

The learning curve for building a web site or web page with HTML is so intimating for many affiliate newbie would-be’s, they won’t even take the First Baby Step. Here is your solution. I’ve been using Kompozer for more than 2 years, an Open Source, free to download WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) Editor, considered superior to many Editors costing $97.00 or more. Ready to get started building your first web page? Download Kompozer at http://kompozer.net/download.php.

I also recommend a simple, easy to learn graphics creation software, such as Web Graphics Creator. You will, in time, be amazed at what you can do with just these two pieces of software. I create professional looking web pages, if I had to outsource, would easily cost me upwards of $1,000.00!

Your total investment in these two essential software applications? $0.00 for Kompozer. $39.95 for Web Graphics Creator. For your convenience, here is the purchase and download site: http://www.laughingbirdsoftware.com/the-web-graphics-creator.html

Your First Goal and Primary Objective

Your goal, as an affiliate marketer, is to make money with affiliate products. You must learn how to effectively drive massive amounts of targeted traffic to your web page, also called landing pages, squeeze pages, affiliate funnel pages, the intent being to capture the name and email address of your potential customers.

Question: Why would you drive traffic to an affiliate link that passes through to the seller’s product sales page? Answer: Don’t you think that’s a little like “putting the cart before the horse?”

It only stands to reason, then, that your First Goal and Major Objective is in the building of a huge potential customer base. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel. Do what has been time-tested and time-proven to earn a full-time income as a professional affiliate marketer.

Affiliate Marketing Trick No. 1 for Earning a Full-time Income

Why would you take the time required to write your own original Ezine or Newsletter? What is an Ezine or Newsletter in their simplest form? Both are essential content emails which you program an autoresponder to deliver to your potential customer database of opt-in subscribers.

The following define the most important purposes for developing an ezine, newsletter or mini-training course:

1. Newsletters, ezines and mini-courses may be used to develop a trust between your subscriber and you, as you deliver valuable free content to him and her.

2. The most direct route to informing your potential customers of the latest marketing strategies, software developments, audio-video training and information products is via your autoresponder email series.

3. The time you are willing to invest into the development of your original ezine, newsletter or mini-training course is pure gold. It is an investment, like gold, that accrues the interest to return dollars for products delivered into the tens of thousands of earned income per month over time.

4. Newsletters, ezines and mini-courses delivered at the correct intervals (days between delivery of your followup emails, ususally four) is the most powerful marketing strategy with which you will build and drive significant targeted traffic to your affiliate product offers.

5. The rapport and trust developed through ezines, newsletters and mini-courses are the real secret ingredient that leads to increasing sales of affiliate products. Your subscriber base is your affiliate goldmine, to which you may still be selling to 25 years into the future.

To sum it up, there is no more effective way to become a part-time or full-time affiliate income earner than to develop your own affiliate funnel pages (at least in the beginning), driving huge numbers of visitors, out of which a percentage will opt-in (subscribe), becoming your customers, as you deliver high quality information to them via ezine, newsletter or mini-course, and validate your status as a professional online marketer, well into the future.

To your good fortune and online marketing success,

Timothy R Walls

Editor, Marketing Secrets EZine

After many years of observing the MLM Marketplace, I have noticed that there are many mistakes that MLM distributors make. These mistakes are not because the Mlm’er is stupid…….it is simply because in most cases they only follow what their upline or MLM Company tell them to do. They are only following the directions of those above them.

Usually, distributors are advised to approach their family members and friends which is called a ‘warm’ market, but this is often the main reason why so many of them result in failure, because they are not looking to start their own business in the first place. When you are in contact with your Upline, ask about Lead companies, and, when you are then promoting your MLM business, try to use only funded proposals as this will enable you to generate money upfront.

There is a lot of hype in the MLM industry. People hear that they will enjoy so much success that they will even be able to retire after only six months of operation. They will be told that they can even use their Upline’s excess contacts. But this is not true. Success will not be instantaneous at all. It will take at least two years for you to build a list of contacts, or to transfer an already pre-built downline from another company. You will need to be prepared to devote the time and effort to building a good base of core distributors in order for you to enjoy any kind of success. Patience is key and a you should have a plan that you can follow while you are growing your business. Once you have the plan in place it is imperative that you not jump from one company to another one, as even someone with plenty of experience with MLM would find that to be rather difficult.

The Third Mistake is the choice of company or products. There are many different estimates, but there are probably 15 million MLM distributors in the USA and it may grow by 5 million more distributors 5 years from now. You might think that this is a huge market, but one very major dynamic has changed. Up until about 1990, there were maybe only about 100 viable MLM Companies. When we look at the present situation, there are literally 1000’s of new MLM Company startups yearly.

This basically means that everyone is competing for ever smaller shares of the distributor base. For example, your MLM company may be marketing the very latest juice secret from the remotest Chinese mountains. However, you can be sure that there will be hundreds more who are also offering the exact same thing and for some it will also be their flagship product.

It is much better, in this writers opinion to choose a MLM company that offers tools that the industry itself requires, such as Leads, for example. This would mean that you would have the fifteen million people to market to instead of only a small portion.

While you may feel discouraged you can rest assured that making a success of your MLM business is quite possible. The important thing is to do what you can to avoid making any of the mistakes that are mentioned above. If you are careful and make smart informed decisions you can, and will, find success in your MLM business.

We can’t always depend on public relations working however if you can master the media it can be very powerful for your bottom line. If you are a small business owner PR is your number 1 guerilla marketing tactic.

Rule # 1) start with the local media! Your local press is always looking for good stories. Many of the local media companies are owned by national media companies. If the story has national interest it has the possibility of getting picked up by the national press. Your local media outlets are much more open to hearing your pitch than CNN or Oprah.

Rule # 2) It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out which media to choose to pitch, however it does require thought. Television tend to follow newspapers and today many Internet blogs and web sites are leading the way. If you look at how fast the news breaks the electronic airwaves tend to dominate. Does your story have visual appeal? And for what medium?

Rule # 3) Know who to talk to in the media companies. In newsprint it is always best to speak directly with the reporter who has ownership of their area subject. For example if your story is about business call the business editor, if it is about local happenings call the local reporter. In TV you will ask for the “assingment desk” or the “assignment editor” or the show producer to pitch your story to.

Rule # 4) Make your story relevant and give it a hook! If you are a masseur and there is a marathon on your city each year create an event for the marathon runners where they can get free massages after the race and explain to them that they can take better care of their bodies by using massages. Then call the TV station and let them know that you, Mr. Expert Masseur will be holding this event (hook) after the marathon for runners who have completed the marathon with back pain.

Rule # 5) News media has to sell stories. When they do this they tell you to sick around to not change the channel because they have a “new” back pain solution that you don’t want to miss. If you tell this to the assignment editor he will apprecite it because you are really helping him shape the story for his broadcast and keep his viewers on his channel. He needs ratings!

Rule # 6) There has to be a payoff for the viewers! Many viewers will know that there is a marathon event in their town and might know the runners themselves or be a runner. The payoff for the athletes is that they will know how to deal with their back pain. The TV station will love providing use tips to the community, this is how they become the close friend to the viewers, they are viewed as a trusted friend helping the needs of the viewers.

Rule # 7) Go for the close! Ask to pitch them! That’s right, tell them you have a quick story pitch, would they listen for 30 seconds? If they say yes, I usually take about 3 minutes and I don’t stop. At the end they will either agree to it or not. If they agree they will ask for more information. Or they will call you back. It is this simple.

In conclusion, press is the best form of free advertising. Knowing how to talk to the news media, knowing what they are looking for is all you have to know. THe rest is up to you to make the contacts.

We can’t always depend on public relations working however if you can master the media it can be very powerful for your bottom line. If you are a small business owner PR is your number 1 guerilla marketing tactic.

Rule # 1) Best place to start is the local media! If you start with your local media the chances are that a big media company is reading or listening. If your story has national appeal it might get aired by the big media companies. It is much easier to get local press plus the chances are that many of your customers are local too.

Rule #2) Figure out the best media to use and it can be the local newspaper, the local radio or TV stations and the Internet. Each has their advantages and disadvantages. Typically if the New York Times publishes an article on the front page and the TV stations tend to follow their lead. Some stories are better suited for Newspapers than are TV when they first break. It depends on the visual nature of the story. At My Success Gateway, LLC we have been covered in all 4 big media: Newspapers, TV, Radio and Internet.

Rule # 3) Find the right person to speak to. I always like speaking to the actual reporter especially in the newspapers since they tend to know about their subjects i.e. environment and climate change. In TV you can always ask for the assignment desk or the assignment editor. I also find show producers helpful.

Rule # 4) Make your story current with the other news, and give it a hook! For example let’s say you run a massage business and every year near your town there is a big marathon. Set up a massage station near the finish line to treat the runners. Give them free massages. Explain to them that a deep massage is good for you after an event like this. Next get on the phone to the local news teams and let them know that you are a massage professional and are “taking care of the runners” post race.

Rule # 5) News media has to sell stories. When they do this they tell you to sick around to not change the channel because they have a “new” back pain solution that you don’t want to miss. If you tell this to the assignment editor he will apprecite it because you are really helping him shape the story for his broadcast and keep his viewers on his channel. He needs ratings!

Rule # 6) There has to be something in it for the viewers, we call this a payoff. Because the marathon has a lot of visability in the town and most people know at least a few participants, the payoff for the atheletes is that they can solve their back pain with the proper care and treatment. The television station would love to do this type of a story since it benefits members of their community.

Rule # 7) Go for the close! Ask to pitch them! That’s right, tell them you have a quick story pitch, would they listen for 30 seconds? If they say yes, I usually take about 3 minutes and I don’t stop. At the end they will either agree to it or not. If they agree they will ask for more information. Or they will call you back. It is this simple.

In conclusion, press is the best form of free advertising. Knowing how to talk to the news media, knowing what they are looking for is all you have to know. THe rest is up to you to make the contacts.

Ever since Google AdWords made its grand splash on the market, pay per click advertising has become the latest rage in internet advertising. The ability to write an ad and allow a search engine to do the rest of the work for them has turned out to be a proposition that many advertisers find impossible to say no to.

Theoretically the connection between a search engine and a marketer is a co-dependant one. The marketer creates an ad and then pays the search engine to look for and discover possible customers by using keyword identification.

When web surfers put a search term into the browsers search box the search engine displays the advertisers ads at the same time as the search results are displayed.

The reality however, is a bit more difficult than that.

For marketers looking for keywords, this is not always a simple process. It is not always just a matter of heading over to the search engines keyword selection tools. The keywords they have there are often overused and will produce many, many search results pages.

Because the basic web searcher’s interest isn’t going to be sustained past the 5 or 10 pages, the advertiser wants his ad to be shown on the first 5 or so pages to stand a better chance of seeing a profit.

The difficulty in this is that the right to be among these top search results is determined by the amount of money the advertiser is willing to pay “per click” for their ad.

The standard form of advertising allowed the advertisers to have an ad displayed for a set amount of time for an established fee, regardless of how many people saw it. Advertisers realized this was an inefficient way to get customers.

This brought about pay-per-click advertising. In this form of advertising an advertiser only paid a fee when his ad was chosen. That way they could make a better profit if their ad was chosen on a regular basis.

Progression came in the form of competition. Because the search engines wanted to maximize profits, the would put the ads that brought in the greatest payment for each click in the most visible spots – right up there with the top ranked search results. That meant that advertisers wanting those spots had to bid more on clicks than their rivals.

The expenses for a pay per click ad campaign can compound rapidly without the advertiser even realizing what is going on because when your advertisement is in one of the first ad spots on a search results page it can get a lot of unprofitable interest and very little paying customers. That is wasted advertising budget.

Pay per click advertising can be a dangerous minefield for the uneducated marketer to maneuver; it is not the simple endeavor advertisers would have consumers believe. Fortunately, there are a number of resources for assistance (as well as alternative methods of advertising) available on the web for anyone savvy enough to look.

Hurrah! You made it!

You did your market research, chose your keywords carefully and did all the math before deciding how much you could afford to bid while still keeping your advertisement among the top search results. You’ve already gone two steps ahead and utilized all of Google’s tools for choosing synonyms and other keywords; your advertising campaign for the next six months is all laid out.

Where to now?

Sorry to say, but now the true work starts. Careful tracking of the activities of all of your ads is necessary to determine how efficient they are and what kind of productivity they are having. There are a few ways to accomplish this task.

Tools offered by AdWords help you to calculate what percentage of your traffic is brought by your ad (this is how they get their profits). Your web host will have a way to get information that tells you which ads attracted traffic that led to sales.

This is vital because ads not performing well will be a constant draw on your advertising resources, or it will sit and do nothing, taking up space and your attentions. When you could be concentrating on more profitable ads. You pay the search engine whether the clicks are productive or not.

How do you handle an unprofitable ad?

Having done your job well, your ad is now showing in the first 5 or 10 search result pages. Now you need to decide if the problem is your keywords. The temptation when making keyword choices is to take ones that are the most popular because more people are going to be seeing them.that’s good .right?

The hard part here is that too many of the popular term are too broad, meaning you might start searching for something with this word but would use the results to refine your search and find what you are looking for elsewhere. So if a web surfer used this as a search term he probably didn’t know quite what he was looking for and would browse through a number of sites making no purchases. A desirable keyword has a broad enough reach to attract unknowing searchers but narrow enough to also attract your target people.

Monitor your ads carefully. This is crucial in the continuation of your Adwords campaign’s success. This success also determines the success of your business in the future. Be sure to take every precautionary measure to be sure that your business’s future is bright.