Developing A Traffic Plan Of Action For Your Site
By Ryan Smith

One of the key steps to promoting your website or service is to develop a plan of action for the site. What this means is that the owner needs to decide what methods will be employed, how they will be employed, and how long they will wait to measure results.

These plans may involve e-mailing, e-zine articles, link trading, blogging, etc. The list could go on. The point is settling on a course of action and taking.

Getting It Organized

While it sounds easy enough to do, the actual idea of organizing your marketing efforts is more involved than it sounds. Many would be Internet Marketers believe that if they "throw enough traffic at it something will stick".

In one way, the idea has merit, but for the most part it is rubbish. Let's discuss the latter first. When most people start, they buy traffic and lots of advertising from everywhere they can to get as much traffic to their site as possible. After they have exhausted their finances, they grow discouraged from the lack of results and many quit. It is in this scenario I say the idea is rubbish.

When I say the idea has merit in one respect, let me try this. If one were to throw several well thought out advertising ideas at their site,the chances of success would grow significantly. Well thought out means working with several ads, not one hastily cobbled together ad.

Taking the ads out to the marketplace has been sometimes referred to an ongoing experiment, meaning that the ads are developed through seeing which ones are acted upon the most and further developing those ads.

If you are looking to get professional ads done right away you may consider hiring a professional copywriter. But even in these cases, you may have to work with the ads some to get the maximum benefits.

The Marketplace

Let's say that you have have some reasonably good ads ready to market. Now you have to decide how to get these ads to your perspective customers. Here are a few ideas.

Viral Marketing

This particular form of marketing covers many different aspects. It is considered to be the best way to market on the Internet. As an example, many Netpreneurs use free report giveaways as a means of promoting their site. They allow the readers of these reports to give them away. Some may offer to allow the readers to repackage them. This is an excellent incentive as it allows the readers to market the report as their own.

E-zine Marketing

This can be an excellent form of marketing depending on the number of subscribers in any publication and their responses to the e-zine postings. You may be able to work out special arrangements with e-zine owners by supplying articles for their use. Your articles won't be blatant sales letters but can be an excellent way to attract visitors to your site.

You can purchase ad space as well, but it may get costly. If you are on a budget, you may consider the arrangements above as the alternative.

Article Marketing

This is another excellent form of marketing. Simply writing articles in a particular niche can help drive lots of quality traffic to your site through the "About the Author" boxes. Furthermore, this particular form of marketing has an search engine benefit as well. It raises the page ranking of the site and, in most cases, they are seen before the site they represent is.

This can be done through a paid submission service or free. Most services offer both free and paid memberships. The only difference is how the services are set up.

Another point to mention for this type of marketing is this: Original content is KING. Copied content will only get your site blacklisted (Called search engine penalties). When writing articles, use all original content.

Irregardless of what you use to market your products or services, be consistent and persistent. Work with patience and don't take shortcuts. Don't expect to get rich overnight. Building a business takes time and work. But, the rewards and sense of accomplishment is something that is well worth the wait.

Check out RP Smith's hot new website at http://www.e-profitsubmissions.com/

Blogs

Don't Buy An Overpriced Blog To Make Money
By Bruce Lipski

Do you want to make money online? Are you thinking of buying a blog to make that money? I want to warn you that I think the evidence is in: don't buy a blog to make money! Late in 2007 after the new Google page ranks came out there was a rash of blogs being put up for sale. I think CashQuests went for the most of the bunch at $15,000.00 followed by OneMansGoal at $8,500.00 and then a handful more at less than that.

Looking at the Alexa charts of three of those sites, you can clearly see where the sales were made and the subsequent drop off in viewers after the sales. Blogs are hard to maintain and no matter how you look at it, they are the personal property of the owner/writer. Every blog has a personality and the readers either like it and stick around or they leave. When a blog sells, that owner is gone and so is everthing he/she brought to the table.

I read certain blogs because I am entertained by the owner of the blog or value what they have to say. If they were to sell, then that person's humor and style would be gone and I would no longer have any interest. For all practical purposes, the blog with the new owner becomes a new blog.

I can only imagine the pain being felt by some new blog owners as they realize what a monumental mistake they have made. They think they are buying a business but in fact they are buying nothing more than some content and readers that are unlikely to stick around.

Making money with a blog is hard anyway, whether you start with readers or not. Yes, maybe the top handful of bloggers can make money doing it, but they work hard at it every day. Don't be fooled by those top bloggers who try to convince you to follow them and they will show you how to become a pro blogger. They know very well the overwhelming odds are that you will fail.

If you must have a blog why not start one yourself? It is free to start your own on Blogger or Wordpress or you can buy a domain and host it for a whole year for under $20.00. You can then plot the course for your blog and establish your own identity rather than trying to step in and fill someone else's shoes. In six month time you will probably have as much content as you would have had with that overpriced blog you considered buying for thousands of dollars. Just roll up your sleeves and start writing!

Do you want to work from home? Check out my top ways to make money without a job at Work From Home Jobs .

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