What ever type of business model you are using there is always one important ingredient that you must have, and that is TRAFFIC.
Traffic is always the lifeblood of your business, because even if you had terrible conversions and a badly designed website as long as you still had traffic then you would at least still make money.
Over the last 4 years I have tried many different traffic methods both free traffic and paid traffic. Some were a success and some were a complete failure. I will reveal to you below one of my most powerful and effective traffic methods that I have been using which has delivered great results
Number 1 Free Traffic Source:
Ezine Articles
To some this may be a bit of a shock because submitting articles can be quite time consuming but believe me, it will definitely pay off in time. You see.. the way I look at my online business is I always like to make the most of my time and only use the most effective, profitable and time efficient methods which return the best results in order to build my business. When building traffic, using articles is a very good idea because you will be putting the work in only once, but you will be seeing the results of your efforts for a very long time to come afterwards.
There are however some things you must consider before writing a tonne of articles.
You MUST be sending the traffic from your articles to a squeeze page.
If you are not sending the traffic from your articles to some form of squeeze page then in my opinion it is a complete waste of time using articles to drive traffic because you are NOT using your time efficiently to build your business. You need to make sure that all of your traffic that you drive from your articles is being sent to a landing/squeeze page so that you can build your email list (This is vital)
I know some people use articles to make one off sales for affiliate products etc. This is all well and good but these are only one off payments and your not building yourself a real business.
I use ezine articles as an example because I always get plenty of traffic when i submit my articles with them. You also need to remember that you cant just submit a few articles and hope to generate lots of traffic. Sure… you could get lucky and one of your articles could start to rank high and starts to get lots of views but you should not just rely on a small number of articles to send you traffic. You need to be submitting a lot of articles. The more you submit the more traffic you will get to your squeeze page.
Remember though, the traffic is permanant traffic and it is a great way to guarantee you a constant steady stream of traffic to your squeeze page.
A quick tip: You will not only be getting traffic from people reading your articles but also people looking at your author profile and as long as you have links in there you can receive a fair bit of traffic that way too. If you contine to submit lots of articles and you manage to get in the top 10 authors for your niche then this will also send you more traffic.
If you are really serious about using ezine articles as a steady traffic stream then start pumping out articles every day. You can either write them yourself or get them outsourced. Which ever the case try to aim at submitting over 100 articles for your particular niche topic (obviously the more the better) but 100 will be sending you some good steady traffic each day.
Submitting 3 articles per day for only 1 month will be 90 articles. It soon mounts up if you submit them every day!
In summary of using Ezine Articles:
- You get to build back links from every article
- The traffic is good quality
- It is all free traffic
- It is all permanant traffic
- You can also receive some good traffic from your author profile page
- Your articles can get picked up and distributed around the internet building you more back links and also sending you more traffic to your squeeze page
BONUS TIPS:
These are some tips which will help you to get more views to your articles (These do really work well, i use these myself)
Bonus Tip 1
Use “POWER WORDS” in your article Titles. After all this is the only information people can read to make them want to read your entire article
Here is a list of some “POWER WORDS” Which can be used for article titles, email subject lines or on sales pages. These “Power Words” will all help with open rates and user engagment…enjoy!
Power, Fast, Whopping, Ultimate, Blasting, Crazy, Burning, Overdrive, Warp Speed, Profits, Secrets, Closely Guarded, Proven, Free, Discover, Blueprint, Insane, Explosive, Exploit, De-Bunked, Forced, Sky Rocket, Extreme, Jaw Dropping, Mouth Watering, Weired, Boosts, Super, Extra, Jumpstart, Killer, Surprising, Little known, Melting, Blazing, Unleash, Avalanche, Tsunami, Hot, Power packed, Spark, Mind blowing, Mesmerising, Incredible, High powered, Electrifying, Awesome, Blockbuster, Rocket-Launch, Turbo boost, Explode, Ignite
Bonus Tip 2
Use Numbers in Your article Titles. Any numbers work great and much better than just plain old boring text
For example
- 3 secret ways
- 2 killer tips
- 5 blazing hot
- 7 weired
I think you get my point
Bonus Tip 3
Here is an example of an article title that is bad and then an improved title using power words
Boring Title – “how to lose weight, build muscle and bun fat”
Exciting Title – “3 Killer Excercises for Blasting Fat, Building Muscle and Transforming Your Body into a Fat Burning Furnace”
Now which one looks more interesting??
I hope you can see the power of using compelling titles which attract attention
I hope you can now see the power of using ezine articles but using them effectively rather than wasting your traffic
PS: If you have any traffic sources that you like to use and are effective then leave a comment below I would love to hear what they are
PPS: Look out for more posts over the coming days and weeks where i will reveal to you the rest of my closely guarded and effective traffic methods
Thanks
Paul
hey hows it going
its been a while since my last blog post i know, but ive been busy with a new project and im happy and relieved to say that ive actually finished it now.
Today`s blog post i have something that i really want and need to get off my chest because it`s eating me up inside and i have to vent it.
Sometimes i find an internet marketing article online which really makes me think about certain aspects of my business and which then motivates me to make some positive changes and i hope this article will have have a similiar effect on you so don`t take this information lightly.
If you have been following my blog for any length of time then you would know that ive been building niche sites for the last couple of years making money with google adsense and amazon and ive done pretty well and i had a good little system in place for making profitable adsense and amazon sites which i created my first internet marketing product earlier this year.
But as you probably know google constantly make changes to there algorithm which in turn can have some negative effects on your sites rankings, and of course positive effects too if your lucky. After every google update you see lots of people complaining about there sites losing rankings and that income has taken a nose dive. Ive mentioned this before but i was never really hit that badly from any of the google updates and most of my sites continued to rank at the top of google and kept making regular money. A couple of sites were hit but most of my sites continued to make regular money and were never hit by any of the google updates.
Ive always been a believer in “Learn by the mistakes of others Not Your Own”
This is true to an extent… you will still occasionally make mistakes and that`s fine, but most of the time you want to learn by the mistakes that other`s make. (This will save you a lot of time, money, pain and head scratching)!
So taking all this into account, i looked at my online business and realized that my business model wasn`t very stable, in fact, my online business model where i made most of my money was a complete joke.
Why was my business model a complete joke??
Well think about it, im putting most of my income in the hands of someone else which has the power to shut my income down at the push of a button or the flick of a switch. And that person is GOOGLE or SEARCH ENGINES.
And i bet most of the people reading this blog post do exactly that.
So what solution have i got to this problem??
Well around 5 weeks ago i decided to sell all of my niche sites so that i can start again using some of the funds to start a new project. Some people might think i was mad for doing this. Well in fact it`s quite the opposite. It was the best decision ive ever made.
I had around 4 good earning niche sites which i sold for over $7,000 and then a couple of weeks back i sold the remaining smaller earning sites for $500. Along with last months adsense and amazon icome i made a little over $9,000
Now i have got rid of most of my sites, i will admit i still have a couple of niche sites which are doing ok which i may sell in the next few months but for now im happy with the way things are. After selling those sites i was then able to set my new income stream up using some of the funds from my niche sites for doing the project.
I already had an idea what i was going to do anyway so i didn`t just sell up and the think “right now how can i make money” i already had a much better business model in my head so it was just a case of building my new system.
Now that i have my new system in place all im doing now is building traffic so this brings me onto my next point
Now listen up because what im now going to say could save you months and months and a lot of time and effort.
Iv`e completly changed my business model from making money with niche sites to a much more stable business model where im building an email list and selling my own products, and no it`s not in the internet marketing niche.
I wanted to create a business model which:
- had a sales funnel
- i could sell my own products
- i didn`t have to rely on google and search engines to make me money
- my income wasn`t unstable and in the hands of the clowns over at google
- i could build a list of loyal customers
- i didnt have to slug away building boring back links all the time
- i didn`t have to worry about losing my affiliate accounts
- i could leverage my email list when i wanted to launch new products
- all i had to do was to drive traffic to one page (my squeeze page)
- i wanted a business model which i could scale up easily (the most important one)
I know there are “many way`s to skin a cat” as the saying goes, but when it comes to building a stable income then you need to incorperate one main element, and i don`t care how good you think your business idea is or what you plan to do. You need to be “BUILDING AN EMAIL LIST OF PROSPECTS AND CUSTOMERS”
If you`r not doing this or you have no intention of doing this soon then you are going to find things very difficult with building a stable, sustainable and profitable online business.
Why the Hell are you constantly putting most of your income in the hands of Google and other search engines?????
Even if your not entirely sure how to create your own product in a different niche then learn how to and start building an asset online rather than having a risky business model which survives mainly on search engine traffic.
Probably the best thing iv`e ever read online as an internet marketer:
Quote From Tim Ferris:
“Our goal is simple: to create an automated vehicle for generating cash without consuming time. That’s it. I will call this vehicle a “muse”…Muses will provide the time and financial freedom to realize your dreamlines in record time, after which one can (and often does) start additional companies to change the world or sell.”
Do you have a “muse”???
the definition of a muse in the internet marketing world is a system which doesn`t require constant maintnance. Basically a system which has a sales process and funnel which works on autopilot and works for you 24hrs a day. All you have to do is send traffic to your squueze page/beginning of your sales funnel and let your system take over from there.
The system i have recently set up is exactly that.
If you read the last bullet point above you would of seen that it says “the business model must be scaleable”
With using a muse you have no problem scaling your business up. In order to do this and to be able to handle big numbers you need a system and you MUST be using an autoresponder.
So… if your thinking about starting a new business model then make sure you build a “MUSE”
STOP wasting your time working on a business model which is not stable which you rely on facebook, google or other search engine traffic.
You need to be building an email list and selling your own products…. period!
What if you spent 12 months building a few niches sites up to say 200 pages each and you spent money on lots of links, content and outsources and then google were to slap all of your sites (and this has happened to a lot of people) how sick would you feel? Imagine how ill you would feel seeing all your traffic and rankings go overnight after months and months of hard work? If your willing to take risks like this in your business then your very brave/crazy, good luck!
You need to start taking your business seriously and start making “good business decisions”
PS: On a side note, the only thing i will say is if you are new to internet marketing then by all means build some adsense and amazon sites so you start making some money. That is a perfect way to start making money online but for god sake as soon your making around $1000 a month with them don`t just keep plodding away because you need to diverse and start building a much more stable business. To start with adsense and amazon (or affiliate marketing in general) are great for learning SEO skills and getting experience but as soon as you start to hit some half decent figures take the advice that i give you above and start building some of your own products and building an email list.
I hope this has nailed home a few things as to the direction which you should be taking your online business if you take it seriously
thanks for reading, please leave any comments below!
Here are 22 awesome tools which i want to share that help me to run my online business
Google Keyword Tool – the google keyword tool is the only tool that i use online to check for traffic. I know some people use other tools to check traffic numbers and thats fine but if your trying to get traffic from google then it makes perfect sense to use there own tool. Remember though.. traffic numbers in any tool should only be used as an estimate as the figures are not 100% accurate.
Alexa – this is a handy tool to use not just so you can check where a site ranks in the world but you can get other useful information too, like traffic stats, demographics, and keywords that a site is ranking for.
Quantcast – is an awesome tool which is under used probably because not many people know about it. It basicaly gives you lots of in depth demographic data about a particular web page. This is super powerful when used in cpa or affiliate marketing…
WHY??
well with cpa offers you can type in the landing page url and see what traffic is already being sent to the page. Also with affiliate marketing pages you can see what sort of traffic s being sent to there sales page… this information is golden because you can then tailor your websites and pages for a certain type of age group, gender etc.
Majestic SEO – is the best tool ive come accross for checking your back link velocity. It shows you how many back links are being built to a particular webpage each day and over the last month. This is also golden information for your SEO rankings because if your link velocity is very erratic and random then this could have a big negative effect on your google rankings. Its an aweosme tool and Free too so make sure you add this tool to your arsnal of internet marketing weapons
Google Insights – if you have checked out my adsense and amazon video course then you would of seen that i use google insights as part of my method for checking to see if a particular keyword is worth going for. It gives you lots of great statistics and data for traffic and demographics and when building affiliate sites this tool is a very important tool to use.
Tynt – tynt is a tool ive recently started to use. Basically theres people out there always stealing content from our sites and a lot of the time theres not really much we can do about it. Untill now…. With tynt all you do is upload some code to your site and then every time someone takes content from your site tynt will automatically place a link within the content back to your site.
This works really well, as ive already had quite a few links generated over the last month using tynt. You wont get a link to every piece of content that gets taken from your site because some people may delete it but half the time the link won`t get seen and you will get an extra back link to your site. Only fair right….? you wrote the content so you want something back for your hard work right!!
Its Free to use and also tynt give you some other basic stats for keywords that your being found for and all that stuff but those are just all extra`s. Make sure you check it out, its cool 
Pic Resizer – what a great little tool. I use this site when ever i want to shrink a picture but keep it in the same scale. Its really handy and easy to use.
Godaddy Bulk Registration Checker – this is another very handy tool to use. You may of already heard of godaddy and thats fine, the feature which i use often is the bulk domain registration checker. It saves you a lot of time and you can check hundreds of domains all at the same time by using this feature. Of course its completely free and its definately a tool i use often.
Free Image Hosting – tiny pic are really useful sometimes because if i want to send or upload a quick picture to a forum or something then doing it all on your own server can be a pain in the ass. So all i do is upload it to tiny pic and within seconds i get a selection of links that i can use either in forums, emails, or i can choose the html format, its really handy check it out!
Snipping Tool – you should already have this on your computer. Its really helpfull because if i want to include any screen shots of anything i just use that, its dead easy to use and you can even use it in combination with the free picture hoster as i mentioned above.
Google Analytics - this is a must.. you want to be checking all your traffic stats and keywords so its a good move to use a tool by google as most of the time thats where most of your traffic will come from. There are other alternatives available but google analytics gives you a good rundown of all traffic and keywords which i find really easy to understand.
Google Webmaster – if you take your SEO seriously then you need to have your website in google webmaster. It will give you an accurate ranking position of all of your websites pages and how many impressions each page gets, clicks, click through rate and indicates when there has been any movement in any of your stats. Its one of my must have tools as an internet marketer.
Xheader – this is a useful tool to create customized headers for your site. Your not going to get photoshop quality designs by using x header but its plenty good enough to start with. With new sites i generally use x header and then once the site is earning some money and i know its going well i then outsource for a better header to be designed.
SEO Quake – quite simply i cant live without this tool. If you take your online business seriously and you want to be able to check your SEO competition and your competitors back links then SEO quake is a must. Without it your simply going to be marketing blind….get it right now if you dont have it already!
Back Link Watch – if you want to analyize your competitors back links then back link watch is a useful tool to use. Its not something i use every day but its handy to know about and have it at your disposal.
Keyword Density Checker – This tool is useful in a couple of ways, firstly if you want to check some of your own content on your site and see what keyword density you have then you can check it with this tool. Secondly if your checking some of your competitiors websites to see what keyword density they have on there sites then you can check it all using this tool too.
CopyScape – this tool speaks for itself…if you havent heard of it before then it basically tells you if anyone else is using your content online also if you have some articles written for you and you want to check them to make sure they are unique then you can use copyscape to do this. All you do is type in your url of your web page… its dead simple but effective.
Spy Fu – This is another tool which i recommend in my video course that you use whenever you want to find out what the average cost per click is for a particular keyword. When building adsense sites its crucial that you always use spyfu to check the cpc otherwise you will again be marketing blind and also you could be doomed for failure from the start if you dont check your keywords cpc.
Flippa – this is an online auction website where you can buy and sell websites in just about any market. I dont use it for the obvious reasons of buying and selling but more for research. You can discover some hot niches if you look through flippa, because they tell you how much the site is making, traffic stats, where the income comes from, what type of traffic, screen shots plus lots more useful data. You can then use all this data to then make a similiar site knowing how they do it. Be careful though as there are some sites on there with stats that are made up and are complete rubbish. They often get spotted early but just be careful, if in doubt ask a fellow more experienced internet marketer for there opinion.
Serp IQ – this is a new tool which ive started to use over the last few months and it is really really good. Your able to check all of your on page SEO and offpage SEO factors and also all of your social media apsects to your site as well. It shows you where you rank, shows you the complete top 10 for a particular keyword plus lots more excellent data. Serp iq takes into consideration a lot of social factors too which is very important and this is something a lot of tools dont do.
These two tools below are both paid tools however they are both tools which i cant live without as an internet marketer
Aweber – without a doubt this is my most important tool that i have ever used in my online business. If i stopped using all of the tools but still kept my aweber account then by online business will still be growing each and every day.
Your autoresponder is your number one asset in your online business because not only does provide you with leverage but you can also scale up your business and income systems in such a way that it will always be managable.
How many times do you hear people that have brick and mortar businesses say “well im just so busy i havent got time to take on any more work, or “that customer will have to wait” ok its fair to say that offline businesses havent exactly been booming this last couple of years however when a company does eventually get busy (and this is of course there intention otherwise they wouldnt have a business) the last thing you want to do is turn customers away or have to turn business away because you just cannot cope with the demand.
Using a service like aweber this will never happen online because it doesnt matter how many prospects or customers you get on a daily basis, your autoresponder service will always manage all of them for you on auto pilot
So if you take your online business seriously then check out aweber, without an autoresponder your fighting an uphill battle and your never going to be able to build a sustainable profitable online business
Optimize Press – this is an awesome wordpress plugin which creates impressive landing, squueze and membership pages with a push of a button. When i created my adsense and amazon video course and the squueze page i used optimize press and it gives your pages a very professional look and also it increases conversions because of the high quality design of the pages.
These are all of my internet marketing weapons which help me to run my online business
Hope you have picked a few up which will help you too
If you think i have missed any good ones or let me know other tools which you cant live without please leave a comment below and let me know what they are
paul
