Independent Digital

Creating and managing dynamic websites using Php, MySql, HTML and Wordpress with a bit of PEAR on the side

Entries Comments



Email This Post    Print This Post   

Make Money, Build Traffic, and Increase Sales

22 December, 2007 (08:15) | Increasing Traffic | By: clive





by Jo Mark

When you are just starting out with your Internet business, you want to keep expenses down to a minimum. Yet, you must still attract people to visit your website. Without traffic, you have no business. Fortunately, there are many free or low cost ways to attract visitors to your website. One of the best free and easy techniques to make money, build traffic, and increase sales is through the use of online Internet forums.

Internet forums are websites that focus on the exchange of information. Some people are asking questions and others provide answers. And others just want to vent or discuss topics that are related to their niche. Most forums are targeted to one particular area. An advantage of using forums is the fact that almost all of the people on the site are interested in the same topic.

Almost all forums allow you to participate for free, but in most cases, you must first register in order to participate. You can find forums related to your website by going to Google. Once there, go to Groups and enter your keyword information.

An important matter related to forums is the fact that you must take the time to read their terms of service. Those who repeatedly violate the rules will quickly be banned and prohibited from using that forum in the future.

That brings us to the main focus of this article. How can you advertise your business, make money, build traffic, and increase sales using online forums? Most forums allow you to add a signature (sig) file to each posting that you make. Develop a signature file that promotes the website or product that you are promoting. Your sig file should read like a small two or three line classified ad. When you set up your account, check the box to indicate that your sig file should appear with each posting that you enter.

Don?t start posting blatant advertisements on your first visit to a forum. If you do this, people will view your postings as spam and will ignore the information you post. Start out by answering questions in your area of expertise. Of course, with each question you answer, your sig file will quietly advertise your site. After you have answered a number questions, people will begin to see you as an expert in the field, and you will begin to see increased traffic to your site.

Make sure you register with as many related forums as possible. To get maximum advantage from your forum sig file, post information every day on each forum you are registered with. By using this technique, you will be quite surprised at the amount of traffic that you can generate through forums.

Do you want to learn more about how I make money? I have just completed my brand new guide on how to Make Money Every Day!

Make Money Every Day - Free!

http://www.milliondollararticle.com

Get Your Own Ebook & Affiliates!

http://www.WriteEbooksAndMakeMoney.com

Article Directory: Article Dashboard

Internet marketing – Armand Morin Speaks at Dan Kennedy Superconference

8 December, 2007 (18:38) | Advertising, Article publishing, Blogging, Google, Increasing Traffic, Search Engine Optimization, Wordpress | By: clive

Armand Morin Speaks at Dan Kennedy Superconference by John Braun

The leading internet marketing guru, Armand Morin, gave an eye opening presentation at the Glazer-Kennedy Superconference in Chicago on April 22, 2007. I got a chance to speak with him personally and was totally impressed with not only his knowledge, but also his down-to-earth approachable attitude.

These are the highlights of his presentation.

Do not get blogged down with Blogger.com
Blogger.com is affiliated with Google. There are millions of blogs posted daily on this site. Contrary to popular belief, Blogger.com is NOT the best place for your blog.

Why? For the most part, it uses its own search engine to find blogs. The reason is to prevent Google from getting bogged down with blog searches. There are too many blogs.

This is bad for you if you have a blog on Blogger.com because you will reduce the ability to get your blog listed on major search engines. It can still happen, but it is not quite as likely.

Your best bet is to use a program called Wordpress (often purchased FREE from your web host) and install your blog on your domain name. This way, the search engine will be able to locate the information on your blog and link it to your site directly.

Another tip about blogs: You can sign up with Google Adsense and place the ad near your blog. This can do a few things for you. First, it can make you a few dollars with the clicks you will get from the people viewing your blog. Second, it can help improve your search engine rank when you link to the site. Last, it can make your site look more professional because it is associated with Google. So, go ahead and give it a try.

Submitting articles on the internet
Submitting several articles to article directories will put you on other sites and give you a higher search engine status. The key is to submit articles that pertain to the subject of your website. Make sure the headline is relevant to your website as well. For instance, if you own a carpet cleaning company, submit an article on the subject of pet odor removal. Pet sites may pick up the article and other sites that are give spot removal tips on carpeting. It will give you huge credibility.

You can submit your article to directories that will make the article available to over 1000 different sites. One site, ArticleMarketer.com does this for a very small fee.

Submit articles often. At least once every week. It may take a couple months for you to see the benefit because Google may not send its robots to your site often if you do not have high traffic. But soon, you will reap the benefits.

Oh, by the way. If you do not like writing, you can purchase articles for as little as $3 from EzineArticles.com. I suggest you change the headline and parts of the article to fit your website subject matter. This is a quick and easy way to send out articles on a regular basis.

Final words of internet wisdom
If you decide to use Google Adwords, do it on the most highly ranked sites in your subject keywords. For instance, if you have a company in Atlanta, it is VERY hard to get on top of the search engine in Atlanta (or any city for that matter).

So, do a Google search for Atlanta. Find the highest ranked sites that offer advertising on the site. Place an ad there and you will instantly be linked with one of the tops sites in that subject.

Sure, you will get some hits directly from the site. But here is the best part of the deal. You will be linked to one of the top websites in that subject keyword. Which in turn will rank your site higher with that subject. Cool, huh?

John Braun is a copywriter with Hitman Advertising. To get your FREE REPORT entitled How To Choose The Most Profitable Advertising for your service business, visit www.HitmanAdvertising.com

Article Source: High Quality RSS Feeds and Articles on 350+ Topics

Eleven hot tips for making money with google. Tip 10

22 November, 2007 (16:25) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

Where should I place Google ads on my pages?

Certain locations on the page are ?hotter? than others. In the accompanying image (below), we notice that the colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance). Also, ads placed above the fold tend to perform better than ads placed near rich content and navigational bars because users are focused on those areas of a page.
Best postion of ads
Always put your users first when deciding on ad placement. Consider how they will navigate the page, and what will be most useful and visible to them. Sometimes this will call for the ad to be placed other than where expected.

Tip number eleven to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Eleven hot tips for making money with google. Tip 11

22 November, 2007 (16:13) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

Making AdSense fit your forum site

Ad placement and format are crucial when designing successful ads for a forum site.

  • Placement. Display your ad units where repeat users will notice them
  • Forum regulars usually skip the header and go straight to the thread, so ad units above or below the first post can be more effective than ads next to the logo
  • Put a leaderboard at the end of the last post which gives the user a ‘next step’ when the content ends. Avoid placing it after the footer
  • Formats. Adapt your design for multiple ad units and limited space
  • Multiple ad units allow you to use a variety of formats to fill ad space on your site. Skyscrapers above the fold on the left side of your forum produces better results than elsewhere. However, when using multiple ad units throughout the page, the leaderboard is still the best. See the image below:

    Location of ads on forum site

  • Place horizontal link units just below the header as these offer a wider range of relevant topics to browse

Always be sure to blend the ads so they don’t appear overly intrusive – but then be careful not to blend them so well that they mislead your users!

Consider using image ads to increase the pool of ads to display on your site. Forums tend to have lower clickthrough so use CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) ads that can improve revenue without the need for clicks.

This is the final of the eleven hot tips on how to make money with google adsense. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Eleven hot tips for making money with google. Tip 7

21 November, 2007 (12:40) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

AdSense for search – web search right from your site

An AdSense for search box on your site:

  • Will improve your users’ online experience
  • Will generates a new revenue stream
  • Allows you to better understand your visitors’ needs
  • The search results pages can be customized to fit with your site’s theme
  • You?ll be paid for every valid click on the ads that appear on the results page

Use the top queries report for AdSense for search to better understand your users. The report provides a list of the top 25 searches performed on your AdSense for search box. You can use it to determine the most sought-after topics on your site, or investigate what your users aren’t able to find on your pages.

Tip number eight to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Eleven hot tips for making money with google. Tip 6

21 November, 2007 (12:20) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

Link units help you make the most out of limited space

Link units display a list of topics relevant to the content of your site. When users click on one of these topics, they’re brought to a page of AdWords. You’ll only be paid for user clicks on any of the AdWords ads on the resulting page and not for clicks on the list topics.

  • Effective for more focused content, where visitors are seeking specific information
  • Their varied formats are space-efficient

Tip number seven to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Eleven hot tips for making money with google. Tip 5

21 November, 2007 (12:07) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

Blogtimize – Optimize the ads on your blog

  • Blend ads into your blog
  • Blend your ad units into the background. Choose a bold color for the ad title and make sure that the background and borders are the same color as the background of the area where the ad is placed.

  • Experiment with multiple ad formats and locations
  • Wider ad formats tend to be more reader-friendly and placing an ad unit after the first post will most likely catch your readers’ attention. Also, consider placing a Skyscraper (120×600) or vertical link unit on the right side of your blog.

  • Offer readers more options with search and referrals
  • Consider using Adsense for search and referrals, which can increase your earnings as well as provide readers with valuable information. They are also flexible formats, which can be placed in small areas.

  • Improve ad targeting
  • You can use section targeting to target an ad unit to a specific section of your blog. Section targeting allows you to suggest sections of your text and HTML content that you’d like Google to emphasize or downplay when matching ads to your site’s content.

    Tip number six to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

Eleven hot tips for making money with google. Tip 4

21 November, 2007 (09:42) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

Maximize ad space with multiple ad units

The more ad unit you have, the more ads can be displayed and the more money you can make. You can place up to three ad units per page (in addition to three link units and three referral units). Multiple ad units are good for:

  • Pages with lots of text where viewers need to scroll through the page.
  • Forum or message board pages, especially in the threads
  • Pages where only small ad formats (such as a buttons) will fit

Ensure that the best placed ad unit on the page is the one that appears first in your HTML code so that the highest valued ads will display and generate the most revenue for you.

Tip number five to follow. If you want to advertise your website for free then have a look at goFreeClick free text ads.

What is Google adsense?

15 November, 2007 (10:32) | Advertising, Google | By: clive

Google adsense allows website owners to place ads on their websites for which they receive payment from Google when the ad is clicked.

Ads can be in text, image or even video format. When you sign up with Google adsense, you choose the format and then paste the generated javascript on your webpage. You need to choose the position carefully so that the ad is highly visible. When the page is viewed, Google determines from its index of webpages, which ad to display. If your webpage has not been indexed, then Googles? bot will scan the page to determine which is the appropriate ad.

Google adwords is an ad server. It contains ads that participating advertisers have added to the server. Google adsense calls on the adwords server to ?serve? or display the appropriate ad. Advertisers, who use Google adwords to create their adverts for display, bid on keywords and phrases. The more popular the word or phrase, the more expensive it is. They are then charged each time the ad is clicked. Website owners using adsense get a percentage of this revenue. The ads can either be displayed in Googles? search engine results page or within the content of a webpage. Google adsense is an ideal means for website owners to generate an income. However from an advertising point of view, Google adwords although an effective means of advertising, can be very expensive. The alternative is goFreeClick free text ads. Working on a similar principle as Googles? adsense, goFreeClickallows advertisers to create up to 10 adverts which are then displayed on participating websites, all for free. The only catch is that advertisers place the javascript code on their webpage. This code will then display the appropriate ad when the page is viewed. GoFreeClickis not a means of generating an income for website owners but it is definitely an effective means of free advertising.