Learning about Advertising
The latest things I’m learning about are advertising. There are two things. In is how to actually advertise my sites. The other is how to put advertising on my sites.
So, of course, one of the best ways to advertise my sites is with article marketing. I already know I’m a good writer, and have several articles published in suite101.com. That brings in a very small amount of money each month, which I’ve so far used to pay for my url registrations of my various sites. So I’m not making any money off of that. But I am able to at least get something for all that work! But I also need to put more articles in places like ezinearticles.com, where other people can see my articles and I can get lots of links to my sites.
Advertsiing on my sites is another thing. There’s the most popular form, Google Adwords, but I think that I really need some more traffic for that and want to put it into my sites in such a way that it doesn’t detract from the content. Of course, the best way to get traffic (so it’s said) is to have great content. Well, I’m a little behind in that department. I spent the last seven days working at my day job, and won’t really have a lot of time to deal with doing a lot of writing. Heck, I’m doing this on my lunch break right now!
I’ve also been doing some reading on what the best long term strategies for an online only business are. It seems that the best (or at least most lucrative) in the long term is to have your own products. That’s cool, since I like that kind of creativity. However, that can take a long time to build. The quickest way to get money is through affiliate marketing. This is selling other people’s stuff. So, its kind of like a sales job, only you are 100% responsible for the kind of sales and the marketing strategies you will use in order to sell these products. Most often you have a landing page or link in your site recommending the product that leads to the actual sales page of the person/company that sell the actual product. You get paid a commission on whatever you sell, and that’s that. Oh, you get paid because there’s a code in your link that tells the seller who it is that actually made the sale. It’s kind of like leading someone into the store and getting paid to lead them there. The person in the store is who does the actually selling.
If you sell your own stuff, you have to do it all, but then you can get these affiliates to recommend your product(s). Of course you’ll have to pay them a commission, and these usually range from 25% to 70% of your sales. WOW! I bet that most sales people in the brick and mortar stores would kill for that kind of commission. Of course, they are only people who talk with people who are already pre-qualified. But even those sales people who find their own leads don’t get that kind of percentage. But they are usually dealing in much bigger commissions. A huge commission on an Internet product is anything over $100. And the great majority are a lot less, sometimes as low as $2.
I know I’ve got one product already. I haven’t really done any advertising for that, though, so I’ll have to work on that. And I have another product almost ready that I’ll post on here once it’s ready. And one of those sites is designed to be an affiliate site anyhow, so I really need to improve that! There’s practically nothing on it, so I need to get working on content (and graphics). I hate doing graphics, but people like eye candy. It sure helps sell things better…
Oh, I’ve added my links in my sidebar. So now you can check out my sites and let me know what you think of them. Feedback on how to improve these is always appreciated. I know that a couple of them are really bad right now… Gosh, how I wish I had more time. But that’s part of why I’m doing this, isn’t it?
December 2nd, 2008 at 1:26 pm
Content is king, for sure. However, not all content is created equal. There are 2 types on content:
Content that gives a lot of info on a topic, this topic people are searching for, they find your site, they read the topic, and then they MIGHT read more info on your site, linger a bit, but most of them move on. This is the free content traffic. Its great for free info for visitors, but not so create in a business sense, UNLESS you are running a big site where you make your money from adsense (google advertisement that you get paid for by impressions, or by click)
Now, the 2nd type of content (which I think I mentioned in another post on this site) Is content, that again, drives traffic to your site, and again the customer reads the info, and then buys what you are suggesting in the info. This is the type of articles that scream on “desperate buyers” the ones that are on the verge of buying what you are writing about. Be it a fat loss product, a get out of debt product, etc etc. Something they want and need right now, and they come to your site, with credit card in hand. Now, the bad thing would be if you had an article that targeted those types of buyers, but you did not offer them anything after they were done reading.
This is where the long tail keyword research comes in. You search for terms that are people looking for a solution. You just have to put yourself in your customers shoes, and think of what they are using as search terms. This is where the best free keyword research tool comes in handy: GOOGLE ADWORDS; http://adwords.google.com/
You then just click on get keyword ideas around the middle of the page, and start punching in those niches and see what comes up. And you slowly narrow it down to a select few that are targeted towards buyers. This is also one of the places to see if people are even searching for something. And if they aren’t, then you shouldn’t try to sell it to them. They can not buy something they do not know that they need, does not matter how much they actually do need it.
1 final thought on this though, about driving traffic from search engines to your sites with content, is that this is a very temporary traffic solution. Since you can not control what google will do with your site on a day to day basis, you need to “capture” as many targeted visitors as possible. This would be done with an autoresponder. I know I mentioned this in another post, but I will say it again. Having a list, is like having your own traffic generator that you can control. You push a button, people see the email, they like you, they are buyers on that niche, they might as well buy from you. And they will, time and time again. Its like a license to print money almost. And the best thing is, as long as you captured the desperate (targeted) visitors, the ones who want to buy, and want to fix their problem, you control when you make the money, and how much.
Gotta go now, ciao.
Jeff
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:25 pm
Another thing that I did not get a chance to mention, was link building. This is another way to advertise your site. Having a lot of back links pointing to your site, will give you authority in googles eyes. And what this will do, is it will rank you in the searches for certain keywords, it all depends on what you put in your keyword selection that are attached to those links. Again, this all comes down to the proper keyword research. Trying to get the right keywords that are buyer oriented, to make the most out of your incoming traffic. So I guess it really comes down to Buyer Targeted Keywords, which will give you buyer targeted articles, and back links, which will give you buyer targeted traffic, which will put money in your pocket, and allow your business to grow. It does not matter how much traffic you are getting if none of the traffic are buyers. Unless of course you are creating adsense sites. But the average adsense site only brings in about 100 - 200 a month. You could of course build a bunch of these, get 100 - 200 from each of them, nothing wrong with that. But that is another kind of website entirely. Something that I never really ventured into, I wasnt really interested in making pennies a click, when a click could be a potential $20 - $100 from click bank products. Oh, and BTW, 100 - 200 a month is around 3000 - 5000 unique visitors to your site everyday, approximately.
Umm… I did get kind of side tracked, I seem to do that alot, this was supposed to be about backlinks, but it seemed to go towards buyer targeted keywords again. Can’t imagine why? Can you? ;P
Just so you know, I use a service to gain backlinks from sites, its called http://www.3waylinks.net. Check it out, its 47/month ,but you are allowed to have up to 50 sites for that amount. Of course, if this is more than you want to spend, then do not to it. But check out the website, on how they do it, and also, when you have time to read, go sign up to http://www.warriorforum.com . This site is the top forum about internet marketing that there is. Its a fountain of information from people who have been making their living from online marketing for years.
Well, supper is ready.
Ciao for now.
Jeff