This is a guest post by Christy Taylor.

Everyone has something they know about and something they can help others understand. What many people don’t know is that what they know can always be made into an article that others can use.

An article doesn’t have to be about something big, but it should be something that you care about and that you can express how to do or how to feel. There are probably billions of articles on the Internet with different people’s perspectives, ideas and thoughts. All you have to do is write something that is entertaining and eye catching.

Most articles that work well on the Internet are between 400 and 600 words. They usually have headlines and bullet points to catch the eye as readers pass through. Good information will be passed along to others and before you know it, your website traffic picks up.

The good news is that you don’t have to write all of these articles. In fact, there are several different ways to do this and they are worth the investing of a few dollars. There are article directories and software programs that will do the work for you after you write the first article.

The way the system works is that people read your article and then link to your website for more information. This is called back linking when it is in an article directory and the traffic to your website grows.

The nice thing about article writing is the more you write, the more you have to send out to the directories and the more people can read about you. Finding a niche market that people will read can send you more customers in a very short time.

What People Read

This is where you go on a kind of scavenger hunt because you can find many items that interest you. Look at television, read the news feeds online and read any news that interests you. If it is fascinating to you, chances are people are talking about it. Look for information about the topics you enjoy and write about them. This will generate more creativity, and you will gain more ideas for your own articles.

Chat rooms and message boards also have a lot of information about what people are taking about, and they can be used for topics that are the most current. While you are there, look for questions that people are asking.

Creating articles for your website will take some time, but it is worth the investment to get because over time you won’t have to do as much work in this area. More and more people are coming to websites for their content that they can use.

Christy Taylor, author, is the owner of Virtual Business Connections, an Internet Marketing/SEO/Professional Copywriting firm. For more information on how to generate traffic to your website, visit http://www.VirtualBusinessConnections.com

With exams (SATs) and courseworks coming up, I will have to take a short break from blogging (and my business) in the next two months. As much as I love blogging and working on my business, I have to learn to prioritize things in order to meet my goals. Like they say, “Don’t spread yourself too thin.” The same applies to business.

But if anybody is interested in taking over by writing a couple of guest posts (you may include up to three links back to your website) then feel free to email me at stanley@stanleytang.com, letting me know your topics of interest and how many posts you can contribute. The topic can be anything related to the niche – internet marketing, entrepreneurship, social media etc.

Like I said, you may promote your blog or website in the bylines – but NO affiliate links. So basically you are getting exposure to over 10,000 visits per month for an extended period of time.

Don’t worry. I won’t be completely gone. I will still try my best to provide you guys with awesome stuff through twitter – http://www.twitter.com/stanleytang every now and then. Take care.

Found this awesome slideshow about social media marketing:

Should stir you with some inspirations for web 2.0 start-ups

Yesterday, internet super affiliate Ewen Chia launched his latest print book, How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider’s Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business.

He kindly sent me a review copy and I took a quick look. And honestly, I was blown away. It’s literally an step-by-step blueprint of his affiliate marketing system that almost anybody can follow. Although it might not be as “insider” as you may think, it’s definitely worth the $13 from Amazon.

With this amount of incredible content in his book on top of Ewen’s incredible marketing skills, it was no surprise to see the book become an instant best-seller and hit #1 on the Overall Best-Seller’s List on Amazon in as little as 12 hours!

But what does it got to do with me? Well, here’s the interesting thing:

See that section where it says “Frequently Bought Together”? That little blue cover right there is my book – eMillions: Behind-The-Scenes Stories of 14 Successful Internet Millionaires! It got actually recommended by Amazon themselves! Now just imagined the thousands of people who went to that page on the day (it takes hundreds of sales to hit and maintain the #1 spot)… I’m pretty sure quite a few are going to take on that offer from Amazon (in fact, it says 6% of the people visiting that page end up buying my book)

Within just 24 hours, my book ranking has soared from 400,000 to 743 (hitting the #1 spot in the Home-Based Business Category)… all with ZERO effort and promotion on my part! (A typical campaign like this would cost anywhere from $1,000 up to $10,000! – unless of course you’re using word-of-mouth marketing)

This is the power of piggyback marketing

Remember to get a copy of my book, eMillions, over at Amazon (and get tons of cool bonuses):

http://www.emillionsbook.com

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog post explaining how I brought in 184 unique visitors to my blog… just with a simple trackback that took me 2 seconds.

Like any good scientist marketer, I repeat my experiments to ensure accuracy and precision in my results. So the other day, I wrote a blog post called Web 2.0 Is Dying… Or Is It and linked it to the post on TechCrunch (which then got displayed on the trackback list).

72 hours later…

Just stumbled across an awesome slideshow presentation about Twitter (view in full screen):

It’s by @minxuan who is a Singaporean student living in Silicon Valley.

You already know how important it is to build your own email lists.

But do you build your lists as quickly as you could?

If you’re not sure, I can understand why.

More often than not, I was too busy chasing sales and not building relationships. Sure, I’d set up pay per click, write articles, post useful comments in forums. and still not make any sales. Argh! Before I knew it, I wasn’t marketing as often I should have. “Bah, what’s the point…? No one’s going to buy my product anyway, so why bother. Besides, I’m so busy working on my next big project.”

In the back of my mind, though, I knew I should be marketing differently. It nagged at me, so sometimes I would at least make the effort to ask another successful marketer for their advice. But, smart people that they are, they would usually say, “The money is in the list!’

So when I found out about a marketer named Jason James (one of the featured experts in eMillions), I perked up. You see, in less than 3 years, Jason has created more than 5 different products that debuted with six-figure paydays.

But that’s not the part that amazed me. You see, Jason found a way to add thousands of people to his own mailing list at the same time. In fact, one of his launches he created a brand new subscriber list of 1,000’s of buyers.

Jason is a real sharp guy. He realized that he could (and does) make even more money, simply by mailing to his own list.

He sends them useful content.

He sends them new product announcements.

He sends them affiliate emails that promote the latest big product being offered by other marketers.

And each time, he makes money when those subscribers buy.

It didn’t take Jason long to realize that the more subscribers that were on his list, the more money he could potentially make. So he shifted his focus to the list building methods that ultra-successful marketers use.

The good news is he discovered their marketing edge.

It’s called a Giveaway event and they have become fairly popular in the internet marketing niche. Of course, if you’re an online marketer, 99.9% of the niches you’ve thought of entering have never heard of giveaway events. (Talk about a big competitive edge!)

Done right, a giveaway event can give you a big list of hungry buyers and more money in your bank account.

Done wrong, and your event will be a major flop. Your professional reputation will be toast and you still won’t have a big list.

That’s why I was really excited when I learned that Jason wrote a manual that covers Giveaway Events.

It’s called Giveaway Riches.

http://www.stanleytang.com/go/giveawayriches

With Giveaway Riches, you don’t have to worry about doing your own giveaway event. As long as you follow Jason’s step-by-step plan on setting up and running your own giveaway event, your success is practically guaranteed!

http://www.stanleytang.com/go/giveawayriches

Jason reveals everything he’s discovered about giveaway events – and nothing is held back. He even tells you some of the major mistakes he made – and learned from – so you don’t make the same mistakes too.

He’s now making this manual available to you. Say goodbye to slow list building and say hello to:

• Rapid list building. Add loads of new buyers to your mailing list that other marketers gladly refer to you.
• Easy to understand step-by-step plans. You don’t have to guess how to do a giveaway event. You get access to exactly what you need to know. FAST!
• Unlimited license. You can use Giveaway Riches system on as many websites as you want or any niche you want to go after. There’s no limit to where you build a list.
• Make money at the same time as you build a list. Thanks to the special offers built into a giveaway event, you can make money while you build a hot fresh subscriber list. Brilliant!

Check out Giveaway Riches:

http://www.stanleytang.com/go/giveawayriches

1. Be remarkable – somebody worth making a remark about
2. Become a resource to others
3. Have your own unique personality
4. Be vocal and opinionated within the communtiy
5. Don’t continuously push the envelope by flooding them with requests
6. Invest time into social media
7. Produce and share content that your audience will love
8. Monitor what’s being shared about you
9. Become a real member of the community
10. Ask questions
11. Answer questions
12. Provide value to the community
13. Be controversial
14. Don’t be another “me-too”
15. Automate carefully – it’s about people not robots
16. Don’t be an asshole
17. Make it easy for people to share and bookmark your content
18. Listen to the community
19. Make at least one new connection every day
20. Engage yourself in conversations
21. Become the conversation
22. You’re there to make relationships, not hard selling
23. Take time to focus on building a loyal following
24. Give, Give, GIVE!
25. Treat social media like a cocktail party
26. Be supportive
27. Syndicate your content across all social media platforms
28. Encourage others to syndicate your content onto their sites
29. Fully research the community to understand your market
30. Be fun
31. Get to know the unwritten laws of the community
32. Create an attractive, unique and professional profile
33. Use a cool avatar/picture
34. Use the same avatar for each social media service
35. Don’t be a keyboard gangsta (i.e. trash talk all day)
36. Know what your followers/friends want and give it to them
37. Form reciprocal arrangements with others
38. Monitor your noise level
39. Never cheat the system
40. Help others unconditionally
41. Be yourself

I see it all the time…

One marketer will only get a handful of visitors to his site per day. The other will work really hard to get hundreds of visitors daily. Six months later, the first marketer will be earning a nice monthly income from his handful of daily visitors while the other marketer will still be struggling to get more “unique” visitors to his site while making very little money, if any. A great traffic-generation model linked to a poor profit-generation model leads to failure.

If you want to make money from your site, you have to understand these key points:

• The site that gets the most traffic does not necessarily make the most money
• The site that is able to turn traffic into subscribers and buyers usually does well
• The site that can turn traffic into repeat buyers always comes out a winner!

Getting traffic to your site is only the first step. Once it gets there, you need to have a powerful direct response sales message ready to take orders or add subscribers to your list. Otherwise, all your efforts will go to waste.

You see, while most marketers are only focused on finding new customers or getting more unique visitors to their site, the smart marketers are also consistently working on getting their existing customers/prospects to buy more often. And maybe even buy much higher ticket items.

Getting an existing customer to buy again is much easier to do than getting a stranger to buy from you for the very first time.

So, all the extra traffic you get to your site will not make any difference to your bottom line unless you work on turning these strangers into trusting, repeat buyers.

An Important Point About Profits…

Over the years, I’ve noticed that the individuals who make the most profits consistently are those who charge a monthly, recurring fee. This can either be in the form of a monthly access fee to a product-based membership site or it can be a service that requires a monthly payment (e.g. hosting service, Internet access, advertising service etc) – anything that creates a residual income source.

It also takes much less effort to make a profit using this system because, again, you’re selling to an existing customer who has already willingly paid for that product or service. Instead of having to sell to the customer every month, all you have to do is keep providing a good product and service. Compare that to always having to find new customers, or even selling new products!

If you can find a way to provide a product or service that charges a monthly fee – be it just a few bucks a month – you can really begin to maximize your profits from the traffic stream that comes your way.

A predictable monthly fee, even as small as 9 bucks per month, is a lot better than a “probable” sale of $27, 2 or 3 times per year. Start using bigger numbers and you’ll really see big differences.

Oh, by the way, this monthly access product or service does not necessarily have to be your own. You can also join a dependable affiliate program and just as easily earn a monthly residual income.

I was on the plane to Korea for the ski trip during Christmas when I began writing a blog post about the fall of Cuil (aka the “Google Killer”) and how it was a complete disaster. As soon as we got off the plane, a RSS feed came in from TechCrunch that also covered the same topic about the fail of Cuil.

We had to wait one hour for the bus to arrive, so there was plenty of time for me to finish off the post (it was very short) and read the TechCrunch post. It was pretty relevant so I just decided to link to that post.

Little did I know how much traffic it brought me…

I was completely shocked and wasn’t expecting any traffic at all. Just goes to show the power of trackbacks. How an “accident” brought me 184 unique visitors of free traffic It’s not a lot, but keep in mind this was just from ONE trackback. What if you did 10, 20, 50? (obviously, I would recommend you to do so relevantly and not just spam/abuse)