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

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…

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.

Here’s an interesting video I stumbled across where the CEO of Twitter, Evan Williams, reveals what Twitter’s future would be like:

It’s interesting to see that the future of Twitter’s use is MARKETING. He also hints on the possibility of introducing Groups which will help organize the people you’re following as well as your followers into chunks (something which I need badly). I know TweetDeck offers a similar feature but it’s nowhere near as powerful as the sort of thing Evan talked about introducing.

Creative content is the key to creating buzz

Yesterday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dean Hunt from the UK. Dean is one of the leading experts in the field when it comes to buzz marketing… and he’s only 26 years old! He’s truly a marketing genius and knows how to get people talking.

For those of you who have been a subscriber of mine will probably know that I’m a BIG fan of viral marketing and I happen to agree with many of the stuff Dean said. It’s all about creating CONTENT that will turn into link baits – whether its humor, quality tips, controversy, value etc. Read the interview below:

1. What did you do before you stumbled across the internet? And how did you eventually got started with internet marketing?

I have done everything from graphic design, to being a professional golfer. I squeezed a lot into my youth. I stumbled across Internet Marketing really without knowing exactly what it was. I created a sports betting forum in 2003, and basically I wanted to make it popular, so I just experimented with lots of techniques. It was only later that I realized that what I was doing was actually called “marketing”.

2. What initial obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them?

Lack of funds were my main issue early on, so I overcame them by being creative, utilizing contacts, and learning how to get noticed.

3. What is the difference between buzz marketing and viral marketing?

For me, buzz is the action and viral is the result. For example, if I stand in Time Square New York naked and sing ‘Like a Virgin’ by Madonna, then I will create a buzz, later, if people tell their friends about it, then that is the viral stage. So really, viral marketers are actually buzz marketers who are looking to go viral, they just don’t realize that yet.

4. How did you become known as the buzz marketing expert?

Again, kinda by accident. I started my blog as simply a way to keep my thoughts and ideas, it wasn’t really something that I wanted to share with the world, but then I started getting traffic, and when I analyzed that traffic, I noticed that people responded most to anything that was creative, different, funny, or edgy. A pattern soon emerged, and I discovered that creative content is the key to creating buzz.

I also have managed to have huge success over and over again on sites like Digg.com, so that has helped cement my place as the leading buzz marketing expert on the net.

5. Could you perhaps use a case study of yours and walk us through a step-by-step process to a successful buzz marketing campaign?

I actually have done a few case studies, you can download one of them here: http://www.webtrafficorgasm.com/casestudy.zip or signup for free at www.buzzprofits.com and I will send you them all. They show EXACTLY how I did it.

6. What do you exactly do to monetize your buzz marketing efforts?

I use what I like to call “down the line monetization”. What this means is that I don’t look to profit from the traffic straight away. Most people don’t grasp this concept, and that is why they have to work a lot harder than me to go viral.

Say for example you create come killer buzz content, and you get 100,000 visitors in a one day period. The usual method is to plaster your site with loads of adverts, and if you are lucky, you can make $200 from adsense.

That is what most people do.

However, for that $200, you now have 100,000 people who think your site was annoying, spammy and crap. So you will never see them again.

What I do is don’t look to monetize instantly, in fact, I have been known to strip all ads off my site when I detect that I am about to go viral, and my personal blog has zero ads on it. Then, when people come, they read my content, they check my other stuff, they subscribe to my newsletter, they add my feed to their reader, they bookmark me, they email their friends etc… and I build a relationship/following with them.

Now, as well as dramatically increasing the popularity and value of my site and brand, these extra followers can be sold to at a later date, hence why I call it “down the line”. I sell to them later down the line.

It might even be 6 weeks later.

7. What else do you do to make money online apart from buzz marketing?

I recently started doing consultancy services to web businesses that want to dramatically increase the popularity and profits in their company. I do this with my awesome biz partner Barry Dunlop (BarryDunlop.com) and it is going well. I don’t normally plug, but if anyone is interested in our services, please contact me ASAP at my personal email: deanhunt08@gmail.com as we only have two places left on the program.

8. You have an very interesting blog with tons of personality in it – the bunnies, the $1 million dollar review, the 6 billion RSS reader etc. Tell us a bit about these and why do you do those wacky stuff. It’s certainly not things you see normally on a typical blog.

That is why I do it. Most people don’t get why I do it, but it is the same reason that people where bright clothing… to be noticed and remembered. I read hundreds of blogs per week, and I forget about 99% of them. The ability to stand out above the crowd, get noticed, and be remembered is the essence of buzz marketing and branding in today’s world.

9. Any final comments? Plans for the future?

I know there are a lot of businesses struggling out there at the moment, so I would strongly recommend that they contact us ASAP and we can discuss some exploits, techniques and strategies to improve their Internet Success (deanhunt08@gmail.com). Thanks for your questions, and I hope that this has been useful to your readers.

Dean (www.deanhunt.com)

Seriously. I don’t get why people care so much about their Alexa ranks… and people start freaking out when they see that their rankings start to drop. A person once asked me, “Stanley, how much traffic do I need to break into the top 100,000 on Alexa?” And the answer is… I don’t know.

Here’s the thing. Over the past few months, I’ve had many sites break into the top 100,000 yet each of those sites had completely different amounts of traffic.

For example, recently with StanleyTang.com, it received over 12,000 unique visitors in a 24 hour period after being featured on the frontpage of AppleDaily, yet Alexa says it only has a ranking of 73,000. On the otherhand, emillionsblog.com received just 1,000 unique visitors that day (12 times less traffic) but according to “accurate Alexa” it had a ranking of 60,000. In fact, a few months ago, one of my niche sites cumulated over 1,700 unique visitors that particular day and it soared into the top 20,000 on Alexa.

So which one should I believe:

• 12,000 UV – 73,000 Alexa Rank
• 1,000 UV – 60,000 Alexa Rank
• 1,700 UV – 20,000 Alexa Rank

Unless you offer some sort of advertising service (in which case it looks “good” to potential advertisers) or you just simply want to brag about it to your internet marketing friends/customers (in which case you can simply purchase Alexa traffic bots from the DigitalPoint marketplace), I personally wouldn’t care too much about my Alexa ranks. The only “real” traffic stats I care about are my Google Analytics and AWStats.

What do you think of Alexa rankings?

Now this is what I call “traffic generation”:

(it’s now at 14,200 visits)

Click here to read the full case study

1. Guest star on a radio talk show. Radio talk shows are hot these days and make a great platform for you to get your name out there.
2. Get yourself on television. Do a local television show as a guest. If you have the money pay for a local commercial spot. Television is an amazingly effective medium.
3. Be a guest speaker. Go to local clubs or organizations and volunteer to be a guest speaker for their next function. This works best if the group is somehow related to your product or group members are a part of your target market.
4. Make yourself into an expert. Being an expert gives you status and makes people believe in you. Start establishing yourself as an expert in your community so you can have people start vouching for your expertise.
5. Advertise in a local magazine. Local magazines are affordable and a good way to get your name to the public.
6. Get in a newsletter. Many local organizations and groups publish newsletters that go out to all their members. You need to get your name in there. Write a guest article or do an interview.
7. Put up a billboard. Billboards are attention grabbing and they send your message out to a large number of people.
8. Place newspaper ads. Newspaper ads are surprisingly effective and affordable. Use them to your advantage.
9. Hand out flyers. Flyers allow you to target customers and add that personal touch because it gives you face time with them as you are passing them out.
10. Use direct mailings. Direct mail is a proven method of advertising. You can make highly targeted mailings and reach your customers with a fairly inexpensive method of marketing.
11. Start up a telemarketing campaign. Telemarketing is a very effective. It is also something you can do on your own so it is cheap.
12. Print up business cards. Business cards are great tools that can be used in many different ways. You can hand them out, leave them at local stores and even send them with orders.
13. Sponsor a contest. Offer your products as a prize for a contest. Be sire to include your label or business card with your URL in the prize package.
14. Sponsor a sports team. Local non-school associated sports teams rely on sponsors to fund their programs. In exchange for sponsoring the team you get your business name displayed on their uniforms. It is a great trade off.
15. Give to charity. Give in the name of your business and you will help your business reputation.
16. Get in the church bulletin. Church bulletins are well read and they are a great place to get your business name published. You should contact the pastor to see how you can get in the bulletin.
17. Develop an offline affiliate program. Affiliate programs are not just for online. If you have a product that can be easily carried around and showed off then you can make an offline program.
18. Become a news story. Do something newsworthy or become part of a news story and you will get free publicity from the news.
19. Host promotional product giveaways. Giving away promotional items is a great idea because you are giving away something free and people love that. Plus you are giving away something that advertises your business, so that is good for you. It is a win-win situation.
20. Print up t-shirts. T-shirts are great advertising tools. Think about how many times you have stopped to read someone’s tee shit. Now think about how amazing that could be for your business.
21. Pass out bumper stickers. Bumper stickers are a cheap way to get your business name out there. You can give them away with orders or just hand them out to people who already have one on their car.
22. Use the old stand by of word of mouth. Word of mouth has been a great tool for building many businesses. Put it to work for you by encouraging people to tell others about you.
23. Set up shop at fairs or festivals. Fairs and festivals allow you to reach a large group of shoppers. You can set up a booth for a small fee and sell quite a bit of product.
24. Print up pamphlets. Pamphlets allow you to put all the important information is an easy to read package. People do not usually mind taking a pamphlet and looking it over. Plus it is a nice reminder of your URL and business name.
25. Send out text messages. People use text messaging as a main form of communication these days. Get into the trend and send out text messages like you would email messages. People like to forward messages so make yours catchy enough to be something they will forward and get more mileage out of your efforts.
26. Post ads on bulletin boards. Bulletin boards are underused tools. They are simple to use and free. Post a flyer on one for a boost in sales. Make sure you get permission, though, and follow the rules.
27. Be a part of the Sunday paper. The Sunday newspaper is the most popular newspaper and the prime market for advertising. You can either put an ad in the classifieds or you can add a flyer to the loose pages of the paper.
28. Team up with a local business. Find a local business that complements your business and see if the owner wouldn’t mind working with you. You can give the business an online presence and you can use them offline. You can trade business cards and even team up for package deals.
29. Create a phone book listing. The phone book is still a great place to get found. You can even buy an ad where you can put your URL. People still use the yellow pages a lot to find businesses so this makes this a natural place to advertise.
30. Think outside the box. Try off the wall ideas. See every situation you encounter as an opportunity. You might just be surprised at the results.
31. Go to an offline event. This is probably the most important and effective way. Not only can you generate traffic to your website, you are also building relationships with potential joint venture partners.

Okay, I’ve began using Twitter 2 days ago and already I’ve seen some pretty incredible results

24 Hour Update

• 370 new followers
• 60 unique visitors

Not bad, considering all those are free traffic, all from just the first day!

48 Hour Update

• 500 followers (<--estimated)
• 349 unique visitors

72 Hour Update

• 645 followers
• 647 unique visitors

So, 647 extra free traffic in three days, all from spending a few minutes each day Twittering. Not bad.

Looks like Twitter is the new Facebook? Is this the future of Internet marketing?

What’s your opinion? Leave your comments

Stanley Tang

P.S. – Remember, if you have not yet done so, follow me at:
http://www.twitter.com/stanleytang

[tags]social media, social marketing, twitter, web 2.0, web traffic[/tags]

One of the most effective internet marketing strategies to generating free traffic on the internet is by the writing and marketing of articles. It isn’t a secret that the internet has an insatiable appetite for words.

Content really is king on the internet and there is a constant search by those who own websites and those who publish E-zines for material… new material to put on their websites or in the E-zines. It is true that the internet is made up of more than words but words are in the greatest demand.

Articles that are to be submitted to article banks should meet certain standards, of course, and you will not make any money at all from the articles that you submit to these article banks. You will get advertising…free advertising but you will not be paid.

Very, very briefly articles which are to be submitted to article banks need to:

1. Be no longer than 300 to 400 words long.
2. Need to be key word rich.
3. Need to have an attention getting title that includes key words.
4. Need to have an attention getting first sentence that includes key words.
5. Need to contain a resource box that has your full name and the address to your website.

You can write the articles yourself. You can hire ghost writers to write them for you or you can purchase PLR (Private Label Rights) articles and rewrite them.

You can either do the submissions to the article banks yourself by hand, so to speak, or you can use submission software that can help you cut down on the time involved or you can hire an article submission company to do article submissions for you.

Whatever course you choose for getting articles written and submitted will be fine. You just need to do it because this is one of the most effective free advertising methods ever devised.

[tags]internet marketing, make money online, free traffic, article marketing[/tags]