Wednesday 12 December 2007

7 ways to advertise my site

Below you will find 7 ways to promote your website or blog with a bit of money. You can use them to generate raw traffic, improve your search engine rankings, gain visibility on your niche and so on. Despite the initial investment most of those techniques will pay off on the short to medium term. If you are expecting to make money with your website there is no reason to assume that you will not need to spend some as well, right?

1. AdWords: Google make billions of dollars every year from the AdWords-AdSense combo. Why is that? Because they work. Adwords is probably the most efficient method to generated raw traffic for your website. In order to get started you should create an account, add lots (by lots I mean hundreds if not thousands) of keywords that are related your site and set the maximum Pay-per-Click rate at $0.01. After that raise the rate by $0.01 every week or so until you start getting the desired amount of daily clicks. Notice that at lower bids the keywords will be reported as “Inactive for Search”. Do not worry about it, it just means that your ads will not appear on the search network (Google’s search results), but they will appear on the content network (websites of people that use AdSense).

2. Site-Specific AdWords: if you pay attention to the AdSense units you will see that most of them have a link titled “Advertise on this site”. This feature enables AdWords advertisers to create customized ads that will be displayed only on specific websites. Those ads work on a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) rather than a CPC (cost per click) basis, but they can generate a good amount of very targeted traffic since you will be in control of where the ad will be displayed and of the message. You can get even better results if you use some creativity when designing the ads, click here for some examples.

3. StumbleUpon Ads: StumbleUpon is a very innovative social bookmarking site that allows users to discover great websites by using a browser toolbar. When the user clicks on “Stumble” he will be delivered a website that people with similar interested rated positively. The user is also able to give positive and negative ratings to any website that he visits on the Internet. StumbleUpon also offers advertising campaigns, called StumbleUpon Ads, where you can deliver your website directly to those “Stumblers”. It costs $0.05 per page delivered, but since the websites that appear on StumbleUpon usually have a high quality it is very likely that part of that paid traffic will convert into regular readers.

4. Text Link Ads: if you are trying to increase your search engine rankings to leverage organic traffic you should consider buying some text link ads. While those text links can also generate direct traffic the biggest benefit you will have is an improvement on your search rankings, specially if the links are placed on authoritative and relevant websites. There are several places to buy text links, including specialized companies like Text-Link-Ads and Text Link Brokers or online forums like Digital Point’s market place.

5. Direct Banner Sales: most established websites sell banner ads or sponsorship plans directly. Those advertising deals usually are structured with weekly or monthly fees, regardless of the number of impressions or clicks that you will get. Despite this characteristic a banner placement can represent good value for money because apart from the direct traffic you will also create visibility and brand awareness. Readers of the website where you will display your banner will associate the message on the banner with your site or blog. Should they come across that banner or message two or three times it is very likely that they will get curious and decide to check what the buzz is all about. Another advantage of banner placements is the fact that people will unconsciously think that the author of the website endorses your content or product.

6. Sponsored Reviews: buying some sponsored reviews is a good way to kick-start a website. They will bring backlinks, traffic and RSS subscribers. There are many market studies confirming that “word of mouth” is the most efficient way to capture people’s attention, and that is just what you get with sponsored reviews. You can either pay a low price (sometimes as low as $5 per review) to get a large number of reviews from small sites or you can focus on large players (which can charge several hundreds of dollars for a single review) that are authorities on your niche. The best way to purchase sponsored reviews is through sites like SponsoredReviews.com, ReviewMe or PayPerPost.com.

7. Blog Networks: there are several blog networks founded around a traffic exchange principle. Basically you create an account for you blog and you earn credits by surfing other members’ blogs. Afterwards you can use those credits to make people visit your blog or to display your banners around the network. The interesting part is that most of those blog networks allow users to purchase credits with money, and the price is really convenient. You should be able receive hundreds of visitors or to get thousands of banner impressions for less than 10 dollars. Some blog networks that sell credits include Blog Explosion, Blog Soldiers and Blog Advance.

from dailyblogtips

Posted by Calvin at 14:50
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Free Online Game

How to Make Money Online For Free

The best way to make money online for free is to get into affiliate marketing, which is to promote other people products and services.
Adbrite
Fair Ads Network
Auction ads
Google Adsense
Widgetbucks
BidVertiser - The Best Choice!!!







Next, you are going to drive tons of traffic to your affiliate pages using free channels and methods.

But before we talk about driving traffic, you are going to choose the right product to promote. Do some research to find out what things are hot currently and go to affiliate networks such as Clickbank to find a product that suits the trend. It is very important for you to focus on promoting one product first if you are new to affiliate marketing, before moving on to another winning product.

Now, let us talk about ways to drive traffic to your affiliate product page, strictly using free methods:



1. Create a Squidoo lens. Make sure that your lens is keywords optimized according to what you are promoting. The naming of the lens will play a big part on whether you will get to top of search engines.


2. Writing keyword-optimized articles. Research and gather keywords that are related to the products that you are promoting. Write an article for each keyword and make sure that it gets to prominent pages of search engines.


3. Create a report.
Create a short report which talk about the topic or product that you are promoting. Use free source to convert it to a PDF file, and distribute it for free on the Internet.

4. Forum postings.
Join relevant forums and include a signature to your affiliate product pages. Make sure that you do not spam but contribute informative ideas to the forum.


5. Classified ads.
Post free ads talking about the product that you are promoting on popular classified sites such as Craigslist.
These are just some free ways to drive traffic to your affiliate product pages. The quality of the product that you are promoting also plays a big part on whether you will get any sales out of it.

Chitika

9 ways to let your blog/website noticed

With billions of web pages it can sometimes be hard getting yourself noticed. What can you do to stand out from the crowd? How can you get your web pages highlighted and sought after? Here are 9 ways in which you can get more attention for your web site.

1. Fill your web site with content
Your web site visitors are not interested in you, they are more concerned with their own world, their own problems, their own difficulties. If your web site is full of information that can help them cope in their world, remove their problems, or ease their difficulties, they will appreciate you. So, focus your web site on the content you provide. There are several ways you can do this. One is to provide a blog as part of your site, though you will need to update this at least daily if it is to have any real impact. An alternative is to have an articles section where you include more detailed information than you might have in a blog. You could also have in-depth reports that people download directly from your web site. However you do it, just focus your strategy on providing content - and lots of it. But the content must be practical, useful material that your readers can directly benefit from.

2. Use the words your web site visitors use
Whatever your web site is about, it will only attract attention if it is using the language of your target audience. If, for instance, you have a web site that offers "take-away foods" it is not going to get much attention in parts of the world where they call such things "carry-outs". In other words, your content must match your audience. Don't use the words and jargon you might use in your business, but use the words your potential customers use. If you don't know what they are, ask them. Also make sure you check the words that people will use to search for your site using Wordtracker.

3. Have a design that follows the standards
People have become used to certain online conventions - links in blue, underlined, for instance. Even though it may be tempting to appear different or unique, if you do not follow the standard conventions your web site becomes less appealing to people. So this means, for instance, having the navigation down the left hand side of the page, or along the top. It means having a footer on each page with your contact details. It means using the conventional colours to signal links, emails and so on. If you try to do something different you confuse your visitors meaning they are less likely to return and even less likely to tell their friends about your site.

4. Get your site listed in directories
People often use directories to find appropriate web sites. You need listing in all the relevant directories to your business. To find specific directories that you can get listed in, use a program like Internet Business Promoter. This helps you locate subject specific directories and manage your submission to them. Also, get yourself listed in DMOZ - it might take some time, be patient, but a listing here is helpful as many other directories and search engines use data from DMOZ. Getting a listing in the Yahoo Directory is also worthwhile paying for. Within seven days you could be listed on one of the most popular online directories.

5. Gain benefit from Wikipedia
One of the most popular online resources is Wikipedia - the online encyclopaedia edited by volunteers. Contributing content on your areas of expertise will help bring attention to you and your web site. You cannot simply put up a Wikipedia page all about your business - that would be considered "spam". But adding to existing pages, including your links where appropriate to relevant content on your web site, would be valuable to readers of Wikipedia and to your business.

6. Get links to your site
Having other people link to your site is essential. It shows that they trust you and like you enough to recommend you. Don't look for any old link; have a strategy to gain links from relevant sites that are also respected. A link on a relevant and respected site is worth many, many times more than a link on someone's site just because you happen to know them. So, if you are selling lawn mowers, get your site linked on gardening sites, web sites about grass growing and so on. Another way of generating useful links is to get your site bookmarked in del.icio.us and on Digg. Look for other social bookmarking sites like these in your spe******t field. Try also StumbleUpon and ReddIt. To find useful sites to link to your web site you need Internet Business Promoter's Arelis feature.

7. Get involved online
Take part in forum discussions, Google Groups, Yahoo Groups and other discussion sites. Contribute also to Yahoo Answers. In doing so you bring attention to your expertise and also you get the opportunity to add a link to your web site or some of your appropriate content. Also, be on the lookout for blogs to which you can add comments, again showing your expertise and adding links to your web site, bringing it even more attention. To find suitable blogs use Google Blog Search.

8. Use traditional Public Relations
Many web site owners focus all their efforts online, forgetting that the "offline" world is a great way to publicise their web site. Indeed, the owners of Google did a considerable amount of PR to get their venture up and running. So take a tip from them, get as much "offline" publicity as you can. Get yourself listed in Expert Sources - journalists use this to find people to interview. Also make sure your web site has a "media" page that has all your contact details, examples of the kind of media exposure you are available for, links to articles about you, radio programmes you have featured in etc. Also, your web site media centre will need a selection of high resolution photographs of you and your business as well as a short business and personal biography. Your media centre should also include your press releases, if you have them. Journalists look at your web site and if they see a media centre they realise you are "friendly" towards the media and therefore are more likely to approach you. You can also distribute press releases automatically using Press Equalizer.

9. Take part in social networking sites
Use sites like Facebook, MySpace and Ecademy to bring attention to your expertise. On Ecademy you can become a "club leader" for your particular topic and on Facebook you can set up spe******t groups on your area of expertise. By contributing to these sites - and others in your spe******t area - you bring even more attention to your web site. Furthermore, you make it easy for your online contacts to mention your web site to other people online, thus further promoting your site. For a list of sites you can work with go to this list of social networking sites.