Friday, July 3, 2009

Free Marketing Techniques Part 3

So you just started blogging and want to get noticed, well here are a few techniques I picked up and would like to share with you.

1.The first thing that you have to do in order to promote your blog effectively is to contribute new material as often as possible, shoot for at least once a day if you can. If that's to much try writing several articles at a time when your in the mood and the words come to you easily.You can always post them later when you need something to talk about. Its important to realize that the search engines are constantly looking for new information so if your post meets this need it will get ranked by the search engines. I know this is not earth shattering news but you have to stress the basics, besides people want the new stuff otherwise they won't come back to your blog.

2.Make sure you ping your blog regularly to alert the search engines to your new material. You can try http://pingomatic.com/. Blogger does this for you automatically.Also search for as many directories as you can find and register your blog with them.

3.Try submitting your blog articles to a "blog carnival." A blog carnival is like a magazine with many different articles by different authors so if you get published you can leave a link back to your post. It's important to know that the more links you have directed back at your blog the more traffic you will receive.

4.Respond to your comments that people leave. This makes your blog more interactive. Remember communication equals sales. Visit different blogs that are related to your blog and leave comments.Make sure to leave a link/signature back to your blog. Try putting some effort into your comments, don't be lazy.

5.Go to a few forums and contribute to the various topics, this is a good place to leave your signature/anchor link. If people read your comments and there is a link for them to click, this will drive more traffic back to your post.People are more likely to click on your link instead of your blog URL since some of the forum members might think your trying to make a quick buck.Make sure you don't give one word comments, show some genuine interest and others will do the same for you.This anchor link/signature you created gets listed in search engines because keywords become the link instead of the URL.The only downside to leaving a link is you have to insert some basic code which is not that difficult, just do a search and you will get the idea. Make sure you read the forum rules on linking first before you try otherwise you will get banned from the forum. In the next series I will show you how to put a signature/link on other peoples posts/forums. Please feel free to leave any comments or questions you may have regarding this article. Until next time.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Free Marketing Techniques Part 2

In the last post I covered some basic free techniques on how to get started in affiliate marketing and where to post your ads. Some good places to start posting your links that I recommended are http://www.backpage.com/, http://www.craigslist.com/ and http://www.usfreeads.com/, these are some of the most visited classified sites on the web. An interesting fact that should get your blood pumping is that craigslist is the fourth most visited website on the Internet so you can image the potential that this website has for promoting your affiliate programs or anything else you can think of. Check these sites out for whats hot. You can also join there affiliate programs and that's what I like about backpage. All you have to do is fill out a very simple application and they give you a link that you can post on your blogs or websites, so if some body clicks or you affiliate link and joins you make money. On my previous post I showed you a few of my link promotions, the only thing I left out were a few details that I promised I would cover. So now you know about affiliate marketing and where to post, now you have to know the secrets to posting your links. In order to keep your links on some of these free classified sites is to disguise it by "cloaking" it. The reason you want to cloak your link is to prevent being banned from these sites and to not make your ad link look to commercial which tends to turn off most people. Now for the good stuff. Cloaking your link is so easy you won't believe it, all you have to do is go to http://www.offto.net/ which is another free site and join. Once you have an account just go to the section that says "cloak your affiliate link" its pretty easy to figure out on your own but I will give you the details. Look for the section where you put your "hoplink" that you got from clickbank and paste it into the section that says "affiliate link", make sure you blank out the (http) before pasting it otherwise your link won't come out right. Now put your nickname in the next section under where you cloak your link, your nickname is basically your user name that you opened your account with. My nickname is chirodr98.Next thing you do is to create a title, this serves two purposes. The first purpose is to create a headline for your ad and also to help monitor your stats so you can see how many people are clicking on your link. A headline that I used to promote my affiliate program was "Satellite TV for PC", be creative with your title and try to use something catchy and leave your headline to three or four words, these are like keywords that search engines pick up.

Another great thing about http://www.offto.net/ is that it keeps track of your links for you as long as you name it otherwise you have to write down the security code and the cloak link you created, which is a pain in the ass if you ask me. So now that you got all the above done I would like to pass on a tip I got from reading Jon Leger's website called http://www.askjonleger.com/. Jon Leger recommends checking the box that says "hide links to affiliate program on landing page", he writes by doing this you will gain more traffic to you landing page since this is what causes your page to be cached and rated in the search engines. This is extremely important so don't forget ok.In my next article I will discuss how to get your blog noticed so stayed tuned and if you have any questions or comments please leave a few. Until next time.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Free Marketing Techniques Part 1

Hello fellow Bloggers I thought I would pass on a few techniques I recently discovered on how to market for free online. My philosophy in life is that what you put out in life comes back to you multiple times, its really all about helping each other out especially in these financially difficult times and what's better than learning how to market for free ? A lot of my inspiration comes from my study of the human body,yoga and martial arts, this has been a life long learning process for me and along the way I have learned some incredible words of wisdom that I would like to share with anybody who has an open mind. In life and in the martial arts we often find ourselves in impossible positions and it is here where we find the most valuable solutions to our biggest problems in life, the Chinese have a saying " in crisis lies the solution." It's this very moment when we make our greatest breakthrough and the impossible becomes possible. You must be saying to yourself , where is this guy going with all this? I assure you I will get to the good stuff soon, so hold on ok? So here is the situation, you have no money and your life sucks and your stuck in an impossible submission hold. How in the hell can I escape from this hold down ? Remember a martial artist knows there is always a counter move. So if your almost out of air and need to be resuscitated then Internet marketing is the solution you have been looking for. My new mantra for you to burn into your consciousness is "when it comes to making money for free the Internet is the place to be." I know many advanced marketers and bloggers probably already know a lot about what I'm going to be discussing so for those who already have there Black belt in marketing/blogging this article is not for you.

So your a white belt blogger/marketer and want to learn how to make some money on line ? No problem we all have to start some where right ? So here we go ok ? One way that I found out about is affiliate marketing. You might be asking yourself what is affiliate marketing ? Well affiliate marking is a process where individuals have already created an information product such as "37 days To good credit" http://offto.net/f2x6th/ or "How to speak Spanish" http://offto.net/jddon9/ ,there are literally thousands of products to choose from and the great thing about it is you get paid to promote their product and the best thing about it is it costs you nothing to get started.If you click on the above links you will see my promotion come up which I posted for free.Think about that for a moment and consider how much it would cost you to start a traditional business, there literally is no comparison in my mind. When I started to look into affiliate marketing I soon realized this was a billion dollar industry that continues to grow on a daily basis with plenty of room for the beginner.There are also lots of free tools on the Internet that you can use to help promote your product. I plan on sharing this with you in the future so don't worry ok? All you need to do is get busy promoting and learn all that you can and before you know it you will become a pro. If you can just set aside a few hours a day you will definitely succeed.

So you might be asking yourself where do I go to get started ? A great place you can look into is
https://www.clickbank.com/. Just sign up for a free account and start checking out there products. After you sign up go to the Marketplace section and choose a category your interested in from the menu, you can also do a keyword search and see what pops up. A good tip to finding the right affiliate program to promote is to (sort) by gravity. The higher the gravity the better your chances are for making a sale since a high gravity means that this product is selling. Look for a product that has a gravity of over 40. Once you think you have a product you might want to promote check out what is called "view pitch page" this basically is a landing page with all the advertising and product promotion done for you, so this lets you see what your potential customer sees when checking out the product. All you have to do now is what is called create a "hoplink" which you will see right next to "pitch page." Just click on the hoplink and it will automatically create a link for you. So you might be saying to yourself what the hell are you supposed to do with this link? This is where your creativity must come in. This link must be put where people can see it and if you don't have money to pay somebody to build you a website don't worry there a plenty of FREE methods to help promote your affiliate product.In my next post I will get into how to cloak and post your hoplinks for free so don't worry ok. If your in a hurry and want to start posting your affiliate links check out http://www.backpage.com/24949769. I like this site better than Craigslist because it seems less strict about posting affiliate links just as long as you "cloak" them and post in the appropriate section, try under "services" section first so you don't get kicked out or have your listing deleted. Backpage also has a very cheap upgrade option that allows you to list in multiple cities, so check it out. Just get off your butt and start learning you have everything to gain and nothing to lose.