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.

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.