Affiliate Marketing – Top Tips for Newbies!

Affiliate marketing’ seems to be an ever-increasingly used buzz-word. As a thriving and growing industry, being an affiliate is now accessible to everyone – from the full time internet marketing professional to the person wanting an additional part time income.

So what is this affiliate marketing malarkey all about? Well in the context of this article, I’m going to exclusively deal with online affiliates – that is, running a website to promote the products and services of another company so you can earn commission.

You’ve probably heard of, or used, some of the really big affiliates. Here are just a few of the most popular:

Moneysupermarket
GoCompare
MoneySavingExpert
Quidco
MyVoucherCodes
Kayak

These are big players making an absolute fortune every month. However, they have huge advertising and marketing budgets to match. My point is though, that affiliate sites are, for many of us, natural and usual parts of our online purchase flow.

How does affiliate marketing work?
Let’s consider a customer going online to buy a camera. They want a Panasonic camera so they hop on Google and search for ‘Panasonic cameras’. The first hit is the Panasonic site – they click through, browse the range and make a purchase:

Outcome: Customer buys product, manufacturer/retailer makes money.

Now let’s think about an alternative scenario. A customer wants to buy a digital camera but doesn’t know which one. They go on to Google and search for ‘digital camera comparison’. The first hit is for Which.co.uk so they click through and have a browse.

Once they’ve found one they are interested in purchasing, they can select ‘compare prices’ which shows the prices various online retailers are offering. There is a button saying ‘go to store’ next to each. The customer then clicks through and buys the camera.

Outcome: Customer buys product, affiliate site (Which) makes commission, retailer makes money (albeit slightly less due to paying commission).

You might be wondering why a company would pay commission that cuts into their profits. The reason is that they didn’t have to pay anything to market/advertise the product – the affiliate did that. It gives the company more ways of getting to their audience whilst effectively ‘out-sourcing’ the marketing cheaply. Win-win for the company and the affiliate, plus the customer is still happy.

Easy money?

If you could build a time machine (using a Delorean of course), you could go back 5, 10 years and make a fortune from affiliate marketing, very easily. Back in the ‘old days’ you could throw together a site, whack on some banners, and buy some heavily optimised links and you’d coin it. Those days are pretty much over I’m afraid!

Being an effective affiliate today that makes money isn’t easy. It takes knowledge, skill, flexibility and a lot of determination. If you’re someone who gives up easily on things then affiliate marketing isn’t for you!

Affiliate marketing requires a mixture of skills – including sales, marketing, SEO, consumer psychology, content writing, Content Management System knowledge, data analysis, negotiation and accounting. You also need to be passionate about learning, willing to be self-critical and love all things web.

I don’t say the above to put you off being an affiliate – being an affiliate can be financially rewarding and very satisfying. You just need to be dedicated to it and not expect to make your first million in the first month!

Without further ado then, here are my top tips for new affiliates:

1) Find A Niche

The first step of starting out as an affiliate is the most important one – deciding on which product/service you’re going to market! You can be an affiliate for almost anything these days, from cosmetics to cars.

It’s vital not to just jump in and choose a niche without giving it a lot of thought. Many markets are absolutely saturated and will require a huge amount of time and money to rank well in (online gaming and payday loans to name just two). Other niches may be new products that haven’t been tapped into yet and may provide easier pickings.

Remember this though – whatever market you want to get into, there will be others doing the same! Think carefully about what you can bring to the table in terms of content and value to your visitors.

2) Research

One of the mistakes I made in my main affiliate site was not doing enough research before I started building it. I assumed that because I knew loads about online poker, that I knew my target audience. I was wrong! Whilst I did a good job in terms of building content and SEO, I failed to do basic stuff like thorough keyword research.

The outcome was this – I ranked very highly for quite a few terms – however they had low search demand and were ones that don’t convert well. Fail!

Any new web project requires thorough research. I know some affiliates that will spend weeks, if not months, researching and planning before they’ve even installed a CMS. Think of it like redecorating a room; a decent paint-job will need decent preparation – sanding things down, washing walls, masking things up…boring stuff but essential for a good job.

So what should the research involve? For a start, keyword research is vital. This involves brainstorming what you think your most important terms are. You can then use tools such as the Google keyword tool to find out what people are actually searching for.

Don’t just think about the volume of searches though – you also need to think whether a given term will convert into a sale/click-through. Consider the following – ‘free poker’ has 301,000 (broad) matches on Google UK per month., whilst ‘high stakes poker’ has only 12,100. Whilst the latter has far, far less search demand, it shouldn’t take a genius to work out that it stands to make the affiliate more money in commission. The word ‘free’ is usually to be avoided as it indicates the searcher has no intention of spending money (it’s often used as a negative keyword in PPC campaigns).

Also, consider how many sites are competing for a given term – using the examples above, Google UK suggests about 65 million pages for ‘free poker’, whilst ‘only’ three million for ‘high stakes poker’. The more competing pages, the tougher your job is going to be to rank for them!

3) Choosing an Affiliate Company

Once you’ve chosen your niche, you’ll next want some companies to promote/be an affiliate for. Here is another part of the process where it’s worthwhile investing some time into research. Some companies have bad reputations in terms of having predatory terms or late payouts. Do some searching on Google and relevant forums to find out what other people’s experiences are.

Before you sign up, make sure you have read the terms and conditions of the affiliate agreement. Yes this is a boring task but ensure you know what you can and can’t do. This avoids problems months down the line and losing income.

4) Domain Names – Choose Wisely!

Don’t skimp on the domain name; get yourself a nice ‘brandable’ one, either one that hasn’t been registered yet, or is being sold (try sites like www.sedo.com). Avoid ‘spammy’ ones like online-casino-bonus-codes.com. They look naff, they sound naff, and in any case, Google isn’t so keen on ‘exact match’ domains any more. As an example, look at our company – what looks more trustworthy and like a ‘real’ brand – koozai.com or digitalmarketinginsouthamptonandlondon.com?

Trademarks

Be very, very careful about buying a domain with a brand name/trademark in it. The vast majority of affiliate agreements will state this isn’t allowed – essentially to cover the danger of visitors mistakenly perceiving the affiliate site to be an actual part of the real brand.

Certainly within the poker affiliate niche, I’ve known people to get away with doing this for a while (I guess the companies gain income so weren’t too bothered). In contrast though I also know of a person who had a long-established site, making good money, and then out of nowhere had the company he was marketing shut down his site and demand the domain name be handed over.

I personally don’t feel the risk warrants it, and it’s not worth damaging your reputation as an affiliate. Ultimately, buying a keyword-heavy or trademarked domain smacks of being lazy. A skilled affiliate can take a ‘brandable’ name and turn it into a profiting site.

5) Kick-Ass Content

One thing pretty much anyone in the digital/online industry would agree with these days is this – your site needs awesome content. With both consumers and search engines more savvy than ever, now is the time to invest into content which really adds value to your site, is informative for visitors and drives sales.

This means – no generic/copied text; no meaningless drivel written just to appease the search engines. It means well-written, well-researched content that gives the visitor the information they want and need to decide whether to buy. It means striving to be better than your competitors and getting creative about what to have on your site.

6) Build A Brand

Don’t be another bland affiliate site with the same sort of content on it. Get creative, find out what your audience wants, keep up to date with your niche. Is there a new product in your niche? Be the first to review it.

Always ask yourself – what else can I cover in my site that would add more value than what my competitors offer?

A brand is something you build up over time, gaining more and more trust from the online community. It’s a long term investment that can reap huge rewards.

7) Write about something you love

If you’re starting from scratch as an affiliate, the best advice I can give you is, start with a product or service that you’re genuinely passionate about. For me, this was online poker. If you’re writing/blogging/building a site about something you love, it’s a lot easier and a lot more fun. The passion you can bring to the site will be picked up by your visitors and will provide authenticity, helping to boost conversions.

If you’re writing about something you don’t know anything about, it will show! It also makes coming up with content ideas much easier – the geekier you are in your niche, the better!

8) Embrace Social Media

If you’re serious about building and growing your site as a brand, I can’t stress how important it is to fully utilise the power of social media. If you’re not bothering with this, then you’re instantly giving your competitors an edge over you.

Social media should be seen as a natural extension of your site. At the very least, make good use of Facebook, Twitter and Google Plus. Don’t expect overnight results from social, this is a ‘slow burner’ but will pay dividends. Invest time into making useful, regular updates that will engage with your visitors and potential visitors.

If you have video content (for example, product reviews are great), get yourself a YouTube channel and promote it. Presentations and PDFs can be promoted on Slideshare and other sites.There are hundreds of social media sites out there – don’t be afraid of using the more niche ones if you think there’s value to be had from them.

Your job can be streamlined to some extent by using tools such as TweetDeck and Hootsuite to schedule your posts in advance.

9) Get Analytical

You must, repeat must, get into the habit of analysing your traffic. Google Analytics is the obvious place to start, but other tools such as GetClicky are good too. Make sure you’ve got relevant goals set up so you can monitor the effectiveness of your site.

Traffic numbers are obviously important, but also check out metrics such as ‘bounce rates’ (how many people click away after one visit), demographics etc.

Don’t skimp on the time you spend using Analytics. You may find data and statistics boring but if you’re going to be lazy with this part of your business, you’re never going to maximise the effectiveness of your site and will continue to ‘leak’ opportunities.

10) Convert, Convert

Your goal isn’t to get traffic – it’s to get traffic and then convert them into sales/leads which you will get commission from. Ask yourself this – would you rather 10,000 visits and 10 sales, or 1000 visits and 20 sales? Don’t get trapped into ‘vanity’ figures of high traffic.

So your aim is to strive to continually improve your conversion rate, getting more and more value from your visitors. Consider doing ‘A/B’ testing where you assess which parts of a webpage can be improved.

It goes without saying but without traffic, your site’s a dead duck. Gaining traffic comes gradually as a result of building up content and back-links. However, what good is traffic if it’s not converting into sales/click-through? Pretty much none!

Here is where another skill an affiliate needs comes into play – Conversion Rate Optimisation. Remember, your goal is to attract visitors, give them the information they want, then get them to click through to the site of the actual company.

A key to this is having effective ‘call to actions’. Essentially you need to make it very clear to the visitor what they should do next. Don’t just have a page of text describing a product. Have a button or link that says ‘buy now’, or similar. Make it stand out. Experiment with button colours, sizes and placements.

11) Embrace Change

Online marketing is changing all the time – consumers are more savvy, SEO is more difficult, and the market as a whole is more and more competitive. You need to be prepared to change not only your site, but your approach, skills and attitude. If you don’t then you’re not going to succeed in the long-term, it’s as simple as that.

Affiliate marketing is not an industry where you can ‘bury your head in the sand’ when things go wrong or when Google changes their algorithm overnight. You must take the emotion out of your business decisions and be ready to embrace change as and when it’s needed (and also anticipating it).

12) Learn From Your Peers

Interact with other people in your niche. Ask and answer questions; be inquisitive and curious and don’t be afraid to take criticism.

Attend events – there are loads of affiliate expos and conferences – these are an excellent way of meeting fellow affiliates, the companies you’re promoting and hear updates on the industry.

If you can get a ‘mentor’ this can be a great way of learning from someone who knows their stuff and has already made a ton of mistakes you can learn from. Some affiliates will effectively offer mentoring in exchange for you using their affiliate-affiliate links (i.e. they get a cut of what you get a cut of!)

Forums are great as they allow you to ask questions – a popular use is to ask for a ‘site review’, where other people can critique your site, from an SEO or user experience point of view. I’ve done this before and it’s hugely beneficial. Getting someone’s objective input on your site can be a real eye-opener!

13) Be Patient – Very Patient

Unless you’ve magically found some massively under-exploited niche, you absolutely must be prepared to work damn hard and wait for results. The money isn’t just going to start rolling in because you have a live website with an affiliate link. I remember the day after I’ve put my first affiliate site live, logging into the PokerStars affiliate site and being surprised to see no commission!

See this as a long-term game – keep working on your site, adding content, building social, building links, and blogging; eventually the results will come. Aim to be the very best and most informative site in your niche and you will succeed because you will attract visitors. You’ll also start building a reputation as an authority in that area which will have the knock-on effect of people mentioning and recommending you online.

14) Outsourcing

There may well come a time where either you can’t physically do all the work yourself, or you don’t have the knowledge. In this case you will need to consider out-sourcing work – be it content, development, SEO or other.

The good news is that within the affiliate industry, there are plenty of people providing freelance work, from small one-off tasks to on-going work. Finding a good person needn’t be difficult, or expensive. A lot of freelancers are recommended using word-of-mouth. If you’re a member of a forum relating to your niche, you can often come across people there. Failing that, there’s plenty of websites where you can request/offer work (such as Elance). I’ve even had some success for small jobs on Fiverr.com.

Once you’ve got someone good that you’ve used, hold on to them! Good content writers are an invaluable asset. Build relationships with the people you buy services from, treat them well and they’ll be more likely to cut you favours (such as completing work at short notice) in the future.

15) Make Loads Of Mistakes

Make mistakes and learn from them! The beauty of this industry is that you can never know everything (anyone that says they do is lying). You will make mistakes – this doesn’t make you a failure as an affiliate marketer – far from it. Learn from them, try something different and move on. If you mess something up don’t beat yourself up about it or give up – persevere, work consistently on your site and you will succeed.

Rather than thinking ‘I really screwed up there’, view everything as results – made a mistake? You still got a result – just not the one you wanted! You must keep a positive attitude and move on. If you’re going to just give up when you get something wrong you’re in the wrong industry.

Summary – Just Do It!

I’m conscious that some of what I’ve written in this post will put some people off – however my intention is to make you have a realistic approach to being an affiliate. I personally love affiliate marketing, for all its faults.

It’s challenging, it’s rewarding and you can learn loads from it! The beauty of it is that anyone can start doing it with minimal investment (a domain name and web hosting is all you need to get going) making it easily accessible. With easy to use, simple Content Management Services like WordPress available free (along with thousands of templates), you can be up and running in hours.

Learn loads, make mistakes, have fun along the way and hopefully make money!

10 Free, Little-known Web Marketing Tools

Fine-tuning your web marketing efforts will likely increase their effectiveness. Here’s a collection of 10 free tools that can help.

Email Subject Line Suggester

MailChimp, the email service provider, provides a tool for suggesting subject lines for your campaigns. While it does require a free account to utilize the tool, the invaluable information you can glean from it makes it worth the effort.


Google Trends

Google Trends not only shows current hot searches, but it allows you to compare products, keywords, or ideas — displaying their popularity in comparison to overall search volume.




Browsershots

Whether you are completely redesigning a website, or simply making tweaks to the checkout process or lead generation forms, knowing how a web page will behave in different browsers is critical. Browsershots will show you screenshots of your web page in different browsers and versions.




AdWords Performance Grader

AdWords Performance Grader by WordStream, a pay-per-click management software creator, analyzes your Google AdWords account from top to bottom, attempting to show you how you stack up against competition in your industry. For the tool to work, you must provide Google account credentials.



Five Second Test

Studies show that people make decisions about a web site in less than 8 seconds. Your first interaction with visitors is critical to converting them to customers. Five Second Test lets you upload a sample of your site, have people view it, and then complete a series of questions about what they saw. To use the free version, you’ll have to return the favor, and answer questions about other websites as well.




Twellow

Twellow aggregates Twitter users and categorizes them by areas of interest. Dig in to their database to find tweeters that are relevant to your business, and follow them.




YouTube Keyword Tool

If you are implementing video into your web marketing, YouTube Keyword Tool can show you what kinds of videos are searched for on that website based on criteria you enter, such as themes and locales. It’s an excellent way to determine what is interesting to people at the moment.




Pingdom Page Load Speed Tool

The page load speed on your website has two primary effects: It can help or hurt your search engine optimization efforts, and, most importantly, it affects the experience your website visitors have. Faster is better. The Pingdom tool gives you a scorecard for your web page performance, and offers some analysis as to why your load speed is what it is.






On Page Search Engine Optimization Analysis

This free tool from SEO Workers, a search engine optimization consultancy, allows you to analyze key pages of your website for elements that are important to ranking well in Google and other search engines. On the report page, embedded YouTube videos explain what you’re looking at, and why it’s important.




Soovle Popular Searches

If you’re looking to understand what people are searching for across multiple search engines, Soovle will take a keyword you enter, and show suggestions for popular, similar searches on the engines of your choosing. You can even download the keyword ideas displayed into a CSV file for later use and analysis.

The Trader in Pajamas SCAM

Have you heard that the amount of money turned over in the forex market is $3 trillion every single day? That’s a whole lot of cash in most people’s minds. And you can get in on this action too. 

It’s easy. Just trade forex with binary options and use the Trader in Pajamas System. Thanks to invaluable insight from former stock broker Keith Anderson, everyone can be a part of this profitable currency trading phenomenon and make significant profits from home. 

You may be wondering, is this a scam?

No way. Keith has become an incredibly wealthy man, and he’s eager to share his secrets with the world about just how simple it is to make this kind of money by being your own boss and working from your own living room. His lifestyle is something everyone should be able to enjoy!

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Keith was called out as a remarkably promising broker, and one of the finest to have immigrated to Wall Street from the U.K. But he left this fantastically stressful job in order to relax, take it easy, and enjoy life a little by working from home. 

You can learn what Keith knows by checking out his Trader in Pajamas System for free: 

Click here to find out more

13 Hot Internet Marketing Trends in 2013

Internet marketing is now a critical piece of just about any company’s marketing mix. There are few marketing options with the speed, efficiency and reach as internet marketing. And so you should take the time to ensure you are focusing sufficiently on your internet marketing to maximize your revenue and growth.    

The year 2013 will prove to be another year in which the array of internet marketing vehicles, tools and techniques will continue to increase. To help you capitalize on the opportunities, here are 13 hot internet marketing trends for 2013 that you should consider when planning your marketing initiatives throughout the year:    

13 Hot Internet Marketing Trends in 2013 

1. Design Matters

Design matters, because design sells. Just look at the success of Apple, Pinterest, Desk.com or Nike. All four websites are stunning, and that’s no coincidence. Apple is the most valuable company of all time. It actually carries very few products, though. It’s the design that powers Apple’s value. Nike is a shoe and apparel company, yet pays just as much attention to the design of its website, videos and ads as much as to anything else. Focus on great design for all of your internet marketing in 2013.

2. Marketing Goes Visual

Similarly, communication through visual means is hot, and only getting hotter. Whether the explosion in infographics, or the dramatic rise in the popularity of Pinterest, or the redesigns of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, we are going through a visual revolution. Start figuring out how to make more of your marketing visual in 2013.

3. Parallax Design

Parallax website design incorporates special scrolling techniques whereby background images on the screen move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth on the screen. You can see examples at the following websites: Volkswagon Beetle and Activate (be sure to scroll down the page!). If you are planning a website redesign in 2013, consider incorporating elements of parallax design.

4. Mobile Mobile Mobile

Wordwide, there are over 5 billion mobile users and 1.1 billion smartphone subscribers specifically. The iPad was the fastest growing technology product EVER! Wow, if you need further convincing that you should start planning how to connect with your audience via mobile channels for your business, you’re nuts!

5. Video Video Video

More than 4 billion online videos are watched every day. Sixty-eight percent of video watchers share video links. So it’s clear your audience likes video. On top of this, consider that after 72 hours, a typical person can retain about 10% of text that they’ve read, 65% of an image they’ve seen, or 95% of a video they watched. Think that video might be helpful with communicating your message to your audience? Just a bit, huh?!?

6. Cloud-Based Tools

To be uber-efficient with your internet marketing efforts, you should be using cloud-based tools. For email marketing, you might be using MailChimp. For SEO, you might be using SEOmoz. For landing page testing, you might be using Unbounce. For heat map analysis, you might be using CrazyEgg. For website analysis, you might be using BoostSuite. Check out all the unbelievably useful options available to you.

7. The Multi-Screen World

With 86% of mobile internet users actually using their devices while watching TV, and with more than 10,901 Tweets PER SECOND being issued as TV viewers watched Adele win Record of the Year at The Grammy’s, it’s clear that we all live in a multi-screen world. Make sure that your internet marketing accounts for not just desktops, but ALL screens.

8. Social Media Gets Smarter

Facebook has more than 1 billion users, and Twitter has more than 500 million. Social media is an opportunity for your business, but it’s been difficult for many businesses to make sense of it all and to gain solid business value out of it. With a growing number of marketing platforms such as Wildfire by Google and ShortStack, and with more granular social media analytics as provided by tools such asSproutSocial, Followerwonk and PageLever, extracting clear meaning from your social marketing will get easier over time.

9. Retargeting Goes Mainstream

Retargeting is a means of placing your advertisements in front of your audience after they have left your website without converting. What many marketers fail to realize is that retargeting is one of the most effective internet marketing techniques available. If you are already investing in your site and your marketing campaigns for more site traffic, then it typically pays big dividends to remind the people who left your website without a conversion of your value in solving their needs. Your options for retargeting include Google Remarketing, AdRoll, Retargeter and also Bizo (for exceptional B2B retargeting). 

10. Email Remarketing

In lead generation campaigns or retailer email marketing, there are always going to be occurrences of form or cart abandonment. However, it’s a waste to just let the prospect go without reaching out and finding out if you might indeed offer exactly what they want or need. After the abandonment of a registration form or online shopping cart, through email remarketing you can send out an automated email to give your brand another chance at winning the heart and mind of the prospect. According to SeeWhy, 26% of those who abandoned an online shopping cart will return to complete the purchase in the case they receive a remarketing email. 

11. Search, Social & PR Collide

Organic search has been incorporating social signals for some time, and the integration of search and social has accelerated with the introduction of Google+ and the Google Knowledge Graph. With Google’s Panda and Penguin search algorithm updates, it’s become extremely clear that quality and value matter. That means high quality content, combined with sincere, transparent social marketing, combined with targeted PR is going to be a triad that’s hard to beat. 

12. Attribution Measurement

If you run multiple forms of internet marketing, such as paid search, SEO, email marketing, display advertising, and retargeting, then it can be difficult to assess the value of each piece of your marketing puzzle. If someone encounters your brand five times in a given week through the different marketing vehicles, who’s to say how much credit to give to each of the different pieces. That’s where attribution measurement services come in, whether Google, ClearSaleing or VisualIQ.

13. The Hispanic Market

Hispanics are the fastest-growing segment of the US population. And as they represent approximately 25% of new births, expect them to have an impact on your future business. Research points to Hispanics spending more time online than non-Hispanics and being more active online than non-Hispanics. If you have been ignoring the Hispanic market, perhaps 2013 is the time to start providing the market with the attention and customization that it deserves.

10 Ways to Get Traffic for Free

Getting traffic is one of the most important tasks for any web master. What is more, you can't get traffic once and then just reap the benefits. Getting traffic is an ongoing task and you must be constantly doing it, if you want to get traffic and keep it. Here are some of the ways to get traffic for free:

Optimize your site for search engines

Search engines have always been a major way to get traffic for free. That is why you need to do your homework and optimize your site so that it ranks well for the keywords you target. SEO is still the most powerful way to get traffic for free and you really need to invest some time and efforts in the optimization of your site. SEO is not that difficult and if you want to get familiar with it in a nutshell, check our SEO Tutorial. If you are too busy for that, you can start with the 15 Minute SEO article.

Frequently update the contents of your site

If you expected some shocking secrets revealed, you might be a bit disappointed. One of the first steps in getting traffic for free is trivial but vital – get great content and frequently update it. In terms of SEO,content is king. If your content is good and frequently updated you will not only build a loyal audience of recurring visitors, who will often come to see what is new, but search engines will also love your site.

Take advantage of social bookmarking sites

Social bookmarking sites (especially the most popular among them) are another powerful way to get traffic for free. If you want to learn how to do it, check the How to get Traffic from Social Bookmarking sites article, where we have explained what to do if you want to get free traffic from sites such as Digg, Delicious, etc.

Use your Twitter and Facebook accounts

Social networks are also a way to get traffic for free. If you are popular on networks, such as Twitter or Facebook, the traffic you get from there can easily surpass the traffic from Google and the other search engines. It is true that building a large network of targeted followers on Twitter and supporters on Facebook takes a lot of time and effort but generally the result is worth.

Get links with other sites in your niche

Another way to get traffic for free is from other sites in your niche. Getting links with other sites in your niche is also good for SEO, especially if you manage to get links without the famous nofollow attribute. But even if the links are nofollow (i.e. they are useless for SEO), they still help to get traffic to your site. If you manage to put your link in a visible place on a site with high volumes of traffic, you can get thousands of hits from this link alone. If you need list of sites within your niche where you could get backlinks from, check the Backlink Builder tool. However, be careful if you exchange links because linking to bad neighbors can do you a lot of harm.

Use any chance to promote your site for free

Free promotion is always welcome, so don't neglect it. There are many ways to promote your site for free and some of the most popular ones include free classified ads, submissions to directories, inclusion in various listings, etc. It is true that not all free ways to promote your site work well but if you select the right places to promote your site for free, this can also result in tons of traffic.

Create a free product or service

Content drives most traffic when you offer something useful. There are many types of useful content you can create and they largely depend on the niche of your site. You can have articles with tons of advice, or short tips but one of the most powerful ways to get traffic is to create a free product or service. When this product or service gets popular and people start visiting your site, chances are that they will visit the other sections of the site as well.

Use viral content

Free products and services are great for getting free traffic to your site and one of the best varieties in this aspect is viral content. Viral content is called so because it distributes like a virus – i.e. when users like your content, they send it to their friends, post it on various sites, and promote it for free in many different ways. Viral content distributes on its own and your only task is to create it and submit it to a couple of popular sites. After that users pick it and distribute it for you. Viral content can be a hot video or a presentation but it can also be a good old article or an image.

Use offline promotion

Offline promotion is frequently forgotten but it is also a way to get traffic for free. Yes, computers are everywhere and many people spend more time online than offline but still life hasn't moved completely on the Web. Offline promotion is also very powerful and if you know how to use it, this can also bring you many visitors. Some of the traditional offline ways to promote your site include printing its URL on your company's business cards and souvenirs or sticking it on your company vehicles. You can also start selling T-shirts and other merchandise with your logo and this way make your brand more popular.

Include your URL in your signature

URLs in forum signatures are also a way to get traffic for free. There are forums, which get millions of visitors a day and if you are a popular user on such a forum, you can use this to get traffic to your site. When you post on forums and people like your posts, they tend to click the link to your site on your signature to learn more about you. In rare cases you might be able to post a deep link (i.e. a link to an internal page of the site) rather than a link to your homepage and this is also a way to focus attention to a particular page. Unfortunately, deep links are rarely allowed.

Getting traffic for free is a vast topic and it is not possible to list all the ways to do it. However, if you know the most important ways – i.e. the ways we discussed in this article and you apply them properly, it is guaranteed that you will be able to get lots of traffic for free.

The Best Way To Make Money Online Today In 2013

The best way to make money online today in 2013 in my opinion is to be building a list around a particular market and niche within that market. Making money online has come along away since it began some years ago with different strategies. Today in 2013 it is all about leverage. Working smarter, not harder. What exactly do I mean by this? In this example I would like to use affiliate marketing or creating your own product as an example of how you would go about this. One last thing before we begin and that is I want you to understand that despite all the fancy headlines you read there is no fast way to making money online especially if you are completely new. Not to make you upset or anything but to get you in the correct mindset. OK, lets begin.

Like I said, today in 2013 you want to be leveraging your marketing efforts and be building yourself a list. Understand why you are doing this and your conversions increase, you build trust with your subscriber base and you make more backend sales. So first you need to decide on a market and niche to get started with. You can use the Google Planner to research your demand for your market and niche. A market is something like "sports" or "health" or "investing." There are many markets you can get involved in today. Now a niche would be something like and lets use the "health" market as an example somebody looking to cure athletes foot. So your market is the health market and your niche is "how to cure athletes foot." Now what do we do? The second phase for the best way to make money online would be to create and set up a landing page. A landing page which is a squeeze page is simple a 1 page website that offers something of value such as a free ebook or a trial to a membership site. This can be anything but its need to be of value and what you would do is give this away in exchange for their name and email and start building yourself a list. Now part of the conversion process is of course getting people to sign up but more importantly how you can tie a "front end offer" to your funnel that will give you up front sales to help cover your advertising cost and time for your marketing efforts. Understand? Hope so. If not go back through and re-read this. This is hugely important to our success. Understanding what it is you are trying to do. The final stage for the best way to make money online is then to set up an email sequence inside your auto responder that does two things for you and they are build trust and product backend sales for you. It is that simple! It all just takes time to do but for those who put in the effort will be rewarded.

Well as you can see that the best way to make money online today in 2013 is really not that hard. It really isn't. There are many different strategies to make money online and I just covered one of them that's all. My biggest advice for those looking to get started in find yourself a couple of mentors both in the business and on personal development and start to follow both. Below I have a link to my website which goes more into detail how this whole process works and how to get started. Thank you for reading.

I hope you have found what I have told you of value! IM is not an easy game to get started with. If I had to start over I would start with developing the proper mindset first and understanding. Sound simple but so many people don't do it and wonder why they are not succeeding.

Content Thirsty? Content Marketing for 2013

The reality is customers don't care about you, your products, or your services. Sorry! What they really care about is themselves, their wants and their needs.

Content marketing is about creating interesting information your customers are passionate about, appealing to their wants and needs. It is the creation and distribution of relevant, valuable and engaging content with the purpose of increasing brand recognition and engagement. Great content marketing strikes a fine balance of communicating with your customers without selling products or services.

Content Marketing Is Set To Be Huge In 2013

But why is it going to be so important this upcoming year? For starters, the increasing amount of time that people are spending online and searching for information has placed more emphasis on the importance of content marketing, especially as search engines look to provide their users with the highest quality results. A recent survey conducted by Econsultancy states that more than 90% of survey respondents believe content marketing will become more important over the next 12 months. In addition, nearly three quarters (73%) of digital marketers agree that 'brands are becoming publishers'.

Source: Content Marketing Survey Report By Econsultancy, October 2012

How to Write Great Content

Content marketing essentially takes the form of written, visual and audio format. And although there are many variations, written content is by far the most popular method currently used. Everything from social posts and email newsletters to feature articles and press releases require great written content. Here's how to do it:

• Before creating content, you need to prepare. Think about your tone, style and general outline of content.

• Do something new. What is topical and relevant to your company? For instance, you could write a comprehensive article on an area that is very current in your industry.

• Great content needs personality. It's also good to add humour or take a provocative stance. Consider the popularity of your views and whether they will attract media coverage. Ideally, your opinions should be bold and popular.

• What does your audience want? Most likely valuable information, so give them what they want. Content marketing needs to offer practical advice that people can use.

• Content marketing is about mastering the art of storytelling therefore captivate your audience with characters that they truly connect with. Telling a story that will provoke ideas and conversations.

• Great content should be persuasive. Do this by providing informative, well researched content that generates interest. Include statistics to add credibility and have a clear call to action.

• And don't forget the KILLER headline to spark interest.

Ideally, you want your readers to engage with your content whether that is to comment, share, Tweet or Like... simply because it's amazing!

When words are no longer enough

Add visuals! Content is no longer entirely text focused, great content marketing should be multi-faceted using videos, infographics and internet memes.

2013 is set to be the year of visuals with growing popularity of visual social media channel such as Youtube, Pinterest, Instagram and SlideShare. Visual appeal will rule content creation and curation. To create maximum engagement, include creative graphics, photos, and videos in your written content to capture imagination and encourage social shares.

Images:
40% of people respond better to visual information than plain text (Source: Zabisco) therefore powerful online imagery will capture attention, spark imagination and drive engagement.

Video:
Great video content should aim to provoke, inspire or excite. It lends itself to social sharing and not only tells a story and conveys information, but can also trigger an emotional response.

How do I apply SEO?

Content Marketing may well be the new buzz word of the moment but it's important not to forget about correctly optimising your content for Google's search engines. Google is always thirsty for more content and you can take advantage of this by following these simple Search Engine Optimisation tactics when publishing content online;

• Frequently uploading new, topical content not only keeps your customer interested in your site but it keeps Google interested! If Google sees a site that has become stagnant with no new content, it will stop feeding it into its search engine results pages. Adding a blog/news section to your website can help with this. Even if it is only updated once every 2 weeks, your site will still reach the approval of Google!

• Google's Webmaster Guidelines recommend publishing content of a high quality stating the following 'Provide high-quality content on your pages, especially your homepage. This is the single-most important thing to do'. Recent Algorithm updates by Google penalises worthless content and rewards highly relevant, meaningful and trustworthy content.

• Ensure the content is original! Not a copy and paste job from some other source on the internet. Duplicate content is penalised heavily by Google search engines and Google is putting immense pressure on producing original, high quality content.

• Make Google's job easier! Don't neglect the SEO basics - Complete meta descriptions, title tags, and image alt tags. All of these help Google read and process your content with ease. This in turn will be rewarded in the search rankings.

• Write naturally sounding content targeted to humans and not search engines. And forget the old SEO tactics of keyword stuffing.

• Increase web traffic by directing any external content back to your website and ensure that your website content is worth reading when they get there