The Know Insider Weblog

Once again I used my wacky test marketing strategy to announce a new project and
once again it worked - but on this occasion I had another motive about which I will tell you more in a moment.

Downloads and confirmed sales are lower than last time around but this does not dismay me because I am addressing a looser, less well defined niche.

What did please me though was confirmation that my reasoning for engaging in a second wacky test marketing run was justified.

You see both of these projects have an inherent element of website optimization about them; a strategy I have been working on for some considerable time; a strategy I have put to the test in small ways but never tried out before in full measure.

I wasn’t so much concerned with consumer reaction to the second project as I was with the reaction of the search engine spiders to the optimization of my website.

Here is how matters have panned out so far with regard to major SE positioning.

More importantly both sets of results were obtained within hours of submitting the URLs.

PROJECT NO.2

Yahoo! No.2 out of 4,500,000 competitive pages
AltaVista No.2 out of 4,460,000 competitive pages
All The Web No.2 out of 4,040,000 competitive pages
MSN No.1 out of 0,786,970 competitive pages

As apposed to…

PROJECT NO.1

Yahoo! No.1 out of 8,570,000 competitive pages
AltaVista No.1 out of 6,493,000 competitive pages
All The Web No.1 out of 7,040,000 competitive pages
MSN No.1 out of 0,804,114 competitive pages

Clearly Google is not impressed with my website optimization strategy and also you might reasonably remark that it appears to be going backwards on the other SEs listed - but hey, I would settle for any ranking between 1 and 10 anytime, and let Google go…

Will I try for a hat trick with my wacky marketing?

I might - but I would be more interested to learn if anyone else is prepared to give it a go.

If so, here is what to do:

1. Set up a temporary website for a product you have yet to develop
2. Concentrate on the sales pitch
3. Rack up new end consumer benefits that emerge as you write
4. Put your mind into freefall on product development
5. Include a form instead of a price link on your page
6. Ask viewers what they think of your embryo innovation
7. Give them price options
8. Give them something free for participating in your survey
9. Ask them to join your newsletter
10. Send them a thank-you email for helping you out

If you do decide on some wacky marketing, please let me know the results.

You can contact me via the website in the resource box.

Jim Green is an online enthusiast and bestselling author with an ever-growing string of traditionally published niche non-fiction hard copy titles to his credit. View his second test marketing experiment at this website:
http://websiteoptimization.howtoproducts-xl.com

Note: This is Part 2 of a two-part article. To read Part 1, go to http://www.internetbusinessformula.com/free-website-traffic.php.

Did you realize that there are easy ways to get free quality traffic to you website? Most webmasters do not realize that some of the best website traffic that they can receive won’t cost them a dime.

In fact, one of my websites receives hundreds of newsletter subscriptions a month without me having to spend a dime on advertising.

Most Internet marketers will tell you how to write good ads and pay the write amount per click at Google and Yahoo, but what they won’t tell you (usually because they don’t know) is how to get free traffic that will actually convert into more revenue than the paid traffic!

There is only one catch - these traffic generating techniques will cost you your time instead of your money. Now you could easily make it cost you money instead by hiring someone else to do it for you, but that is your prerogative.

If you apply these simple techniques you will get more target traffic to your website.

Here are six easy ways to get quality targeted traffic to your website free of charge.

Note: These are steps 4 through 6. View the first part of this article for the first three steps.

4. Submit your articles to article announcement lists.

After you have submitted your articles to the article directories you need to also submit them to announcement lists. This is a great way to get an immediate boost to your website traffic.

An article announcement list is simply an email list that webmasters subscribe to so that they can receive free content for their websites. Webmasters such as yourself send their articles to these email lists. This benefits both sides.

You can go to http://groups.yahoo.com to find such lists where you can publish for free. Just type in “article announcement” in the search bar to locate those email lists that accept article announcements.

5. Exchange links with other webmasters.

You have probably heard this one before. It is by far the most misunderstood and misused Internet marketing technique on the net today.

The idea is simple - offer to link to another website if they will in turn link to yours. This helps to boost your search engine rankings and also gets you visitors to your website.

When done properly this can do wonders for your website traffic. Unfortunately most link building campaigns turn into a free-for-all link farm building campaign where all webmasters do is get as many incoming links as they can, even if they are completely unrelated.

By getting unrelated links into your website and posting unrelated links out your links page will simply become a myriad of anchor tags that nobody will bother using, thus destroying its principle purpose.

To learn how to run an effective linking campaign, I strongly suggest visiting the site http://www.linkingmatters.com. They have a great free tutorial on how to run an effective link building campaign that will actually give you results.

6. Create a free re-brandable e-book or PDF report.

This method has the potential of getting you thousands of visitors within a short period of time. Similar to submitting your articles to directories, you can also create a free 10 to 20 page e-book about an important subject related to your niche market.

Within this e-book you can have a couple of affiliate links to products that you recommend. Make sure that these products are actually worth while as the intention is not to make money but to get your e-book spread as far and wide as possible.

How do you do this? You allow others to re-brand your PDF report or e-book to include their affiliate links instead of yours! I recommend using a service such as http://www.viralpdf.com to do this.

Why would you allow others to do this? Because they will send the PDF report to as many people as they can in order to make money! Of course the URL to your website will still remain intact, so you will benefit from others doing all of the work!

If you don’t want to spend any money, then you can just create a really good report that has no affiliate links and allow others to reproduce this on their sites. Tell others that they can give the report or e-book away as a free gift to those that subscribe to their newsletter. This will add quality to their websites and will generate more traffic to yours.

In conclusion…

I hope that by reading this article I have opened your eyes to a few new possibilities to generating traffic to your website without spending a lot of money (or any for that matter).

In the end word of mouth is the most powerful marketing technique. All of the methods listed above are basically ways to get other webmasters to tell their users about your website. It is always a win-win situation.

Matthew Glanfield is an Internet marketing veteran of 3 years. Receive his free email course on how to start your own Internet business by visiting http://www.internetbusinessformula.com

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn’t take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site.

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Top five ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in search engine results. It is common knowledge that search engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the search engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another’s site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles

There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

Make a Newsletter.

This may sound like hard work because of all the articles you may need to use to build a newsletter but on the contrary, this is not so. There are many writers and sites that are willing to provide free articles as long as they can get their name in on your newsletter. This will also provide free advertising for them as well.

As your newsletter gets pass around, you can widen your public awareness and build an opt-in list that can regularly visit your site.

Join Online Communities and Forums

This only requires your time and nothing else. You can share your knowledge and expertise with many online communities as well as your website. You can get free advertising when you go to forums that have the same subject or niche with your site.

Share your two cents and let them see how knowledgeable you are with the subject. As you build your reputation, you also build the reputation of your site, making it a reputable and honest business that could be frequented and trusted by many people.

Subscribe to Gerardas Norkus’ free Internet marketing newsletter at www.netmarketingstrategies.com and discover heaps of tips, tricks and secrets that will quickly boost your online sales and profits.