KristineWirth.com

Online Website Promotion – 5 Free & Easy Ways to Promote Your Site

kristinewirth — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:52:36 +0000

Nothing matters more than promoting your website if you’re looking to get more traffic. Especially if that site is brand new. It takes a lot of hard work and effort on your part to get a site up and operating and as soon as it is, you’ll also want to plan as to how you can get that site seen by as many people as possible without having it cost you an arm and a leg.

Thankfully, you don’t need a small fortune to start marketing your site; there are lots of free ways to get yourself started online and here’s just a handful of them to help get you started.

Pingbacks for your blog

If you run a WordPress blog on your site, did you know that if you link to another WordPress blog within a post you make on your own site, the site owner of the website you are linking to will automatically get notified that someone has linked to them?

This is known as a pingback and it’s very likely that the owner of the blog you’ve linked to will return the favor. This is a great way to get links to your site from associated blogs within your area of expertise.

Write a Free e-book & Give it Away

As a way to get more people to view your website, take some of the content you’ve already added to your website, re-write them a lttle bit and then compile it into a PDF e-book.

This not only gives people who visit your site a free gift just for visiting but will also give you the opportunity to showcase your expertise on a certain topic.

When you create your PDF e-book (and you can do so for free using Open Office), don’t forget to add links back to your website within the footers of the book.

Once you’ve done that, you can add this free e-book to your own site to entice people to sign up to your mailing list, or you can simply give that book away to free e-book sites that are already getting plenty of traffic such as:

Publish Articles

If you’ve been online for any amount of time, you’ll already know that writing articles is one tried and true approach to getting links and website traffic. This is because it works. Write articles that center around your area of expertise and submit them to well-known and popular online article directories.

When you write your short biography of yourself that’s included with all of your articles, remember to use the keywords and phrases that you want to rank well for within your anchor text. And also remember to link to other pages within your site as well, not just your home page.

It’s also important to note that not all article directories are created equal. There are a few standouts that will get you the most traffic to your site.

These are:

Answer Questions

There are lots of sites that have popped up online over the past couple of years that let anyone at all ask a question about any topic whatsoever. Since these websites are typically organized by category, it’s relatively easy to find a question within your area of expertise that you can answer. This answer can also include a link back to your website.

Some of the more popular sites that fall into this category are:

Online Classifieds

Online classifieds are yet another way to get more visitors to your site. Some of these websites are free and others require you to pay a minimal charge. In either case, they’re all usually extremely affordable for the massive amounts of exposure that you can get.

One important factor to keep in mind about online classified sites is to use the keywords and phrases that you want your site to be found for within the advertisement itself; especially the title of the ad.

Within the ad, you also want to give people who view your ad a reason to come and visit your site. Are you offering them something for free? If so, make sure that they know what it is. Make your ad as crystal clear as you possibly can so that when people do eventually visit, they’ll know what to expect once they get there.

Some classified ad sites to consider are:

Remember to read all the terms and conditions for each individual site as they will each be a little different.

Use Your Auto Responder to Get Personal With Your Subscribers and Improve your Response Rates in the Process

kristinewirth — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 15:53:50 +0000

In business, one of the most complimentary things you can do is use somebody’s name either in a discussion with them or, more importantly where internet business is concerned, within an email.

People like to know that they’re not just some anonymous face to you or some random number. And apart from giving them a call up in person and having a discussion with them, the next best thing that we are able to do is use their own name when speaking to them; even if it is just virtually.

Just consider this for a second. Have you ever walked into a store and actually been addressed by your own name? If this is a store you visit frequently, this likely has happened to you and you most likely were impressed by the owner’s capability to remember who you were; it made you feel like a person and not just another customer.

It makes a world of difference in the off-line world. It shows that the store that you frequent actually cares about you enough to remember your name. And it’s likely that this personalization brings this business more clients than they ever believed possible simply because they remembered who you were.

Online however, it isn’t as easy. We don’t get to see people face to face on a continuous basis. Sometimes we can create videos for customers but it’s just a one-way street. They can see us, but we’re not able to see them.

They hear from us when we send them emails, but this is normally never a two-way conversation.

But, this being the case, we can help a little bit by personalizing the emails that we do send to our subscribers.

Many auto-responders today let you personalize your emails with the subscribers name. Aweber is just one of those auto-responder programs.

As a matter of fact, you can add all sorts of customization to your email that contains details related specifically to every subscriber.

This works because once the subscriber signed up to your list, their name was typed into a special field that the auto-responder company knows directly corresponds with their first name, last name, or both.

And you can make use of this information to show your subscribers that you truly care and that you don’t just consider them “another prospect” or just another number on your subscriber list.

Since a person’s name is so important to them, whenever you do send emails to your list, make sure that you add this name to the subject field of the e-mail they get.

Not only will this get that e-mail noticed more than just a normal subject line would, but it also shows that you care enough to make it personal to them.

And all you should do is to insert the customization code that your auto-responder company provides you with and they’ll take it from there by automatically filling in that person’s name wherever you’ve inserted that code.

As a matter of fact, research has shown that including that tiny bit of customization to your mail messages will not only increase your response rate, but that the e-mail will probably be opened more frequently. Furthermore, those who see their names often within an email message are usually more open to the message included inside of that email.

All this customization however, can’t begin unless the form that the subscriber initially used to sign up with contains a field where the person can enter their name. Most auto-responder companies add this by default but if yours does not, you’ll need to be sure it does get added to your form. Otherwise you won’t have the ability to personalize any emails whatsoever.

Overall, using somebody’s name even if it is merely within an email can increase your response rates and even improve how somebody thinks of you and the services or products you provide.

8 Little Known Ways to Get Your Articles Read and Published

kristinewirth — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 19:19:46 +0000

Marketing with articles, for as long as it’s been around, may have seemed to have lost it’s punch over the years. Or at least that’s what lots of people believe. But actually, it’s quite the opposite.

Many prosperous website owners will tell you that writing articles and submitting them to online directories is how they got their start on the internet, and they’ll further tell you that they continue to do so. This is typically due to the fact that it works. Plain and simple.

That said, one of the keys to successful article promotion is to stick to a few easy rules to make sure that first, your article gets read and second, that once someone does finish reading your content, they click through to your site.

Here are some great tips you can follow when using article marketing as part of your overall strategy online.

Take a look at what’s popular. Many article directories like EzineArticles.com for example, let you view the most published and the most viewed articles within a certain subject area. To see which articles are the most popular in the market you’re writing for, do a search for your topic, click on any article and then scroll down to the bottom portion of that article’s page. Here you will see the articles that have been published and viewed the most often.
Make your title intriguing. It must be a topic that people have an interest in and that will have the ability to get plenty of views online. Using article titles such as “5 Ways to…”, “10 Reasons Why…”, “Top 12 Reasons Why ___________”, are some frequently used and incredibly effective titles.
No self promotion. One of the reasons other sites turn to article directories for immediate and free content is because the subject which has been written about is a good choice for their own website readers. It will be quite challenging to get other sites to publish your articles if all you do is promote your own personal product or service.
Use great spelling. If your content is a hot topic that is getting lots of views yet there are numerous misspellings within the content, it most likely won’t be published by other webmasters. Most article directories these days run your submission through a spell-checker first before you can publish the article so it will catch many of these mistakes but just to make sure, run it through your own spell-check first.
Make it easy to read. Use bullet points or numbered lists to make for easier reading.
Be clear and succinct. Avoid long drawn-out paragraphs and break up your content into manageable parts. Your content shouldn’t leave the reader wondering what your content was about in the first place.
Grab attention within your authors resource box. Keep in mind, your authors resource box is your “take”. This is where you’ll encourage the reader to visit your site. Tell them why it would be advantageous for them to download an e-book you have written or to sign up for your newsletter.
Don’t stick to just one directory. When distributing your content don’t just stick to one service. There are several well-known directories online that you can submit your articles to. Just be certain that when you do, you are submitting unique content and not re-using the same article over and over again.

Once you begin the whole process of writing and submitting articles and submitting them, you will start to notice an increase in visitors to your website.

This traffic will not only come from the directories themselves but you’ll often note that other sites who have chosen to publish your article will also be sending you visitors.

This is the biggest advantage of marketing with articles since that one piece of content that you submitted may be used by numerous locations online thus increasing not only the visitors you get, but it can help you get those valuable and much-needed back links to your website too.

AffiloJetPack – “Easy Assembly”

kristinewirth — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 14:08:09 +0000

OK OK, I know what you’re thinking….why in the world am I talking about something called an AffiloJetPack on a website that talks about affiliate marketing.

Well, it’s not a JetPack like something you’d strap onto your back and fly to your j.o.b. (although, weren’t we supposed to have those by now?)

The AffiloJetPack was, at first glance, hard for me to really understand what this product is all about.

UPDATE! Since this original post, Mark has added a second free e-book. Click the link below to get this resource.

__________________________________________________________________________________

Free E-Book #1

Click Here to Get the Free Book

“The 5-Step Formula for Earning $10,000 a Month Online”

Free E-Book #2

Click Here to Get this Free Book

“How To Make Piles of Cash Online by Giving Away FREE Content”

Here’s what I do know, it’s created by Mark Ling (someone I’ve LONG respected in the affiliate marketing field – and a super-affiliate to boot), the industry as a whole respects him, and his previous products like AffiloBlueprint and Affilorama Premium have been praised over and over again.

But I’ll be honest, when he told me about this new product called AffiloJetPack, I was 100% totally and completely confused.

I mean I get the “affilo” part – having to do with affiliate marketing but the JetPack part really had me raising my eyebrows. I mean I actually said “Really Mark? This doesn’t make any sense.”

On the one hand, it looked to be targeted to complete beginners to affiliate marketing.

On the other hand, it looked like it was pressing some hot-buttons for the more experienced affiliate marketers.

So, after a little bit of investigation, here’s what I found:

Mark has worked with a LOT of people who are new to affiliate marketing. And from this, he’s found a number of hurdles that are standing between the BEGINNER and really making it as an affliate; and he wants to change that.

Hurdle #1: Choosing a niche. This really trips people up and I can’t disagree with that. I’ve seen affiliates spend WEEKS trying to figure out what niche to get into. So what AffiloJetpack does is gives you 10 niches right off the bat. These are literally hand-picked by Mark and PROVEN to already be winners in their industry – so that’s one hurdle out of the way.

(There might even be some more experienced affiliate who are looking for their “next” niche as well).

Hurdle #2: Making a Website. This really stumps a lot of people because it CAN be very intimidating. What Mark has done is put together his very own WordPress theme and designed it so that even the most inexperienced website designer can tweak the layout of their site. It also has some other functions built into it that only someone with experience in affiliate marketing would think about – like a squeeze page generator so that you can use Mark’s own successful squeeze page layouts in your own promotions.

And with the theme, Mark has also thrown in free web hosting. Very nice!

Hurdle #3: THE CONTENT! Writing content for a new niche site can be very frustrating. So, Mark gives you the content for the site, 20 articles of very high quality that you can just plug-n-play into the site as-is or re-word it yourself to get the full SEO benefit.

So the bottom line is, AffiloJetPack is everything you need to build a website in a limited amount of time without a long learning curve.

But “that’s not all!” as they say…actually it starts to get just a little advanced here…

Personally I think that this is really good “as is” but…and this isn’t even the “main event” as Mark puts it.

The main event is what comes next:

A 80-part autoresponder series that you can plug into a service like Aweber and use to start collecting email addresses and building a relationship with people who sign up.

Mark says that the thing that disappoints him the most is when affiliates don’t add an autoresponder series to their websites, because this is the thing that will earn them the most money.

And I admit… I’ve been guilty of that myself. Sometimes you just want to see a site making money before you invest even MORE money in building a follow-up series. Or sometimes you’re just so exhausted by the time you finish putting your site together that this goes on the back burner.

An autoresponder seems more like “extra credit” for an affiliate site, but Mark is adamant that it should be the main focus. To the extent that you might not even promote affiliate products on your website at all!

So this autoresponder series comes with about 65 “informational” emails, and about another 15 “hard sell” emails written by Mark himself. He also tells you WHEN you should be sending these out to get the best response from your list, since just emailing someone once a week in the first month or two isn’t really going to cut it.

I was quite surprised at the quality of these emails… they’re far beyond PLR quality.

You could even put these on your website if you wanted an extra 60+ articles!

They’re the kind of thing that’s going to get people on your list trusting your opinion… at which point you can promote products to them and watch the commissions roll in.

One other aspect that made me think that this maybe isn’t purely aimed at newcomers is Mark’s view that while SEO is low-risk, the bigger risk that newbies face is that they’re not going to see results quickly enough, and they’ll give up.

Because of that, as part of AffiloJetpack he’s also offering training on a variety of other traffic generation methods. You can still do SEO… but he’s saying that if you want to see fast results (and faster cash) you should look at these other methods.

The final verdict? AffiloJetpack is great for newbies who can’t get past the nitty gritty of building a site. It really makes the whole process laughably easy compared to the weeks or months it might take a newbie to put together a site on their own.

More experienced affiliates are probably going to see the real benefit in the huge amount of high-quality content that Mark has put together. Even to put together ONE newsletter series of this quality is going to cost you at least double the cost of this entire product.

And with AffiloJetpack you get FIVE of these niches and newsletter series’, so to my budget-conscious ears, thats ridiculously good value.

Whatever way you look at it, and whatever level of experience you have, this product is a winner. Even if you don’t want to follow Mark’s strategies… do yourself a favor and grab it just for the content.

Very highly recommended.

If you click here right now, Mark is giving away “The 5-Step Formula to Earning $10,000 a Month Online”.

The Market Samurai Affiliate Program

kristinewirth — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 18:34:05 +0000

Well, it’s been a LONG time coming but Market Samurai has finally made their affiliate program open to the public.

What does this mean for you and how do you qualify?

First, you MUST be an owner of the Market Samurai product. Click here to get it today. <=== This link takes you to the free trial download page.

With this program, you earn 48% commissions.

Your leads are locked to your affiliate code with lifetime hard-coded affiliate tracking. So it doesn’t matter if they buy today or a year from now, you still get the commissions.

PLUS, between now and June 27, 2010 every lead you sign up qualifies you for some awesome prizes like:

The New iPad 3G
The yet-to-be-released iPhone 4G
And many, many more. BUT to view the entire prize package they have, you have to own the program and promote it.

Second, they don’t just let “anyone” into their affiliate program. If you intend on marketing their affiliate program using “scam” ads, spam, if you lie, cheat, steal or deliberately misrepesent Market Samurai’s features or ANY of their offers to get sales, use black hat techniques (like cookie-stuffing), use dirty tricks, or do anything else to damage their good name, you’ll get kicked out or reject you.

But, if you’re one of the “good guys” – someone who has integrity, then the program IS for you.

As they state on their site “”This is the whole reason we chose the name “Noble Samurai” – not “Evil Ninjas” (because our integrity is important to us)”.

Again, you MUST own the program in order to promote it and qualify for the prizes.

If you’re unfamiliar with Market Samurai, here’s a little video that explains it: