I’ve already shown you how press releases can help in search engine optimization in my last article “How To Increase Your Page Rank In No Time“. But the truth is that a weak press release won’t get you anywhere. In order to get the most out of your online press release, you have to make sure it’s written effectively.

Do You Really Have Something To Say?

One of the main reasons why some press releases don’t work is because they don’t have anything important to say. Remember that a press release is a mix of article and advertisement- it should kindle consumer interest without sounding overtly promotional. Maybe the sleek new design of your website is exciting to you, but is it what other people want to read about? Will it ultimately drive traffic your way?

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when writing your press release:

1. Is my excitement worth a press release? Some things that you can definitely issue press releases for are product launches, poll/survey results, newsletter launches, seminars, classes, books, awards or high profile endorsements
2. Is it strong? A press release has to be written in a clear, strong manner particularly the opening. Ideally, people should grasp the gist of your press release from the headline and opening paragraphs. They should also be sufficiently interested to read on.
3. Is it newsworthy? Remember that you are sending these out to media outlets so your press release has to answer the five ‘W’s of journalism- who, what, when, where and why
4. Is it focused? A press release is not a 300 page essay- in fact, it shouldn’t run for more than one page. Make sure that your content is crystal-clear and to the point.

Content Is Key

It’s rather obvious that the content is the most important part of your online press release. A weakly-written press release will make zero impact on your website traffic. Similarly, a press release on something nobody is interested in won’t help you either. Many people spend days perfecting their online press release before they send it into cyberspace. Others shell out big bucks to hire press release services to do the writing for them.

If you’d rather write your own press release, you’re already at an advantage. You’ll be able to write truly original and unique content which will set your release apart. Remember to use the right keywords. Keywords are as important in a press release as in articles or website content. Make sure you use them coherently and don’t crowd them in one area. Using them twice in the body of the article and once in the opening line should be enough. Make sure that your headline is striking and grabs attention. It’s also a good idea to use anchor text in your press release.

Popularity: 94% [?]

In this article, I’m going to look at the best sites to broker for. After all, this will be the basis of your earnings. As a JV broker, here’s what you do:

• Find someone who wants to sell products
• Find a marketer to sell these products
• Broker a deal between them
• Earn profits

You’ll remember in my last article, “Taking The First Step Towards Profits“ that I talked about how two-tier affiliate programs are the best ones to sign up for. To get a little deeper into this, here’s what you should look for.

Sites That Pay A Minimum Second Tier Commission Of $10

We are looking at a minimum commission of $ 10 per second tier sale. This is not tough to do. Even if the marketer you broker a deal with makes ten sales, you earn $100. If the marketer has a huge list of subscribers, just by sending them a simple email, you are looking at a high conversion rate that can earn you thousands in commission. See how powerful this method is? So even with a product that doesn’t cost much, you can still make a lot of earnings by identifying and leveraging marketers with huge lists.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

The marketer you are brokering the deal with will love it when he can earn without doing a thing. If you outline even a couple of simple jobs like sending out an email or setting up a banner ad, chances are that they’ll never get around to doing it. Instead, if the product site you are brokering for provides all the promotional material in a ready to use form, you can tell your marketer that all he needs to do is copy paste it into his email software and send. Don’t forget to tell him that he’ll see money within the hour of doing this. It’s a lot easier to send out an email campaign that has already been written for you than go through the process of writing them and then sending them. So you simply need to find a site owner who is smart enough to provide the promotional material to sell his products.

Sites That Give Your Marketer Promotional Material That’s Ready To Use

In fact, this is your first priority as the success of your JV brokering depends on this. What if the marketer doesn’t sign up right away through your link? There is every chance of them signing up even a couple of months later. How do you keep track? More importantly, how do you ensure your commission on the sales generated by them?

Here’s where you need to ensure that your site owner has a cookie tracking system in place. Sign up with sites that offer you a two tier program as well as track everything through cookies valid for several months. No matter when your marketer signs up through your link you will get a commission on the sales they make.

Popularity: 29% [?]

In my last article, “Discover The #1 Secret To Leverage Forums For Traffic“, I talked about forums and how you can leverage them for traffic through the content you post. Blogs can also be monetized through content. Blog marketing is a hot topic with internet marketers, so lets see how you too can get the best out of them.

Blogs are easy to start. Blogs are cheap Internet advertising strategies. You can start one for free on blogger.com, wordpress.com, etc. They are often a great alternative to building and maintaining a website. In fact, most Newbies in online business get started with a blog to get a feel of the whole thing and then plan bigger projects.

The success of blogs is mainly due to that thirst for information, which leads visitors to browse the Internet. Happily, the search engines also demand good quality content and since you need to rank high with the search engines so that they bring you focussed traffic, you can use blogs to achieve this.

Blogs are must-haves for Internet business success. Bloggers wield a lot of powerful influence because when someone is considering buying something, they prefer to turn to their favorite blogs for more information and product reviews and to express their concerns. People trust blogs and visit them regularly, especially when it is refreshed on a daily basis. See what we mean? Now lets move on to ways in which you can pull traffic using your blog.

• Your blog title and description must be keyword specific. When you sign up to start a blog, say at blogger.com, you are asked to give a title and a brief description. Here’s where you think hard. Based on who is your target audience and what topic you are passionate about writing on, you can do some quick keyword research with the help of a keyword research tool and name your blog.
• Generate keyword rich content for your blog. You want to be found by your niche market don’t you? Update your blog on a daily basis so that your visitors bookmark you and keep visiting to see what is new. While original posts are best, you can also use an automatically updating feed getting content from other blog posts and articles. With each post treated as its own page, to the search engines your blog will appear like a multi page website with regular fresh content that is rich in keywords and links.
• Your blog profile must be complete with information about yourself as a person. Visitors love to see that you are for real, what you like and dislike, your favorite things etc. Sprinkle in a few relevant keywords, too.
• While at it, you can also post on other blogs and link back to your blog. Make contact and start the process of relationship building. The more links you have to your blog, naturally the more traffic you will see.
• Allow people to subscribe to your blog through RSS feeds. The advantage is, your content will be delivered to your readers by their consent. Each time you post new content they are notified about it.
• Submit your blogs to RSS directories as a one time activity.
• Each time you update your blog, ping it to let the directories know.
• Preferably create an RSS reader of your own - it’s a good branding exercise for increased visibility.
• Consider pod casting. Technology changes by the day and you might like to keep up with it. There are pod casting services that can upload, store, host and set up the RSS and submit to directories as well as ping.
• Try video-blogging.

Blogs are probably the easiest way to be indexed by the search engines for your specific keywords, and are a great platform to launch your products, pre sell your products and keep in touch with your niche market.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Many web masters work very hard to attract unique visitors to their website but once they start pulling links, something curious happens. They ignore their incoming traffic altogether in their frenzy to woo even more traffic. They simply give details of the services they provide and ask their visitors to pay up. To them, the only source of income from their web traffic is through making a sale.

But making money on the Internet need not be a linear process at all.

Did you know that web gurus generate a neat income by monetizing their web traffic in various resourceful ways? You can do the same. Let me tell you how.

Selling ad space: Big players on the Internet are always looking for new places to sell. If you are pulling lots of eyeballs, you can make money simply by allowing associated ads on your site. Inviting merchants to advertise on your website will give you immediate ROI (Return on Investment).

Affiliate programs: This is the cheapest and easiest way to monetize your web traffic. By integrating popular affiliate programs into your website, you get a chance to earn a high percentage of commission on the products you promote. Promoting products closely associated with the theme of your website has a very high conversion ratio. You can promote as many products as you want.

Ebay programs: Another great way to make money from web traffic. Simply place an Ebay product listing along with your website content. For instance, if you sell weight loss tips, place a block of weight loss supplements listed on Ebay on your website. The advantage? Ebay pays excellent commission rates. And if the products you promote are good, your visitors will thank you for it!

Sell text link ads: Sites like text-link-ads.com allow you to increase your revenue in a quite and uncomplicated manner. Simply place their text link on your site and start earning! They take care of all the hassles of billing and payment; you only need to receive the cash! More importantly, they offer you various tools that help you ensure that only quality links are published on your website. The good news? Commission is sky-high: almost 50%!

Google Adsense: This one has been around for a long time but people STILL manage to under-utilize it. Get a membership from Google and start publishing appropriate adsense script along with associated content. Every click you generate earns you money, sometimes even as high as $25 per click!

Newsletter ads: Your newsletter is a vehicle of interaction and you can promote anything you want through it. Besides promoting products, you can even sell ad space on your newsletter.

Membership website: Every successful guru has at least one of these. The logic is simple: people pay money to access content on your website. Why? Because you are the expert!

Link directories: If you are the proud owner of a page rank of 5 or more, many websites, particularly the new ones, will want to place their links on your website. You can charge a nominal fee for this.

Assignments: As you start pulling in more traffic, a vast number of speaking and writing assignments will automatically find their way to you. People will want to interview you or hear you deliver a speech. This will keep your cash registers ringing.

This letter presupposes that you already have roaring traffic tearing its way to your website. But if you’re wondering how to develop this kind of traffic in the first place, just wait until my next article when I reveal a powerful arsenal of traffic-building strategies.

Popularity: 20% [?]

In this article I am going to describe and give you practical tips about different ways to bring focused traffic and build your lists. Do you have a list? If not, start building one right now. In affiliate marketing, no such traffic, no list. No list, no money. The equation is obvious.

Here’s part 1 to get you started immediately - How to bring in that traffic with blogs. It’s easy and you can do it now.

By the way, do you have a website? Then you must be constantly trying to find new ways to get focused traffic. Among different effective ways, blogs are amazing. Apart from the fact that search engines are partial to them, blogs can generate heavy traffic. Search engines index them frequently and it’s not hard to see why webmasters like blogs. For the affiliate marketer, blogs are cheap to start and maintain unlike websites.

You can add a blog to your website or start a blog on wordpress.com or blogger.com. These free resources can get you started right away. I personally like wordpress the best because there are so many plugins and features that the wordpress community has developed. It far outweighs any other CMS (content management system) out there.

Your blog must be relevant to your website topic or business to serve its purpose of attracting traffic. So if your website sells pet food, then your blog should be related to pets. The best way to bring traffic to your blog is by adding new content a minimum of four times a week. The most successful blogs are updated on a daily basis.

You need not necessarily write the content you add to your blog; you can also post free content or outsource the writing to a professional. Each blog post can be as short as 200 words or longer depending on what you are writing about. Your posts can be information, product reviews, tips, etc.

Since you want your blog to generate traffic, make sure you have a link to your website on the blog. It is also possible to link to your site through your blog posts. In addition to this, you must also link to content on your website so that people find it easy to go there.

Once you post content, you must get your blog indexed by the major search engines. The easiest way to do this is to post content daily. You can also submit to blog directories so that you can come up in specific searches. Here are specific action tips:

• You must post at least four posts a day with your keywords incorporated into it. You can use RSS 2 Blog to create multiple posts and post them at periodic intervals.
• To index your RSS feed, submit it to Google’s Reader and My Yahoo. Also submit your blog to directories like DMOZ. You can also get your feed listed.
• Link your blog to your website, and other relevant websites
• Pinging services can be used to show that your blog has a new post. On WordPress this happens automatically.
• Become a member through a free sign up with websites like Facebook, MySpace, and Ryze etc. and display a link to your blog. Facebook, MySpace and YouTube are websites that have the largest traffic statistics on the Internet and the search engines can find you easily. It is also advantageous in getting you a backlink ranked high.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Linkbaiting is not a new concept. In fact, people have been using it for years to generate one-way links to their websites. Only the term is new, if at all. So, if you’re thinking of driving massive amounts of traffic towards you, better get your linkbaiting arsenal well oiled. Here’s what you can do:

Create great content: By great content, I don’t mean content you get from Private Label Articles. Take a look at some of the top websites for competitive terms on Google, and notice their content on all the pages, not just the index page. Some of the pages simply make your jaw drop. When you are writing to Linkbait, your content is not just some words to fill up a page. The average reader must get something valuable out of your content. Doesn’t matter if they don’t buy or opt-in to your list. Create expert quality content that is interesting, easy and informative.

Rake up a Controversy: Nothing sells better than controversy. Say it with vigor and stir up some heat. Put up controversial video, audio or interviews. You’ll be surprised by the amount of people who come to visit you by way of hate mail, fan mail, curiosity and just to have some fun. And don’t go by what some people say about controversies damaging your credibility. Look at Howard Stern, he’s making a living out of it!

Do a case study: If you can’t kick up some heat, do the next best thing: do a case study of a controversial product or a new product. Conduct some research in your niche and find out what you can effectively ’study’ to rake up enough embers.

Hold a competition: Nothing catches eyeballs faster than a good-sized competition with something juicy at the winner’s post. That is why many websites have end-of-the-year competitions or hold competitions just after a launch. If your competition is popular, you’ll easily be featured on search engines because people are talking about you and linking to you. The competition you hold does not really have to be about your niche or product. Even a fun competition that touches a raw nerve will do the trick, like a prediction poll on the winner of the next American Idol.

These are some of the ways you can bait people to click on your links. However, let’s be realistic here. Each one of your linkbaiting attempts need not hit pay dirt. The trick is to keep trying.

A number of websites help you spread the word about your kickass linkbait piece, so people will find you easily. Seek out sites that are created for your niche and start posting.

Of course, the best thing about Web 2.0 tools is that you really don’t have to do all the hard work. Figure out what you need to do and automation will take care of the rest.

Easier said than done. Zeroing in on the right resources requires a lot of research. You may have to make mistakes and start all over again, which is painful and time consuming, to say the least.

Popularity: 20% [?]

Like web optimization, you have to be careful with the methods you use to generate traffic to your site. You surely wouldn’t want people to ignore or dismiss you as spam or just another advertiser. Here are some traffic-generating tips that will get you lots of traffic without letting you get blacklisted.

• Writing articles on your AdSense keywords is probably one of the best ways to generate traffic for your site. Make sure the content is clear, informative and to the point. At the end of the article, encourage readers to visit your site. There they can learn more about your product or access more articles. Remember to add your name and website’s details at the end of your articles.
• Submit these articles to ezines and article directories. Encourage people to use your articles and share them with others. The more your articles get spread around, the more traffic they generate.
• Start a blog. Blogs attract a lot of visitors, often more than ordinary websites. You don’t have to post every single day- just a couple of times a week is enough. In fact, you can use your articles as posts itself. Remember to provide a link to your site on your blog.
• Swap links with other websites. This can greatly increase your traffic. If you exchange links with a site that generates a lot of traffic, you automatically get that traffic coming your way as well.
• Join networking sites, forums and groups that are related to your niche market. Interact with others and take a pro-active part in the community. Try and get involved in projects that are mutually beneficial- for example, you could showcase a person and their product on your blog. They could do the same for you in return.
• Give people an incentive to visit your site. Getting access to useful information is a good lure. But let’s face it, people love getting things for free. That doesn’t mean you have to hand out free samples every time- offering items like discount coupons or eBooks attracts lots of traffic as well and that often translates into AdSense clicks.

Remember that a good portion of the traffic you generate needs to translate into clicks and sales. In order to do that, you need to constantly think of new tactics to attract customers and encourage them to click on the ads. You also have to keep your website in optimum order. This is probably the most time-consuming part of keeping your online business going.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Membership websites are a great source of recurring income. One reason for this is that people love to belong to a community that is as interested and passionate about the same thing as they are. Look at golfers, for example. The golfing community is crazy about golf and are willing to spend big money on it. People like these are actually looking for an honest environment where they can interact and gain knowledge. The ‘money’ factor becomes negligible when they consider the benefits.

What that translates into is this: the biggest money-puller of your membership site is going to be your content, not your design, product or your name. You need content that sizzles!

Obviously, we are not talking about one-time content here. We are talking about intelligent, trustworthy content that is updated on a regular basis. This will give your visitors a reason to keep coming back for more. So, the foolproof formula for membership income is: provide great content consistently and you should have no problem getting a regular influx of visitors.

However, we all know how difficult it is to keep churning out fresh content every week. More so when your client base is beginning to expand and you’re not well and truly equipped to deal with everything at the same time. Suddenly, there are newsletters to send, blogs to post into, queries to answer and products to evaluate. In the mad rush to get everything done, your content is sidelined and it becomes stale.

How can you prevent that from happening? How can you ensure a steady flow of quality content to your marketing website?

The written word: Use articles, ezines, graphs, charts and reports on your website. Writing your own content is the best option for your website but it is not always the easiest. Hire ghostwriters to write for you. Many paid sites give you a fixed volume of articles every month for a small fee. Subscribe to them. Mix and match them to create unique content. Suppose your niche deals with ‘Making money online’ and you buy 45 articles about your topic. The easiest thing would be to simply post the articles as-is, but do NOT give into that temptation. Rewrite the articles you buy in your own words or string them together to form an e-book, distill them for their gist or use only the headlines. The possibilities are endless. The trick is to make the articles genuinely yours.

Audio content: This is a very nice variation to the staid and boring written word and a real attention grabber. Speak to an established expert, record the interview, and upload it to your website. Monthly interviews will keep visitors glued to your website if the content is good. Or add audio content by podcasting your blog and putting it up on your website.

Video content: This is another attractive alternative. Use QuickTime, Flash, MPEG or AVI to upload video to your site. Just keep one thing in mind: your objective here is to provide content that is more valuable than your competitors and not to show off. Let me give you an example. Suppose your niche deals with the makeup industry. Put up a video highlighting some of the fine tricks of applying makeup. Great way to attract visitors. However, if you were to have a video of yourself detailing the makeup process, people will be miffed. Why did you waste their time to show them what they can very well understand in a reading? Reeks of publicity, doesn’t it? Surest way to drive away traffic!

RSS feeds: RSS feeds will spice up your web content because they provide both audio and video content. RSS allows you to source headlines and summary content from other blogs. So every time these blogs are updated, your content too is updated!

Crosslink: This is another great way of encouraging traffic. Refer to other websites that provide helpful information in the same niche. Comment on their information and link to them. This way, your readers know that you are updating your knowledge. You will also get incoming traffic from the other party who will link back to you if your own content is good enough.

How can you decide if your content is ‘good’ enough? Simple. Good content is information that your visitors will enjoy reading and will benefit from knowing. Ask yourself this: would you pay for this information? That would be the litmus test for good content.

Popularity: 24% [?]

Regardless of which social bookmarking website you choose to use, the tips that follow will help generate traffic to your website. So lets move to the 5 steps:

Action Tips To Leverage Your Social Bookmarking Campaign

Now, you know what a job it is to appear on the home page of social bookmarking websites like Digg, Del.icio.us, etc. You also know that being there could mean massive traffic and links to your website, in addition to high search engine rankings. Well, its not the Holy Grail anymore, if you know how. You are about to! Read on:

Your Posts Must Have Good Titles

Ask any SEO expert - and they’ll tell you that it’s in the title. It, in this case, is the keyword or keywords. Did you put the keywords for which you want to be found in your title? Say yes, because that’s how the people who see your content or article on these sites will link to you - that is, through the titles. This gets your keywords in the anchor text. This increases your search rankings. It’s a neat cycle.

Keep It Short

If you’ve noticed, visitors on social bookmarking sites don’t have a whole lot of patience to read lengthy text. What you need to do then, is to create content that is interesting, short and easy to read. The first two lines must grab your reader’s eyeball and keep it till the end of your content. Then they might link to it, if they like it.

Use RSS Feeds

Social bookmarking site members are there for information. Not for ads or to do their shopping. That doesn’t mean you’ve lost them. Why not put an RSS feed button on your webpage so that they subscribe to your site, and also submit your site to the social bookmarking sites? You can also position ads in your RSS feeds. That’s more money, more pageviews and more subscribers.

It All Comes Back To The King, Content

Have lots of content or linkbait - the more the better. It enhances your chances of focussed traffic. On social bookmarking sites, users comment. Do away with obstacles like asking users to sign in before they comment. Rather, lure them to comment.

A Word About Coming Up With Content For Social Bookmarking Site Users Here:

As obvious as it sounds, users browse to read as much as they can. They don’t want to linger. So make it easy for them by formatting your content to ensure that they read it and hopefully link to it. No point writing a great article if it isn’t easy to read.

• Make use of paragraph headers that highlights important points
• Get the best out of top ten/five lists - people love it
• Use images instead of words where possible.

You must identify the social bookmarking and networking sites that work best for you. The biggest may not necessarily mean the best for you. So identify those niche sites that can bring you a whole lot of traffic and customers rather than lose time on the passive ones. Check the sites you would like to be associated with to see if the content gels with you. Look for sites where the activity level is high. After you identify the right sites, establish yourself by submitting content and build the community’s trust in you. This will naturally lead them to your website.

Popularity: 28% [?]

You are probably wondering how a well-written article could possibly bring people to your website. But it’s the simplicity of this method that is the most charming. It is based on the fact that most people set out looking for information on the web

You can build huge lists by writing keyword rich articles relevant to your business. These articles can be featured on your website, submitted to article directories and other websites that are continuously looking for good content for their readers.

Articles are a great way to generate high quality focused traffic since they establish you as an expert in your area based on the info you provide. They are also useful for building trust, which is very important in the online marketing world. It is important to write them and use them in the right manner.

Here are tips to ensure that your articles bring in the kind of visitors you can convert to customers:

• At the end of your article provide a resource box with a link to your website. Include a brief message with your optin URL, telling the visitor very briefly about how they will benefit. The reader will be encouraged to visit your website to know more and will be in a receptive mood to sign up. Provide a full link to your website.
• Articles must be original content. You can either write them yourself or have them outsourced. They must stimulate the reader so that they will bookmark you and keep coming back.
• The title of your article must be catchy and include the keywords that your visitors use to find you, making them eager to read on. Something like “One secret strategy that will change the way you make money online” if make money online is your main keyword.
• Here’s a no-brainer, nevertheless very important as it is often overlooked. Check your content for spelling errors and make sure it makes for continuous reading.
• Remember to link the articles on your website to your blog, your ezine, your newsletter, the forums you frequent - as all these will bring focused traffic.
• We’ve already said this - but don’t forget to optimize your articles. This is how search engines will find them and help you get traffic.
• Allow your articles to be republished with the resource box intact - this in turn will bring in traffic from various sources. There are many newsletter and blog publishers who keep looking for good content to reprint.

The beauty of article marketing is that you can use the same article to bring in traffic from different sources.

Popularity: 22% [?]