Articles are a powerful way to generate traffic, in addition to bringing you a whole lot of other benefits. When you post articles, you build credibility and trust which is very important for an online marketer. When readers believe what you have written, they don’t hesitate to click to your site and know more or sign up with you. You build a reputation with your niche market. When you are perceived as trust worthy, you also attract joint venture partners.

How do you write articles that will bring loads of traffic? Here are some tips:

• Your keyword rich articles must be focused to your niche market. Decide who should read your articles and write for them.
• An attention-grabbing headline with your primary keyword tucked into it is essential. People read the headline first, and if they find that it shows a benefit, decide to read the rest of the text. People love useful information, and you should write your title accordingly. Some suggestions are:
  • How to…
  • The complete guide to….
  • The truth about…
  • What you don’t know about ….
• Make sure your article has a proper introduction, flows well into the conclusion and states what action the reader should take after reading it.
• Your resource box at the end of the article is the most important component of your article next to the quality content. This resource box will have your contact information in the form of a link to your website. It must be worded in such a way that there is a call to action - depending on whether you want the reader to sign up for your ezine, purchase your product, claim a free report, etc. Your resource box is a lot like an ad so write it with care. Preferably use language your readers will identify with. You must include a benefit to encourage your reader to take immediate action.
• While there is no rule about the length of your article, generally about 500 words should be adequate. Don’t forget to include your keywords.

Articles are an efficient way to get back links and traffic to your website. If you already have a blog, you can always use your own content to write good articles and submit them to article directories. Article directories let you link back to your blog or website via the resource box so that they can generate traffic. Just make sure you have a headline that tempts the reader to get to the whole article.

One method to have your reader clicking to your website or blog is to post a part of the article and at the end, say “part 2 is at link” Your article must be divided at a point where the readers will quickly rush to your link to read the rest of it.

You can post your articles to your blog, your website and on forums. No Internet marketer can afford to ignore article marketing because keyword rich content is the single biggest traffic builder. Search engines love information in the form of articles especially if they are original and updated regularly.

Popularity: 90% [?]

There has been a lot of controversy about how well safe lists work, but you’ll find that they are very effective in bringing traffic.

What are safe lists?

Basically safe lists are groups of people who agree to receive messages from one another. Similar to optin lists but more advanced, safe lists are operated from a website. So lets say you want to send a message to other members on the list. You will need to go to the website and post your message, after which it is personally sent to the members to ensure there is no junk being sent indiscriminately. Those managing the safe list take adequate care to ensure that bouncing emails and overfull inboxes are dealt with appropriately. Since the members on the safe list are double opt in, all the email ids are authentic.

You can join as many safe lists as you like and there are both free and paid ones. So what is the best way to use safe lists so that you don’t devote more time and effort than is necessary? Here are some tips:

• You must be wary about safe lists whose site is not professionally designed. Beware of websites that have too many ads, banners, overloaded with graphics and dollar signs. You must have enough information about the safe list. If no contact information or support link is forthcoming, forget it. If the safe list has no affiliate program or does not disclose the number of members on the list, don’t even consider it.
• Safe list users tend to look at ads when they clear out their safe list email folders. Often a catchy subject line appears tempting them to click and read the ad, resulting in making them sign up for a newsletter, an ebook, a bonus or even buy something. The point of the matter is - you must make sure your subject line is catchy.
• It is also worthwhile to write appealing ads. Your safe list advertising must be excellent to ensure that your affiliate marketing business is a success.
• Make sure you track your safe list ads. You will find a majority of the better safe lists have built in tracking tools.

There is a reason why safe list users don’t feel very comfortable using safe lists to bring traffic and in list building. This is simply because they lack the tools to deal with the huge email volume being received. One of the first things to do is get a large capacity mailbox. If you are looking for a paid email account, ensure that you get email filtering, web based email, POP3 and free affiliate programs. You can also get automatic email deletion.

To get more tips and strategies on how to use safe lists, and get access to several other effective ways to profit from affiliate marketing, get your complete list-building blueprint to success at 15Kin7days right now.

Popularity: 29% [?]

Among list building methods for affiliate success, ezines are one of the most preferred. Simply put, ezines are online newsletters. Affiliate marketers use these to communicate and stay in touch with their subscribers. Through ezines, marketers share news, promotions, updates etc. Ezines can be used effectively to attract focussed traffic to your site.

Almost every ezine is ready to accept advertising from other marketers. The revenue from these ads can nicely offset operational costs associated with running the ezine apart from becoming a source of income in itself.

The best ezines to place your ads in are those that are very closely related to your own niche market to maximize the returns on the ad you put in. Different ezines have different rates depending on the number of subscribers they have and the specific niche. Rates are also based on the position of your ad.

Solo ads are found to work best in ezines even though they cost more because this means readers will see only your ad. In order to create a good solo ad, find an ezine that is directed at the exact target market you want. You can find other websites that run ezines related to your niche market. Searching on Google using your keyword or phrase followed by the word ezine or newsletter easily does this.

After you shortlist the most targeted ezines and newsletters to advertise in, find out the cost and number of subscribers each one has. We recommend actually subscribing to an ezine to see a few issues before advertising in it to get a good sense of the ezine. This will ensure that it speaks your language and reaches your message to your niche.

It is worthwhile spending time on designing your ad. What you say must be geared to getting your readers respond by doing what you expect them to.

Every activity in affiliate marketing must be tracked to monitor effectiveness. By tracking your ads you can know which ezines are bringing you the best response and which ones are not as effective as you expected. You can rephrase your ads to see which words work better so that you don’t waste money.

Some tips to ensure the success of your ezine advertising

• As you might have realized by now, choosing the right ezines to advertise in is the most important aspect of ezine advertising. Suppose the ezine you choose is crowded with ads, you hardly want your ad lost in it.
• When you offer something for free, as a sign up bonus in your ad, chances are quite good that the visitor would want to see what it is.
• Here’s something to check - if the ezine publisher has a policy of not running two ads for similar products within the same issue then you have a better chance of having your ad read by the ezine readers.
• Repeat your ads 2-3 times. The ezine publisher will probably offer you a bulk discount rate.

These are just a few of the many ways in which you can use ezine advertising successfully.

Popularity: 29% [?]

What’s the one thing that can make or break your business? You probably have every ingredient in place to make your business a roaring success - you have the product, your website is up and your marketing strategies are in place. But are you equipped to deal with your customers? You see - it is not enough to generate hordes of traffic to buy your products. It goes far beyond that.

Every business aims at repeat sales. This means you want your customer to come back often. Now, what is it that will tempt them to return to you for more of what you have to offer? Great customer service. When you have a strong customer support system, it leads to customer loyalty. Not only will these happy customers keep buying from you, but also recommend you to others because they have a positive experience with you and want to share it with everyone they know. Does that sound good to you?

We cannot over-emphasize how vital it is for your business to have an efficient and effective customer service system in place. Just some of the benefits you can expect through keeping our customers happy are:

• Save time
• Increase sales
• Increase profits
• Better exposure
• Brand building for your business
• Happy customers

When your customers have quick access to support from you, they feel more confident about buying from you. We’ve all experienced lousy service at some point or other in our lives - can you remember how you felt? Interestingly, we all tend to have a long memory when it comes to bad experiences and we probably thought to warn our friends by telling them about it.

Thus, to keep your business going great, you have absolutely no option but to provide world-class customer service - all the time. Think about this - for every satisfied customer, you’ll have created an advertisement for your business, and a very powerful one. As a first step, look at the following questions and see if you can answer with an enthusiastic ‘Yes’

• Are you easy to find?
• Are you easy to contact?
• Can you customer understand exactly what you deal with or sell?
• Is it easy to select your product?
• Do you have a simple to use payment system?
• Do you have an easy product return policy?
• Is it easy to get prompt answers to queries from you?

If you put yourself in your customer’s shoes, you’ll probably come with a lot more questions to deal with. It is easy to turn any ‘no’s that you may have answered to the above questions. And here are some tips that will help you improve your customer satisfaction program:

• Have a customer feedback system to show you care
• Provide a lifetime refund guarantee where feasible
• Be easy to contact - in fact, put your email address and phone numbers on each web page of your website. You’ll be surprised at how many people actually pick up the phone and call.
• Ensure that you have an FAQ page - answers to frequently asked questions. This is a quick way to minimize queries

Exceptional customer service is the one thing that can make or break your business - and you can easily ensure that you have a great support system in place.

Popularity: 16% [?]

Apart from the conventional tried and tested methods as an online marketer you must also keep track of new methods and concepts when it comes to traffic generation. And if it costs you nothing - even better. This brings us to Squidoo, the Web 2.0 program that’s being raved about by everyone who knows about it.

What sets Squidoo apart from similar sites is that it has quality content. Most of the pages on Squidoo, not surprisingly rank high with the search engines. The site itself is ranked seven on Google and in the Alexa rankings Squidoo is rated among the top thousand websites on the Internet.

On the Squidoo website you can set up your own ‘lens’ or web page on any topic that you are passionate about. You can leverage your lens by making a keyword rich Squidoo URL. Most forward-planning marketers create more than one lens for different topics using their primary keywords.

The keywords can also be used in the page title and scattered strategically through the content on the page. The concept of long tailed keywords, which are keywords that run to more than just 3-4 words, works effectively here, bringing in the focussed traffic that you want to grow your list and your profits.

Squidoo owes its success to the fact that its members are a dynamic community that is continuously coming up with excellent content and links. You can easily establish yourself as an expert in your area.

By optimizing your Squidoo lenses to the search engines through keywords, you will be accessing the entire Web 2.0 media tagging system. Your rankings will improve to a great extent if your links to your other sites and content are relevant.

Creating original content is the first step. It must be appealing to the visitors and the community. Since there’s community ranking, with quality content, you can be rated highly by the users. By browsing around the site, you get a good idea about how others are tapping into Squidoo and use the same methods to be successful yourself.

Squidoo tips on tags

When you make your lens pay close attention to ‘tags’. You will be asked to choose your primary keyword or tag along with three more. Don’t stop here. Add at least 25 - 30 more tags. Why do you need to do this? Tags attract the search engines. These tags, with no intervention from you, are coded into the html of your website - so imagine the result. Google just swallows it. So when users use Google to search for your tags, chances are good that your page will come up, or at the very least, the overall tag page on Squidoo. By adding the right tags to your Squidoo lens, you can maximize the chances of your being found.

The next thing about tags is this. When visitors search on Squidoo using the tags, the results are brought up based on the tags on all the pages and then by page rank. So if your site is about affiliate marketing, one of your tags must be ‘affiliate marketing’ for you to actually receive traffic on your site. Elementary.

Keep adding tags to your Squidoo lens via the edit tags option.

Now you can see how you can use Squidoo to generate traffic and back links to your website. If you are in affiliate marketing, you can display affiliate links.

Popularity: 17% [?]

A well designed link building campaign can rank your site high with the search engines, and also increase traffic to your website. When you link to quality sites, you will build your brand and receive a lot of exposure, with webmasters wanting to link to your site.

Back links or incoming links are links at other sites that lead to your site. They are one of the most vital components in the search engine optimization process. This is because search engines assess the importance of your website based on the quality of back links coming into your site. Link popularity tells you how many websites are linking to yours and you can check this with a free tool.

If there are a large number of links from related or complementary sites that already have a high search engine ranking, coming in to your website, then your website will also automatically rank high with the search engines.

To develop an effective linking strategy, the following will play an important role:

• The quality of your links
• The anchor text in these links
• The total number of links
• The quality of content on the page that has these links
• The number of outbound links on the page
• The page rank of the page your link is on

Search engines smile upon natural incoming links to your website. But how do you build incoming links naturally? How to make webmasters want to link to your site? There are sites that will offer to link to yours if you link to theirs, but this does not always work. Instead you need to focus on getting productive one-way links, since the idea here is to make the search engines happy. Here’s how you can add ‘link value’ to your site:

• Get related sites to link to you because your site offers value to their traffic. This is hard work but when you accomplish it, you can enjoy unprecedented traffic, better conversion rates and therefore, profits.
• Offer value to the website that can link to you by offering complementary products or services or useful information that the site can link to.
• Add special reports or guides to your website so that you can address a specific need.
• Publish articles, hints and tips based on what customers want. This material must be link worthy to your target market so that they want to link to you.

Popularity: 22% [?]

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: 21% [?]

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% [?]

When you know how, it is not difficult to recruit and retain your affiliate army and reap the benefits in the form of huge profits. Building your affiliate army is all about recruiting them, activating them and keeping them motivated to keep up a steady flow of sales. So how can you inspire and motivate them?

You’ve got your affiliates. However, it’s a highly competitive world out there and you need to keep them enthusiastically promoting you as well as recommend you to their successful peers. Here’s how you motivate your affiliate army:

1. You’ve got to help your affiliates by giving them all that they need to be successful. Have a regular affiliate newsletter featuring tips. You could have a toll free number to provide them affiliate support with someone knowledgeable answering their queries.
2. Inspire your affiliates by demonstrating by example the methods used by your top affiliates to be successful. This must be a step-by-step method and simplified so that they can replicate them.
3. Recognize the affiliates who are doing well. A token gift would be a good idea.
4. Treat your affiliates as friends and phone them. They will be impressed that you care. Your top affiliates can turn into your loyal friends and supporters.
5. Ask your affiliates for their feedback to improve your affiliate program. Act on it.
6. Praise your super affiliates on your website and provide their affiliate links. They benefit with more traffic while other affiliates are inspired. It develops loyalty in the top affiliates.
7. Another way to build affiliate loyalty and motivate them is to recommend your super affiliate in email discussion groups. They will really appreciate you for it.
8. Make sure your affiliate receives the commission for a sale whether the customer visits the next day, the next week or even one year later. Customer tracking will make this possible. Set your ‘return days’ duration to a minimum of 30 days - the more, the better.
9. Think about paying lifetime commissions to your affiliates.
10. Allow your affiliates to earn special bonuses when they perform well.
11. Categorize your affiliates and consider paying the top ones special commissions.
12. Apart from commissions, you also need to work out residual commissions and two tier commissions. Referrals are valuable and deserve compensation.
13. Give your affiliates preferential treatment in discounted prices.
14. If there are multiple products, it is better to give your affiliates one link per product.
15. Make sure all your loyal affiliates get a mention from you at affiliate marketing conferences. They feel good.
16. Don’t ignore those affiliates who are not very active. Instead, ask them what the issue is so that you can fix it.
17. Drop by your affiliate’s sites and give them suggestions for more success.
18. When you add to your product portfolio, and a customer buys via an affiliate link give them credit for it. Your affiliates shouldn’t have to sign up each time a new product is added.
19. Let your affiliates be informed via email each time they make a sale. Give them the option of receiving these emails or turning them off.
20. Make sure you send a weekly status report that is easy to understand.
21. Pay your affiliates as often as you can. Give them the option of setting minimum payments.

Affiliates are your business associates. To keep your affiliate army performing well, it is important to motivate them and treat them specially.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Expert internet marketers know that lists are the foundation of their online marketing business. I have put together some critical tips to cost effectively build your email lists - use this as a checklist to enable you collect focused email addresses at every opportunity. 

• Make sure that each and every one of your web forms includes an email list opt in box, whether it is to do with registration, information requests or ordering products.
• Ensure that your website URL appears on all official stationery, promotional material, newsletters etc. You’d be surprised at how many people will immediately visit your link to know more and be ready to optin for email communication.
• While browsing your website your visitor must be able to optin from any page of your website.
• If you use direct mailing methods or paper forms offline, make sure your customers are requested to give their email addresses. At offline events it is standard practice to have a “Visitors book”. Have your visitors write down their email in it so that you can be in touch with them.
• Each and every paper that goes out to your customers and contacts must include an email request. Use every possible way to get hold of email addresses to build your lists - when you respond to customer questions, your invoice, etc.
• An effective way to build your list is to look at your current list. When you mail them request them to tell a friend or refer you to someone. Since these people receive the message from someone they know already, they are receptive to signing up with you! In turn, these people can refer you to others. Not only do you get an authentic list but also an endorsement. Provide a link that your optin list can forward to their contacts and grow your list.
• Be honest about the frequency of mailers you intend to send your optin list before they sign up so they know what to expect. If you send too many mailers too often, you’ll just get blocked.
• Solicit feedback from your subscribers so that you can design your messages according to what they want. If not, they will simply use the ‘unsubscribe’ option and that’s the end of the relationship.
• Your optin list is looking for value when they sign up with you - so make good use of your autoresponder to keep in touch with them with useful stuff.
• Remember that every interaction with a prospective customer is your chance to grow your list. Use ethical ways to build your list.

As you experiment with different methods you will learn different ways to succeed. List building is an activity that never stops as long as you are in business!

Popularity: 20% [?]