In this article, I’m going to show you the best techniques to make money online that have little or no cost and produce fast results. So first off, here’s one that does not involve any cost at all.

Let’s get back to those keywords I talked about in an earlier article, “This Is How You Spot The Best Affiliate Opportunities“. Remember the information keywords? Here we’ll use the buzz factor to cash in on viral publicity. It is as simple as setting up a blog and putting AdSense ads on it. We’ll then use the information keywords to drive unpaid traffic to it.

The crucial factor here is the keyword’s buzz factor. Is it hot enough for people to spread the word? Usually, celebrity news, politics, sports, etc. are the kind of news bits that will work here.

After you have picked the buzz worthy keywords, set up your blog and add your AdSense code to it. You need to get your adsense ad as much exposure as possible - so that you get a great click through rate on your ads, thereby exploding your income. You must now add a blog post about the keyword you’ve chosen. Don’t worry, you can copy and paste the news item itself for the blog post. Add a small article that is informative, with complete details of the news item.

Now you need traffic - and lots of it. How will you get it? Use the power of social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon, Reddit etc. These sites get awesome traffic that you want to cash in and that too without paying a dime. Create an account at these sites and submit your story as per the instructions.

Rather than do this manually, you have the option of using automation tools that can achieve this for you. We are talking about thirty minutes to AdSense income here, remember? Use these tools to submit your news items to plenty of social bookmarking sites and almost right away you will see floods of traffic targeted to your keywords. Make sure you read the site’s policy to avoid getting your item banned.

While you can create a new blog for each news item, it is better to post on one blog as it not only saves time but is also beneficial in terms of search engine optimization. Why lose search engine traffic?

To summarize, you can use high buzz high demand keywords to increase your AdSense income while leveraging the power of social bookmarking sites. You need to do this quickly and on time. If you delay, then you lose the power of the buzz factor of these keywords. Finding these keywords must be a continuous process and thanks to Google’s Hot trends it will be a matter of minutes before you zero in on your list.

Popularity: 38% [?]

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: 28% [?]

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: 26% [?]

As we all have well understood by now that traffic means business and business translates to profits, then the most important step in promoting our business becomes finding ways to bring in more traffic to our website.

We have already been through the strategies for optimization of our web pages for the most highly searched keyword phrases related to our products. We have also been through ways in which we can find and dominate our competitive websites. What next?

What Attracts Traffic?

That’s the question we need to ask now - what kind of information are the internet surfers looking for? Most surfers are browsing the net for pages that contain how to information or where to find something it! In other words, they are looking for free resources!

For example, if your website is about pet food, your visitors may also be interested in pet accessories or kennels. On the other hand, people who do a search for pet accessories may also be interested in re-stocking their pet food at the same time! This creates a valuable possibility for you to attract more traffic to your website.

If you have well built link directories on your website (to related products, though, and not your immediate competitors) then your website actually becomes a useful resource for your visitors. It finds a place in their bookmark list, which means direct one-way links to your website! With well-maintained link directory pages, you can attract as much as 15% of your traffic per day through these repeat visitors!

Not only that, it also gives you a chance to get reciprocal links from these websites. Once you put the link of a related quality website in your directory, and then send them an email asking for a reciprocal link, your chances of having your request accepted increases many times over! When these webmasters visit your well maintained link directory page, they are more than willing to share links with you!

The result is that you get added traffic from their visitors too, who may be interested in buying your products or services. And, if a visitor directly lands on one of the directory pages on your website, looking for pet accessories say, he may stop to buy some pet food from you too! So it’s a total win-win situation for you! These directory pages will obviously get a high search position if they are linked to related high-quality websites.

Time Consuming Process

Well, you will need to spend considerable amount of time and effort in finding good quality websites, visiting them, adding them to your directory and then sending each one of them customized email request for link partnership!

Moreover, you will also need to maintain the directory pages properly, with proper page titles and URLs. In other words, you will have to make sure those directory pages are search engine optimized, so that people actually land on them.

Besides, you don’t want those webmasters to see a haphazard, free-for-all, poorly organized link page. You will need to organize the links on the page into proper categories and labels, so that both the webmasters as well as the search engines love the page, and of course, your visitors too!

Popularity: 19% [?]

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: 28% [?]

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: 23% [?]

You have probably heard and read a lot about the concept of search engine optimization. This is important for all Internet marketers in order to be found by prospective customers online. This is possible through keywords, which are identified through keyword research. Keywords must be relevant to your business since they bring visitors to your website.

For your website to rank high with the search engines that are responsible for bringing focussed traffic, some serious keyword research is essential so that you can find out exactly which ones are used by your visitors. Finding these keywords will also enable you place them in the right locations.

You can shortlist your keywords via brainstorming with peers and friends, competition analysis, and use a keyword research tool for evaluation. What we now want to share with you are crucial criteria to bear in mind when you select keywords to receive targeted website traffic:

• Select key phrases rather than keywords, as you are likely to get better- focussed traffic and appear in more specific results
• Keywords must be related to your website and be relevant to your product or service on offer
• The more specific the keywords, the better the chances of prospective customers visiting your website and the lesser the chances of facing competition
• Pay attention to the variation of keywords used in different locations across the world. Accordingly web pages must be optimized for the audience. The English say ‘lift’ while the Americans call it an elevator - so take care to use the right ones at the appropriate domains.
• You primary keyword can be used for website optimization. The secondary keywords can be used to draw traffic.
• Remember that keyword research tools are effective, but your own knowledge also counts just as much.
• The final keyword list must be tested. This may seem like a tedious process, but it is necessary in order to enable you finalize a list that is effective and ranks well with the search engines
• A variety of relevant keywords is more effective than the same keyword being used over and over.
• Keywords must be located in the title tags, header tags, ALT tags, anchor text, URLs, meta tags and comments. There are efficient tools that help by suggesting the best ways to do this.
• Also add keywords that are spelt slightly differently by users to your list since they are equally responsible for traffic
• By including a site search function on your website you will be able to monitor the keywords being used by your visitors, as well as making it easy for them to navigate your site.
• There are keywords that have a high search rate even though they are low in terms of competition. These keywords are just as important.

To be successful, keywords must have a high conversion rate. This means you must be able to turn your visitors into customers.

Popularity: 23% [?]

Here’s a compilation of all the things you must be wary about in your on-going list building process:

• You’ve got to remember that when a visitor signs up on your list, he or she is doing the same with your competition - and there is nothing you can do about it. Your list will receive email messages from both you and the competition. Over time, they may decide to use the ‘unsubscribe’ option and there’s a good chance it could be with you. Is there anything you can do about that? Yes - one way to stop this from happening is to design your emails so that they are distinctive. Don’t make the mistake of sending the same email twice. It’s also important to be alert about what the competition is doing - and BE different.
• You are probably signed up with several affiliation programs that are good money-earners. You are selling someone else’s products here, and you will obviously be sending traffic to a squeeze page. This is where the traffic will register with the original seller whose products you are promoting. But hey, granted you will earn commission on sales through you; however, what about the contact information of the customer who bought the product? It is the original seller who gets to be in touch with the customers - what about you? Perhaps you have other products you’d like to offer them! So what you do is - send these customers to your own squeeze page first! Let them sign up here for something in return - maybe an ebook or information related to the product. From here, they can move to your affiliate’s squeeze page through your free download or even your autoresponder. When you do this you will also be able to build your lists - and a targeted one at that!
• WOW! So you have a free ebook to give away. There are plenty of free ebooks that you can distribute even if you didn’t write them. But wait - did you notice that this ebook has the name and URL of its author with an optin form where the visitor must register to get actual access to the ebook? What this means is your subscribers will head there directly. What do you do then? You can counter this by getting your potential customers to first opt in to YOUR list before receiving the ebook download link. You can even bundle two or more ebooks that relate to the same topic as a gift for signing up. In fact, better still; get the resale rights of the book, rebrand it with your own opt in form so that everyone is happy.

The important thing is to use list-building methods in such a way that you get the contact info of the visitor and keep them!

Popularity: 18% [?]

Two excellent reasons for search engine optimization are: high rankings with the search engines, increased traffic, letting your visitors find you easily and of course, profits.

A short note on keywords here - be ready with your list of keywords and key phrases. Basic search engine optimization starts with keyword location. Here are some tips on where to place keywords:

1. Title tag - to help the search engine know what the page is about. Title tag is right at the top of your page within the ‘head’ tags. Placing the keyword here will attract focussed traffic to your website. Since it is the text in the title tag that is visible to the traffic, use the text keyword there.
2. The keywords you use in the anchor text must be the ones used to link to that page with other pages on your website. Try and link as many keywords as possible to a specific page
3. The text in the title tag must also appear in the body of the page so that the search engines know that it relates to the title. It will also let your traffic know that they are in the right place for the info they are looking for. The same keywords must be used in the text of the content on the page.
4. Avoid using the same title tag on all pages of your website. If you do this, the search engines will assume that all pages are identical and wont index them. Use the headline of your page as the title tag. This will tell the search engines what the page pertains to and index it.
5. Keyword stuffing is bad practice. Spamming the description or keyword meta tag must also be avoided.
6. Forget about link farms - search engines don’t approve of them. when you link to another site, you must make sure that the content is complementary and relates to your site.
7. In your navigation menu, put links instead of images - search engines cannot read images. Instead, use keywords in these links so that when your visitor has the mouse over these links the title of the link is visible to them.
8. If you have to have images, describe them with the alt tag. Search engines will find it easy to index these images and find your page. it will also help view your website in any browser.
9. Preferably go for manually submitting your website to the search engines. The use of submission software could make you end up paying a penalty or even getting banned. Once submitted, the search engine robots will follow your links and index your website.

You must also use your keywords in domain name, file names and folders. Make sure you have a site map for your website for easy navigation. Good content goes without saying.

Popularity: 29% [?]

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% [?]