Friday, September 22, 2006

Top 5 Ways To Generate Low Cost Website Traffic

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

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

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

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

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

Exchange Links

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

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

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

Traffic Exchange

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

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

Write and Submit Articles

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

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

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

Make a Newsletter.

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

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

Join Online Communities and Forums

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

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

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Six Steps for Starting a Home Business

Many today are looking to start a home-based business. Countless programs claim that they can make folks rich overnight. However, scams abound. So, what are business opportunity seekers to do to when looking to work from home? How can they tell if an opportunity is not only legitimate, but also a moneymaker?

The answer is to use this six step question formula when looking to start a business from home. If you answer yes to these questions, chances are, you have found a red-hot business opportunity with the potential to make you wealthy. Let's discover what the six step question formula is.

#1. Find out if you can make huge sums of money without selling anything. Is this possible? Yes! There are business opportunities that do not involve selling. This works primarily if the business uses a powerful Direct Response Marketing approach. The beauty of this approach is that it attracts all the right people and turns away the wrong ones. Folks are brought into the home-based business system automatically! Direct Response Marketing also eliminates the biggest objections, educates people about the major advantages of a product or service, and best of all, it makes people want to buy now! Therefore, finding an opportunity like this is crucial.

#2. Discover if the work at home opportunity offers help, support, and guidance from experts with a proven track record of making millions of dollars. This will require some research. It's safe to say that many opportunities will fail miserably in this area. However, if such a home business opportunity is found, your chance of success will be very high.

#3. Check to see if the company offers long-term opportunity. In other words, is the system the company has in place designed to make people money for the next 10, 20, and even 30 years? Avoid opportunities that sound golden, but will lose their glitter very quickly.

#4. Determine whether the home-based business opportunity can produce automatic income. It is useless to become involved in a business opportunity that will take months before any results or income can be seen. Why? People will usually become discouraged and quit if efforts are not rewarded in a timely manner. Avoid opportunities that will take months before any type of cash reward will be seen.

#5. Always ask if the start up is easy. If it will take three months to start up the business, why even become involved?

#6. This could be the most important question. Never forget to ask if there is an exit strategy. This is not being negative at all. On the contrary, it is being smart! Remember, there are no guarantees in life and business; things can and do change. Thus, it is always smart and never negative to have a back-up plan or exit strategy.

Starting a business from home is a dream that many people have. However, one does not want to make a decision blindly and without careful thought and consideration. You can't go wrong when using this six step question formula. Your odds for success will be significantly higher if you do!

Sunday, September 17, 2006

Suffering from Information Overload?

The age that we live in is called the information age. And it's said that the Internet is the information superhighway.

If you're an e-business owner, it's possible that you've been run over on the information superhighway. Unfortunately, the traffic is so heavy that it's difficult to get up! The information just keeps coming and coming and coming.

What can be done about all of the information coming at us all at once? What strategies can be used to manage the flow of information so that you only have to deal with the important stuff?

First, let's look at what information you've got coming at you:

If you're online all day long, there's a good chance that a lot of it is from browsing around the Internet, looking for information that you can use to build your business. Perhaps you get emails from people (as well as spam)...including vendors, customers, and partners. You probably get reports from your advertising efforts, like Google Adwords, and there may be times (like when you own several websites) that you have to manage such information as domain registrars.

The first thing you want to do is deal with the flow coming in:

Before reading any information, give it a quick glance and decide if it is critical to your business efforts or not and if it is, save it. If it isn't, delete it.

- Resist the urge to review everything with a fine-tooth comb and resist the urge to respond to emails as soon as they come in.

- Decide whether you need to spend two hours gathering marketing information or only one hour.

- Prioritize information coming in so that you only deal with the most important information and can simply glance at and correctly file the less important information.

Review and prioritize to first reduce the flow.

The second thing you want to do is manage the flow that you're allowing through:

To do this, you'll want to create systems and use databases so you can keep track of everything. Not everything needs all of your attention right away. You can use information managers and task managers to help you manage the flow of information coming in to you.

What's the end result? You'll have less information to deal with...so you'll have more time to spend on critical business activities like marketing...so you'll generate more customers...so you'll generate more sales...so you'll generate more profit!