People don’t normally buy on their first visit to a web site, they like to window shop searching for the right product at the right price. Having an Autoresponder is like a having a very cheap salesman working 24 hours per day, 7 days a week, 365 days of the year.

A website offering a free ebook or download will require the potential customer to leave his or her email address for delivery. It is then the Autoresponder comes alive. Preset with instructions, an Autoresponder will send at a preset time a number of messages informing the customer of the product they looked at on your site, just like a salesperson it will let them know all about the product, what it does, why its better than your competitors, what it will do for them, and keep them up to date with the latest news and offers by text voice or video.

Professionally done follow ups will be etching the name and product into the customer’s brain, gaining their trust to buy from the site again and again.

Having a website these days is just not enough, there are millions of websites and hundreds of sites offering the same sort of products. An edge is required over competitors to entice shoppers to a site and buy. The Autoresponder alone will not give the website the edge, but I doubt the edge will be obtained without an Autoresponder.

Commonly refered to as PPC among the savy internet marketers. If you have been marketing online for any length of time you have probably seen PPC eat up your advertising dollars with little or no results.

You research and choose the hottest keywords, then burn through your daily budget in an hour with no sales. The myth that mega traffic produces mega profits is just that. A myth.

Traffic is great. Traffic improves your search engine ranking. It increases word of mouth advertising. Traffic gets you more traffic, but when you are paying a pretty penny for each and every click you want sales.

You may remember the class action law suit against Google. A group of businesses sued Google claiming the company didn’t do enough to prevent click fraud so they lost money in their PPC campaigns.

In my less than humble opinion, click fraud was not the culprit. For those who don’t know, click fraud is when someone who publishes Google Adsense ads clicks on ads on their own site to make money with no intention of purchasing the product advertised.

As I said, in my opinion click fraud was not the culprit. It was badly chosen keyword phrases. Instructions on how to choose and bid on keyword phrases are available on the PPC sites so I won’t go into the mechanics of bidding.

The important thing is, if you chose the most popular keyword your ad will show up in hundreds maybe even thousands of searches an hour. This means you will recieve hundreds maybe even thousands of clicks a day.

Mega traffic right? For instance. If you are selling hand painted porceliain piggy banks and you bid on the keyword “bank”. Who will see your ad and possibly click on it? People looking for online banking, people looking for a rock band called “Bank”, kids writing a report for school on the bankiong industry. In other words, people who don’t want what you are selling.

They will click on your ad without reading the whole thing and go “This isn’t what I want.” and hit the back button. Remember, it cost you money for them to click. It costs them nothing, so people aren’t careful about what they click on.

Choose your phrase carefully. You want clicks from visitors who are looking to buy what you are selling. Target your phrase. Bid on “porceliain hand painted piggy banks” if that is what you are selling. People who do broad searches are just looking. People who target their searches are looking to buy.

Will you get less traffic? Yes. Will you make more sales? Maybe, depending on your product, how easy your site is to navigate, your prices, etc, etc…

The point is, with PPC, looky loos cost you money. Save the most popular keywords for your free traffic sources. Target your PPC so that only credit card in hand buyers click your ads.

As a web site publisher, RSS offers a way for them to publish their information on many web sites, which in turns increases their reach on the Internet and the amount of traffic they receive to their web site. They also receive more one way links back to their web site. These benefits result in an increase in their search engine ranking.

As a web site owner, RSS allows them to receive up to date links to information on a regular basis that runs on auto pilot. When the publishing site is updated, their web site is also updated.

The result of this is that their web site is updated more regularly which also increases their search engine ranking.

The other benefit the web site owner receives from using RSS is that their information remains “fresh” which encourages their visitors to return on a regular basis.

However, the web site owner does not receive the complete articles, instead, they receive a feed that contains a title, a brief description and a link to the article that resides on the publishers web site.

The main disadvantage to the web site owner is that they trade off traffic for content, as their visitors need to visit the publishers web site to read the complete article.

But, this is a minor disadvantage considering all the benefits that RSS offers the web site owner.

The web site owner will need to install some software in order for them to receive RSS Feeds.

This software ranges from commercial packages the web site owner can purchase all the way down to freeware. Before purchasing any software you should research the different software packages that are available to ensure you get the software that is most suited to your requirements.

Fortunately, setting up an RSS feed is relatively straightforward and should only take a couple of hours at the most, and, once RSS is set up their is very little maintenance (if any) required.

If you are a web site owner, you should consider the power of RSS and what it can offer you and your web site.

And when it comes to web surfers, they come online for two reasons, One is to check there email and reason number Two is to search the web for “Information”.

How do you think the Internet received the reputation as the “Information Super-Highway”?

Because thats what its primary purpose was before they decided to commercialize it to what it is today.

And… what do ‘Articles’ contain?

The answer is quite simple… “Information”.

So, what does this have to do with you?

Be the one who supplies it.

It’s that simple.

Now, for the rest of this article I’m going to give you 10 POWERFUL reasons WHY you should and/or need to get started using ‘Articles’ as one of your online marketing strategies so you too can reap the benefits.

With that said, lets move on to reason #1.

Reason #1. Search Engines LOVE them.

It’s no secret that Search Engines LOVE content, so if you supply it on a regular basis your giving them a great reason to stop on by to take a look around.

Once there they’ll spider and index your website which is just what you want.

Reason #2. Website and Newsletter owners always need them.

I touched base on this earlier about why web surfers come online.

Website owners need fresh content to keep there visitors and/or subscribers coming back, where as newsletter publishers also need fresh content for there “email” newsletters that they publish and send to there subscriber base.

Remember the two reasons I discussed earlier about WHY web surfers come online. BINGO!

Reason #3. They generate Life Long residual Traffic.

Articles produce Life Long residual traffic because website owners, newsletter publishers and article directories archive them for there visitors to read and search through.

And since you have a ‘Resource Box’ located at the end of every article you produce with your website info and URL you’ll receive traffic.

Reason #4. Great way to get One-Way HIGH PR links.

This is probably one of the best reasons because when you offer your free information with ‘Reprint Rights’ and the website owner decides to archive your article within there article directory and their website happens to have a High PR(popularity ranking) ranking, guess what?

You’ll be able to ‘Piggy Back’ off there PR giving your website a PR boost because at the end of every article you produce your able to leave your ‘Resource Box’ with all your websites info and most important of all, your URL.

Reason #5. They’re VIRAL.

This is yet another great reason to start using articles as one of your online marketing strategies simple because your going to offer ‘Reprint Rights’ with all the articles you produce giving Website and Newsletter owners permission to publish them causing a VIRAL explosion and Traffic surge to your website.

Reason #6. You can syndicate them via RSS.

If your up to speed on the latest marketing technology called RSS(Real Simple Syndication) and you write ‘Articles’ on a regular basis you can set-up an RSS feed that web surfers and/or website owners can ‘Opt-In’ to and syndicate your ‘Articles’ via RSS to them, plus, you can also submit your RSS feed(s) to RSS search engines and directories.

Depending on how many ‘Opt-In’ this is yet another great reason to get started with ‘Articles’ and another way to generate LOTS of Free targeted traffic.

Reason #7. Bloggers with BLOGS need “Information” to.

Bloggers with BLOGS or Web-Logs need information to.

If you provide quality information related to a specific Blog that blog owner just might post your article on his/her blog for their audiences/readership to read giving you again more FREE exposure for your business.

It gets better. Blogs also use RSS(Real Simple Syndication) to syndicate there content to various search engines, RSS search engines and directories giving you again more FREE exposure through there feed.

Reason #8. Info-Product developers need it to.

Ever receive a free ebook of some sort in your Inbox with related articles inside it from other authors?

When you offer your articles with ‘Reprint Rights’ and someone decides to include your article in there ebook for a Viral marketing campaign they’re working on, guess what?

More FREE targeted traffic for YOU as that particular ebook circulates across the Internet.

Reason #9. Post them to related Forums and Newsgroups.

Remember, the Internet is all about numbers and Forums and Newsgroups contain numbers to and are yet another avenue for you to gain some extra exposure for FREE for your online business through your articles.

Just make sure you read there ‘Terms’ before you start posting because you don’t want to receive any ‘Flames’ in your Inbox.(They can be Nasty.)

Reason #10. You gain INSTANT credibility as an Expert.

The best way to gain the trust of your potential customers online is to supply them with quality “Information”.

By doing this your stepping up and telling them that you know what your talking about within the industry your in giving them a reason to look into what you have to offer further by following the link you provided within your ‘Resource Box’ at the end of your article.

WoW! Are those 10 POWERFUL reasons to get started with ‘Articles’ or what?

You get all those benefits by just producing ONE article.

The more you produce the more you’ll benefit.

Do you see how powerful ‘Articles’ are now and how they can take your online business to the next level?

I certainly hope so.

In conclusion: “Content IS King” online and will remain King for as long as the Internet exists.

It’s now up to you to step up to the plate and decide whether or not You want to tap into this ‘Proven Internet Marketing Strategy’ yourself and reap all the benefits I just finished explaining above.

Residual income by definition is recurring income that comes, usually without recurring efforts. For example… if you build a house and rent it out. The rent you receive is residual in that is comes in regularly and without extra effort beyond the initial construction. Once you pay your maintenance costs, then you have your residual profits. You will have that income as long as you keep the house – and you can keep the house as long as it brings in a profit – ideally as long as you live!

So besides real estate what kinds of investments bring residual income with minimal risk and fluctuation? Well if you have enough seed money, you buy dividend paying stocks or income trusts. You can easily research the dividend history of a company, look for ones that pay consistent dividends year after year.

Banks and insurance companies are good for this. If in the last 20 years they have never missed a dividend you have a candidate. If they have gradually increased the dividend payout over time, you also have a solid winner. You don’t really care what the stock price does, you want to know how much dividend you can depend on from the company.

A $500,000* dollar investment in a diverse group of dividend paying stocks can let your retire on perhaps $50,000 per year* (* These numbers are just examples not real or validated.) If $50k is enough for you to retire on and live on for the next however long then you know how much you need to accumulate before you can retire. Another benefit of dividend income is that the tax rate on investment income in most western countries is much less than earned income taxes. So you get a break in all directions.

I recommend that you look into some great online income generating businesses. Maybe you won’t make millions – that’s possible too. But if in the next few years you can make more money than working could get (unless you are an E*ron CEO) – and you continually re-invest that in a residual investment vehicle, you could retire real soon. Your online business would also be residual and expanding and reinvesting part of that income into other areas would create multiple streams of income.

But if you are like me, the first major hurdle is how to come up with that initial investment. Well you build a business that requires less investment. Then you use the income from there to invest in other residual income sources.

Internet Marketing is a great place to start with opportunities growing everyday as more and more people come online. It’s easier than you think, but requires some action on your part. The best thing you can do is find a mentor – someone who has done it before and is willing to help you get started. Don’t umm and haw – the worst that can happen is that you don’t make all the money you thought you would – but you have made more than you would have if you did nothing, and depending on the kind of life you have that little extra may be just enough!

In the world of Internet marketing, search engine optimization is the best way to make significant sums of money. You pursue search engine optimization by tweaking pages so that they appear high in the search results for a keyword you would like to be listed under. For instance, you might be a poet and have your site appear in the first few rankings on Google, Yahoo and MSN when someone searches for “poetry.” To do this, you would optimize your pages, a subject beyond the scope of this article.

One problem with search engine optimization is it is a tricky beast. Not everyone can get high rankings and, even if you do, it can take three to nine months to see the results of your work. That is a long time to wait, so the search engines came up with a short term solution. While they were certainly trying to be of assistance, it is also a good way for them to make money.

The solution is called pay-per-click advertising. There are various names, but the basic premise is pretty simple. While you wait for the optimized pages to get high rankings, you can create ads and pay for placement on the various search engines. As a result, you get immediate traffic to your site. On the downside, you have to pay for it which means you better be keeping an eye on your return on investment.

The pay-per-click service on Google is called Adwords and is one of the better ones out there. You create an account with Google, create a small advertisement linking to your site and submit a credit card. Every time someone clicks on your advertisement, Google bills you. Bidding is a subject unto itself, but that is essentially how the process works with Google Adwords.

There are a couple of downsides to Google Adwords. My biggest pet peeve is the size of the ads. You are allowed very little space, so qualifying traffic before they click your ad is pretty difficult. Click fraud is the second area that gets people hot and bothered. Essentially, you just have to accept that a certain percentage of clicks are bogus. I have problems with acceptance, so I try to get organic rankings as quickly as possible.

Overall, however, Adwords has definitely proven to be the best platform for me. Some hate it, some love it. You might want to give it a try to see if it works for you and your web business. Check it out here.

Now this article is for internet marketing newbies, so the strategies for website promotion are fairly basic therefore experienced internet marketers are under no compulsion to proceed.

If you are a newbie, however, please pay attention as these website promotional strategies are what you will need to employ over and over again every time you have a new product to promote. Apply these basic techniques and the bedrock of success is laid for you.

Remember, no traffic, no sales.

Free listings in Search Engines: Everyone loves to get something for free. The same applies to free traffic.
Consider building a keyword list related to your product before you build your website. This way, you write your website content crafting in those keywords for which the site needs to be optimised. Don’t overdo it though as the search engines are becoming too smart and may think you are attempting to trick them. The more pages you have, the easier it is to have your site optimised for your chosen keywords.

Pay Per Click Advertising: Here the search engines list your site based on your bid for a particular keyword(s). Your position in the search listing strongly depends on how much you are prepared to pay for those keywords and the bidding price is also dependent on the popularity and competitiveness of your niche. This Pay Per Click (PPC) listings are the ones you see on the right side of your screen in the search results in, for instance, Google and Yahoo who now own Overture.
It’s always a good idea to know your website statistics especially conversion rates to determine how much you will be prepared to pay for those keywords – what I call your bid price affordability. This way you don’t operate your PPC Campaign at a loss.
Know Your Numbers!

Ezine Advertising: You search for popular ezines (these are electronic magazines or newsletters) in Google or Yahoo by entering Keywords ‘ezines directory’.
Visit these directories and look out for ezines that fit your products and also the subscription base of those ezines. You then choose to place Solo ads, Sponsor ads or Classified ads on ezines of your choice at an agreed price. The choice of which type of Ad and what ezine(s) to place your Ad would depend on your personal preference and your budget as well.

Linking Your Website: You need to set out linking strategies that can boost your business in two ways. First is that the more links you have, the more the search engines will rank your site and consequently your position in the organic search engines. Secondly, you get traffic deservedly from your link partners website. I’m sure you will welcome targeted free traffic from any source.

Affiliate Marketing: Affiliate program are a great source of free traffic and income at no cost to your good self. Affiliates are business partners who sign up to sell your product for an agreed commission. You can make a fortune on the internet from a great product if you have tons of affiliates working for themselves and you. An affiliate software is necessary to track your affiliate sales, visitors. Don’t forget to provide your affiliate with marketing tools and training materials to assist them.

Offline Advertising: This is quite often ignored. Just because your business is online does not mean you cannot generate traffic offline. You will be surprised at how potent this weapon can be. Write Press Releases about your product, Product review etc and send it to editors of newspapers and magazine. The one I love most is what we refer to as web ad. Here you use classified ads in newspapers and magazines to drive traffic to your site.

These are basic strategies you must have mapped out before commencing work on your website. This way you can start marketing the very day your website goes live.
Always think marketing first.

By choosing a domain name that targets the specific keywords for your website you’ll flood your website with laser targeted traffic by enhancing click through response.

Pick a domain name that gives your prospects what they most desperately desire. By including the keywords in your domain name that are your customers desires, including them in your marketing messages and your website content you can’t help but flood traffic to your website!

Wondering what your customer’s desires are? If so, you’ll need to determine what your really selling. Let’s look at an example product here: home security alarm system.

Keep in mind few people know, nor do they care what the heck the product looks like or the features of the product such as size, color, weight, speed, or availability. The only thing they have an interest in is the “results” your product will achieve for them. It all boils down to what’s-in-it-for-me?

Why would a prospect purchase a home alarm system? What’s-in-it-for-them? If you think for just a moment you’ll come up with the right answer.

Yes, it’s to protect their jewelry or valuables while they are at work or when the house is empty.

You must stop thinking of yourself or the features of your product to determine what your customer’s deepest desires are. By turning your product or service features into “benefits” or “results” you’ll be able to hit their hot buttons and flood traffic to your website in the process.

The easiest way to turn features into benefits is to list all the features of your product or service on a piece of paper first. (a feature is a characteristic of a thing: size, color, weight, speed, availability) Then one by one turn each feature into a benefit for your customer. What’s-in-it-for-me– save money? youthfulness? friends? security? money? power? luxury? prestige? thinner body? obedient pet?

The traffic driving potential of keyword targeted domain names is awesome, provided that you research your target market and satisfy their “true” needs, desires and benefits. Once you have established this system for marketing, you’ll be able to use your domain name to construct specific ad campaigns targeted to specific markets even if your website offers multiple products and services.

To take it a step further, you could formulate a domain name that works like a headline for a classified ad. When you break a headline down it should have several different parts. It should fan the flames of desire with a hint of information about solving a specific problem, satisfying a need, providing a benefit, or invoking curiosity with a call to action. Your domain name should contain as many of these “headline characteristics” as possible. Try and phrase the keywords into something relatively short, catchy and easy to remember.

Keep in mind “what’s-in-it-for-me?” as to “what your really selling”. The job of your domain name is to act like a headline to drive targeted traffic to your website by “scratching the itch of your customers.” If you’ve found the right words to scratch that itch, then ONLY YOU can put it to use in your domain name. You’ll find that not only will you do better on your search engine rankings you’ll also attract a lot more attention with your pay per click ads or any type of advertising you use.

For instance, if the purpose of your website is golfing, but the majority of your written material is about something other than golf it may likely provide a disconnect with visitors who are interested in golf (which is why they came to your site). Such a scenario will also reduce your ranking in most search engine results.

Search engines utilize “spider” technology that scrolls through your website looking for those things that connect the content of your website with the purpose of your website. The more often it finds words related to the intent of your site the greater your website will rank. In turn, your website will be seen more often by those using a search engine to find the products, services or information that you provide.

When writing content for your website you should map out applicable ‘keywords’ or ‘key phrases’ that make your site content relevant to your site purpose. So, using the golf example, you might write articles that focus on using keywords of key phrases such as golf, golfing lessons, golf instructions, learn how to golf, golfing videos, etc.

The relevance of your website is important to you, your visitor and ultimately the search engines whose goal is to provide their visitors with the most relevant sites available. Once you determine the target of your website you may wish to visit the following site to assist you in helping to determine which keywords or key phrases are best suited for your site.

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

The site above allows you to type in the keyword that best describes your site. In turn, it provides you with multiple keywords or key phrases that will assist you in crafting the most comprehensive content for your site.

If you have trouble writing applicable content you may wish to find a content writer who can assist you in research and writing. Hiring such a writer can add professionalism and comprehensive content to your site. Visitors should not be distracted by misspelled words and other errors and a professional writer can be a sound investment in your online objectives. Many qualified writers can also take your ideas and polish them up so you work in tandem with a writer in crafting highly specific content for your site. You should define for any writer you work with what specific keywords or key phrases you require. It may even be beneficial to create several articles that focus on one specific keyword or key phrase.

When adding content to your website, it is important to think ahead. Define your main pages then add simple navigation tools to each page of your site. We will talk more about this in our next article.

Important information should be easily accessed on your website. Visitors should be able to locate pages within two clicks of the mouse. Without navigational structure your content will essentially be useless to visitors who have difficulty locating the material they need.

The primary rule for website development is to ensure that your visitors can click back to the homepage FROM EVERY PAGE OF YOUR WEBSITE.

Step 1: DECIDE WHAT YOUR BUSINESS IS GOING TO BE

Step 2: CREATE A WEBSITE

This article will extend the ideas for CREATING A WEBSITE. In the last article we talked about the design of the site which provides a critical first impression with your visitors. Remember, with website design it is better to have no online presence than a lousy one.

As important as the design is, you must convince your visitors that your site is worth a return visit. This is typically done through QUALITY content throughout your site.

A quick tour through cyberspace will show that there are many good looking websites that contain nothing of value for their visitors. These types of sites lack the longevity needed in today’s cyber savvy culture. Style and substance must go hand in hand.

Because content is a key to website development, you must determine whom your target audience is. If your target audience is fishermen, it would make little sense to include Grandma Sarah’s recipe for apple pie. It doesn’t take long to visit a variety of websites that contain advertisements for products that have nothing to do with the website. It is also easy to find websites that contain content that, while interesting, have little to do with the products, goods, services or information the site is expected to provide. When a website owner misses their target audience it leaves the impression that they have little skill in providing the very thing the visitor came to the website for – the very thing you wanted them to leave with.

Once you decide who your target audience is, you need to determine content and direction for your site.

For example, if you are selling fishing equipment, you may want to have other content related to fishing such as fishing tips or fishing locations, etc. You will want to provide content that will keep your visitors coming back for more.

Many site builders have discovered a message board to be an effective tool for bringing likeminded consumers together. You can make this happen on your website with very little time commitment required. Whatever the focus of your website, the message board should operate with a similar focus. This can provide an additional tool to drive visitors back to your site.

Visitors can be consumers of either products or information. If you are effectively catering to their informational needs you can still derive a financial return by providing links to shopping resources that may benefit the visitor. It is also possible to create a specialty shop of your own that caters to a specific segment of fishermen. If you don’t want to develop your own shop, you can link with existing outlets that provide a financial return for every sale directed from your site. You may not get rich from this approach, but it provides an added benefit for your visitor and may be another means of encouraging their return.

Unless you are independently wealthy you will need to find a source for revenue to pay for site development and ongoing hosting and other incidental costs. Make sure to develop open space on your website to allow for the inclusion of sold advertising once your site takes off. Always think ahead.

Your website is something akin to a canvas just waiting for a brilliant piece of art to take shape. Carefully map out the pages you will need for your site. First, you need a homepage - then determine what other pages you will need.

Your homepage should accurately explain and summarize your website’s mission. Work through the mission carefully to minimize words while maximizing the clarity of the purpose statement. If you are selling a product or service your homepage needs to catch your visitor’s attention immediately. Don’t make your visitor search to discover what it is your site does – it’s a game very few will play.

The following is a list of common pages visitors expect in a website:

Contact Us
About Us
Products
Services
Links

These pages are often called by other names, but once you determine the primary categories for your home page you will want to divide your content into appropriate pages. One of the cardinal rules of site development is to always make sure your site is easy to navigate. What this means is that your visitors should be able to easily find what they are looking for. If finding the material they need requires a site search, you may have lost a return customer. Don’t make them search for content. On the other hand you should always provide a prominent link back to your homepage on EVERY page of your site.

When you place multiple ads, images and flashing text on your web pages, your visitor may leave confused and frustrated. Keep things simple – never over produce a webpage and make your content easy to read. A key component to this objective is to maintain a consistent and universally utilized font such as Arial or Times New Roman. Little known fonts may not display correctly for all visitors and may provide further frustration.

BE SURE there are no spelling errors anywhere on your site! Spelling mistakes make a website look very unprofessional. It doesn’t take long to load the content onto a word processor to check for common mistakes in both spelling and grammar. Having someone proof your pages can also add to the professional objectives you desire.

Should you require assistance in devising quality content for your site, you may want to consider hiring a freelance writer to assist in content development. It will be well worth the investment!

When developing content for your website, keep in mind that your text should be as search engine friendly as possible. We will talk more about this in Part 4.

Please look for Part 4 of Building Your Way to Online Success.