SuperTips Ezine: Issue 06

May 5th, 1999
Harvey Segal, Editor:

IN THIS ISSUE

1. Greetings!

2. Feature Article "10 Quick Traffic Building Tips for Any Web Business"
- by Terry Dean

3. Readers Forum

4. Publications of Interest

5. More "Super" Tips
5.1 Improve that Advert !
5.2 $25 well spent

6. Next Issue

1. Greetings!

Hello folks,

Have you ever tried explaining your online business to someone who has never used a PC or hasn't a clue what the Internet is all about ?

Frustrating though it may be it can actually prove a most worthwhile exercise as it forces you to focus on what exactly are the key issues and goals of your business.

I had this conversation with a colleague who had no Internet knowledge but managed to strip away all the surrounding embellishments and sum up succinctly what one needs to succeed online, simply
1. An in-demand product set up at your web site
2. Lots of visitors to your web site

There you are - we've not mentioned all the refinements such as web page design, good advertising techniques, automation of tasks, credit card ordering facilities and so on.

The second point reinforces what we already know but probably often overlook: one of our highest priorities must be getting traffic to our site.

That's why tips for achieving this are so popular and we will see today some great ideas from Terry Dean in our main article.

You'll also see further ideas in our other sections - and my non-technical colleague helps us out some more.

Regards, Harvey

2. Feature Article "10 Quick Traffic Building Tips for Any Web Business"
- by Terry Dean

The question most often asked on the Internet is, "How do I get more traffic to my site?"

You would think that an answer for this question would be extremely simple, but it really isn't. It isn't that it is so hard to get traffic to web sites. The problem is that there are so many different avenues of traffic generation you can choose from for any site.

In this short report, we are going to cover 10 different low or no cost ways you can get traffic to any web site. This isn't even an extensive list. I could easily name off 5 -10 more ways you could be getting traffic to your site, but I don't want to overwhelm you with too many options.

The reason that most people don't get traffic is that they "Try" something, and then they give up. The key to any marketing is testing and then improving. If a method doesn't work for you on your first try, second try, or even your twelfth try, it doesn't matter. Keep going anyway.

Read everything you can about that subject and keep trying different things. If you have chosen to use classified ads for your products and services, try different ezines. Use AOL classifieds. Try Yahoo's classifieds. Create new headlines for your ads. Create new sales letters to follow-up.

Classified ads can work if you figure out how to work them for your product or service.

The same aspects are true of many different types of Internet advertising. They work, but only if you are willing to keep on going even if you fail a dozen times trying. You keep learning and you keep testing.

So, without further ado, here are your ten killer Internet Traffic Building Techniques:

1. Search Engine Submissions

Almost everyone starts right here. They know that search engines bring 84% of the traffic to most web sites, so they know they have to submit to them.

To achieve the top rankings in the search engines will take some serious work. You have millions of competitors, but you have an advantage. You are willing to learn and do what it takes to get to the top.

To achieve the top traffic building positions, you will need to study everything you can on search engine positioning and meta tags. Then, you will have to test. Use a tool such as Web Position to check your rankings, examine your competitors who are beating you, and then edit your pages.

If you are willing to keep going through this process and learning each step along the rise of your rankings, you too could soon be generating 100s of hits daily from top search engine positions.

2. Classifieds in Ezines

The biggest bang for your marketing buck will come from ezine advertising. For $10 - $50 per classified ad, you can reach thousands of potential customers in your targeted market.

With thousands of different ezines available, you can expand into hundreds of them once you find a classified ad and follow-up system that works for your product or service.

By testing your little classified ads and expanding into more and more ezines every week, you could quickly start reaching millions of people weekly and earning an income to match.

3. AOL Classifieds

AOL currently has over 15 million members. If I could only place one classified ad for any web site or product, it would probably be here. For $12.50, you can have your ad placed in view of people on a service where the ads are actually read.

I know several people earn a couple of hundred dollars weekly by placing little classified ads just using AOL's system. The key on AOL is to create a killer headline for your ad so it stands out above the hundreds of other ads in every category.

4. Yahoo Classifieds

There are very few free classified ad sites that actually work. Yahoo is one of the shining lights that stands out above the crowd of mediocre free ad sites. Yahoo has more traffic than any other Internet site and it definitely shows when you place your ads here.

On Yahoo, you are allowed to place 10 ads at a time, so do so. A little key to creating effective ads here is to delete your ads every few days and replace them. Then, you will be able to keep your ads towards the top of the list and receive more free readers.

5. Trade Links

If you develop a strong content oriented site you can persuade thousands of other webmasters to link to you or to trade links with you. There are even a few consultants online who have developed linking campaigns and have achieved a million hits a month or more for their customers within 90 days by linking with the right sites.

You can do this yourself. The key is to develop content people want to link to and then get out there and make the contacts by visiting people's sites, sending out personalized emails to webmasters you have visited, and networking in discussion groups.

6. Participate in Leveraged Banner Exchanges

Regular banner exchanges don't work that well. Although they can produce a few extra hits a month for your site, they never seem to give you the kind of traffic building leverage you need to grow to hundreds of thousands of hits a month.

A new wave of banner exchanges is growing though at unprecedented rates. What they do that separates them apart is that they will give you a 5% to 20% credit of banner impressions of anyone's site that you refer. If you refer a site which gets a million hits a month, you would get 200,000 free impressions a month extra.

There are around 5 - 10 of these types of banner exchanges now available although my favorite is at http://www.zprofit.com - but I am a little biased since I am an owner of it. It gives you a full 20% traffic bonus for all referrals and can get your site moving in a hurry with it's turn-key traffic plan available at http://www.zprofit.com/theplan.htm

7. Start Your Own Mailing List

If you want to make money online, start your own mailing list. It is the best way to keep contact with your prospects and your customers. It is also the best way to build the credibility you need to make sales to your targeted market.

A little less talked about advantage to having your own mailing list is that you can use it to trade ads with other ezines out there. If you trade ads with 10 other ezines out there, you could easily be saving yourself $100 - $500 in advertising expense every week!

8. Banner Ads on Individual Sites

When people think of banner ads they almost always think of the major search engines or major sites online. Well, I have been advertising lately with banners, and I can tell you something.

Making money using banner ads on these high traffic high cost sites is extremely difficult and risky.

These sites will charge you $20 per 1,000 impressions to general audiences and $50 per 1,000 impressions to targeted markets.

By seeking out individual sites who get high traffic (50,000 hits to 1,000,000 hits a month), you can actually get rates of $1 - $10 per 1,000 impressions of your banner ads. By finding 10 - 20 of these sites, you can quickly build yourself an overwhelming river of traffic to your site for a much lower cost than the major search engines.

9. Advertise on Goto.com

Goto has come up with a great advertising plan for businesses. You can actually go to http://www.goto.com and bid on traffic for your site. You pick keywords for your site and then place a bid of whatever price you are willing to pay for traffic from that keyword...generally you would bid .01 to .10 per keyword.

Then, Goto will only charge you for the actual hits you receive from them. If you bid one penny for the keyword and you receive 10 hits from it today, you only owe 10 cents for the day. This low cost traffic building method cannot be beat anywhere.

The key to making it work for you is to come up with hundreds of possible keywords for your site and then bid low amounts such as a few cents on each. Then, check your stats continually and find out what kind of traffic you are getting.

10. Free Stuff

The KING of traffic is free stuff. If you want to get real traffic to your site, provide the kind of free content and services that your market is hunting desperately for.

Provide free articles to other web sites. Provide free downloads. Give away free CGI programs. Provide hundreds of links to needed tools. Provide links to downloadable software. Give your visitors what they want and they will keep coming back and referring their friends.

Terry Dean is the owner of Business Systems 2000 which offers a FREE weekly newsletter read by over 17,000 Internet marketers, FREE reports, and other free tools. If you want to increase your Internet Profits in the next 30 days, contact him today at webmaster@bizpromo.com or visit http://www.bizpromo.com

3. Readers Forum

From reader Alice Lawton

" ... The Special Report Network reminds me of a chain letter scam. Convince me it's genuine and I'll join !"

First of all an explanation to those of you who have not come across the SRN (Special Report Network). My non-technical colleague was able to remove all the jargon and give me this excellent analogy:

If you live in a big city you will have seen men walking around with 'sandwich boards' which are effectively posters carrying an advert.

Suppose you are the owner of Joe's cafe and you decide to spend a few hours each day walking about with your own board and an advert "Visit Joe's cafe". This starts to attract customers.

A colleague likes the idea and also want to carry a board for his own business. Now it so happens that you have an endless supply of free boards so you come to the following arrangement.

You give your colleague a free board on condition that his advert on the top of the board is followed by your advert on the lower half.
He's happy - both of you benefit.

The idea spreads and you have lots of people doing the same, earning you free advertising.

Now you have a flash of inspiration.
Why not have several ads on one board, not too many - or they will lose their effect. About 6.

Tell your colleagues that they can offer the free boards to others who will then have their advert at the top while the first two slip down to positions 2 and 3.

And as you can see this can progress on and on.

So after introducing a few people to this arrangement you can sit back and without further effort there will be a gradual increasing flow of readers of your ad and consequently customers.

This is the principle of the SRN.

All that you need to supply is the title and Url of a report offering useful free information.

When you join up a web page will be automatically generated with a link to your report in position 1 followed by links to 5 other reports.

By simply promoting this page - in your own newsletter for example - you will find that as others join up your report will begin to 'spread' across the Net.

And now - back to Alice's question.

My main criticism of the SRN is that their advertising material suggests that you can soon have thousands and thousands of visitors reading your report. For example
*You get 10 people - that's 10 sites with your link in position #2.
*They each sign up 10 which totals 100 sites with your link in position #3.
and so on.

This is very reminiscent of those chain letter style campaigns and maybe, Alice, this is what is concerning you. If they toned this down a little I'm sure it would be even more effective. It's like saying, in our example, that very soon there would be 1000 people coming to Joe's cafe every day.

Apart from that I have to make clear that it's not a chain letter, there's no money involved and no unsolicited bulk mailing.

Since I joined the SRN I have found an ongoing and increasing number of visitors to my site with no effort on my part other than the first 5 minutes to sign up and post a link to my report.

If effortless advertising appeals to you then you can sign up for free here .

And here's a tip on how I measure the success of the SRN and how I make it more effective:

In order to track the hits generated by the SRN you can of course check your website log and see where links are coming from using the codes of the agent you have signed up, and also of those that they have signed up and so on.

Or if you are unable to access your logs then you can use a counter on the page where you have your report and see how many hits it receives.

But of course you won't be able to differentiate between the hits from your SRN links and the hits from other pages which are linking to that report.

In such cases I always set up a simple 'doorway' type page. My ad in the SRN will point to this doorway page which in turn points to my report.
On this page I can add a welcome to readers of the Special Report Network, tell them about other features of my site, offer a subscription to my newsletter before finally providing a link to my report.

And I know that all hits to that page come exclusively from the SRN.

You can see exactly how I have done this here.

4. Publications of Interest

Here is our weekly selection of newsletters which offer useful free information:

Partenon Free Weekly Business Newsletter via <subscribe@partenon.com>. Here you'll discover business success tips, free offers, and business building resources to help you profit -online and off. New Subscribers get a FREE 5-line ad and a FREE E-Book!

"FREE Subscription E-zines!" Our TEXT LIST can put a "Wealth of Free Information" in your e-mail box weekly! Subscribe to some e-zines; Ask for Free Samples, Plus get Monthly Updates! mailto:Chrig98@aol.com View the entire list at: http://www.site-city.com/members/e-zine-master/

5. More "Super" Tips

5.1 Improve that Advert !

"Visit Joe's cafe"
That was not much of an advert in section 3 was it ?

You would want to make your ad really stand out amongst the other five in the SRN.

Here's two useful tips to improve an ad
- use a motivating word such as 'FREE'
- provide a sense of urgency

So how about this:
"FREE meals for children,
Visit Joe's Cafe TODAY !"

Much better, a simple change, but that should treble Joe's takings.

Those tips are just two out of many in an excellent book which shows you how to write great headlines and sales letters.

It's a FREE E-book called

"How To Make Your Ads Pull Like Crazy"

And look out for the surprise bonus in the last chapter.

Maybe I'd better rephrase the above using the tips from the book, so how about

"Get your FREE E-book NOW with a last page SURPRISE !"

5.2 $25 well spent

If you had to pay for joining the SRN above what would be a reasonable figure ?

As a comparison consider this
- an ad costing say $25 in an Ezine has limited pulling power once that Ezine issue is out of date
- your SRN ad however continues to gain more and more exposure

On that basis if I had to pay $25 to join the SRN I would jump at the chance.

This may sound irrelevant because as you know the SRN is free to join. I mention it because I recently came across a system AdDomain, very similar to SRN, but with an ingenious difference. It cost $25 to join but you get paid whenever an agent joins up.

You receive $10 for each agent and also $1 for each agent that they recruit (and so on down the line).

All this is IN ADDITION to the fact that your advert is being seen at an ever increasing number of sites, which alone would justify the cost.

When I saw this I have to admit that I threw my customary caution to the winds and joined immediately after trying out one check.

As the program is new I cannot vouch for the stability of the company or the timeliness of commission payments - although I have no reason to have any doubt.

But even if commissions were not paid I am still benefiting from the exposure that my ads are receiving.

What was the check that I carried out ?

I wrote to the organisers with a few questions. The response was immediate and with good answers. Enough to convince me.

If you have any concerns then my advice would be to join up with SRN anyway, as it's free, and see how you fare.

If you are happy then you can run both in parallel, offering it first to your SRN agents who will find an extra motivation when they realise that their promotion will also bring in commissions.

One further benefit of this program is that you can promote it to two different audiences
- those looking for a way to increase exposure to their ads
- those looking for a lucrative affiliate program

You'll find full details about AdDomain here

6. Next Issue

Back in our introduction we managed to condense the success factors for online marketing into two rules
1. Provide a needed product at your web site
2. Get lots of visitors to your web site

We've shown lots of ideas for getting traffic to your site so the question you'll now be asking is - what product to provide ?

In next week's issue Paulette Ensign will show you that the answer is ... on your doorstep. Read her article "Making Money From What You Know"

If you have your own article or tip please feel free to contribute it, with your bio information, and you will receive full credit if it gets published.

Also if you have any suggestions to improve this newsletter so that we can make it a great resource for all our readers please drop me a line