There are no secrets: there are no magic formulas. Forget about
making money fast while you sleep. Sure, you can automate
processes so that your business continues to operate while you
are snoring away, but there is no substitute for your initial
application and hard work.
That's the bad news. The good news is that it isn't difficult.
The even better news is that most of it can be done for FREE.
OK, assuming that you have built a website appropriate to your
business (no, one of those self-replicating ones will NOT do!)
and that you are publishing a regular ezine. Both need content:
both need quality, but there's plenty of help out there to
achieve it.
Now what you need is traffic, or in less technical terms, people
looking at your site, your business, what you have to offer.
How?
Every single day we are bombarded with plans and schemes which
claim to beat the system, drive masses of traffic to your site,
make you rich overnight, all your dreams come true so that
you'll live happily ever after. All similarities to a fairy-tale
are decidedly intentional.
It is confusing. Where do you start?
Now I am not saying that these things don't work, except the ones
which are undoubtedly scams! Generally, every single one will
give you some benefit, some link out there, but no single one is
the magic answer. No matter what they claim. Doing them all will
take time, but if you work through methodically, each and every
one will help you in some way.
So to eliminate some of the confusion, here is my Five Point Plan
for organising your promotion and traffic building efforts. It
isn't the be-all and end-all either, but it is a good, organised
start to a regular process. Incorporate one item from each step
each and every single day and you will keep making a little
progress and after a while it becomes self-perpetuating.
1. Build subscribers to your newsletter and keep sending them
back to your site for something; offers, content, freebies. These
will be your best customers: your best sales force. Concentrate
on building rapport with them and above all make it real easy for
them to recommend your site. Consider http://recommend-it.com and
give them an incentive for doing so.
2. Submit to search engines once a month. Your daily chore is to
ensure that your site is fresh, your META tags in place, your
links live, etc. I recommend http://SelfPromotion.com You can use
it for FREE or pay a small amount to have your details kept in
the system to simplify repeat submissions. You will find all the
information and guidance you'll ever need right there and this
service works. You get listed.
3. Concentrate on getting reciprocal links with other sites which
are similar to and complimentary to yours. There are specialist
directories for finding people who want to swap links, try
http://www.swap-resources.com or use the search engines and find
out who is linked to your competitors. Write and propose swaps to
the webmasters. You'll get as much, if not more, targeted traffic
from these links than you will from the search engines, plus
having links back to your site will improve your ranking on the
latter because of the way the link-popularity algorithms work.
Make sure those who link to you are listed on the search engines.
Do it for them if they are not.
4. Once a day, submit classifieds ads, promotion to lists and
newsgroups (only where appropriate).
5. Repeat steps 1-4 incessantly.
About the Author
Pamela Heywood is webmistress of http://www.tucats-design.com
- Building Your Online Business Instinctively. Subscribe to the
weekly TuCats Mewsletter (sic) mailto:subscribe@tucats-design.com
and get regular FREE hints, tips, articles and resources.