While reading an interesting little book called “Knock Your Socks Off Prospecting” by William “Skip” Miller and Ron Zemke, it dawned on me that cold calling is very much like having a website and doing everything possible to entice people to further explore the site and ultimately buy your service or product.

Time and time again, the old saying – “It’s all about the customer” has its application here more than ever. AS a web designer, it’s not really about what I like to design, it’s not about my favorite sets of colors and shades or the typography used on a web site. It’s all about if all these elements tie in together in such way that the potential customer feels attracted to it and ultimately buy into whatever my client is selling.

Years ago I had a client who built and sold homes and although the market indicated that a soft color palette is more appropriate for usage on their website, the owner wanted a very corporate, clean, cold and dark website. That’s who he was and that’s what he liked. I tried to argue that the market does not respond well with this style and despite my advice he pushed further with the template he selected. Needless to say, after several months and a few hundred negative comments about the “coldness” of the site, he decided to change to a much softer image. Again – it’s not about what you like, it’s all about what the customer wants to see and hear.

In order to better understand this concept, create a 3 column list:

The first column should contain the final project delivered to the client. The second column list what should the project accomplish and in the third and final column display what was it exactly that made you stand out as a designer before anyone else. You were chosen for that reason, right?

Combining these elements together, you’ll be able to write great copy by starting with the benefits you can offer to the client and the means to accomplish that.

Do that in a bulleted list and you got yourself an avid reader who will scan through your web copy to find his/her particular need and how you solved it.

There should be no horn tooting about you or your company, your skills, talents or tools used. The client doesn’t care if you are proficient in CorelDraw or Illustrator. You need to list what interests them and how your design will help them gain more clients and or improve his bottom line.

Apply the same principle with your business card, brochure, website or blog. Try to eliminate as much as you can the “I” and “My Company” and replace it with “You – the Client” and “Your Company”.

By doing that you are addressing their needs and you will be researched for your talent of solving problems and covering needs.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 12 Secrets of a Successful Email Campaign (defactomind.com)
• Marketing Interview with Claudiu Geanta (defactomind.com)
• 8 ways we increased ecommerce sales by 10,000% ” Boagworld (boagworld.com)

Select an Affiliate Network to Join

How To Start Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is probably one of the easiest and fastest ways to start your own online business. You don’t need to have any product or much money to start, it’s easy to get into it and you can make huge profits easily. I will quickly tell you step by step how to start affiliate marketing.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Basically you promote other people’s products. When someone buys a product through one of your links, you get paid commissions for that.

How To Start:

1. Select an Affiliate Network you Want to Join
   There are many ones out there that is free to join. I suggest Clickbank.com, because they sell digital products  that you can get instantly and they pay very high commissions. (50%-70%) They also have a wide range of products.

2. Choose Products or Services You Want to Promote
   Look at the popularity of the product and do your research properly, before you make your decision. When  using Clickbank.com, you can use the Marketplace to search products. Choose one that has a gravity of at least 50. I also recommend you choose a product that you already have, or that you know a lot about. You can buy a Clickbank product and test it out for 60 days and then return it for your money back. It will make it easier to promote the product with confidence when you start affiliate marketing. For instance you can promote a product in the fitness niche, for instance Truth about Six Pack Abs or the home business niche like The  Clickbank Code.

3. Promote Your Affiliate Links
   After you chose your product, you can start promoting your affiliate link and get commissions when people buy the product, but in the long run you will make a lot more money when you start affiliate marketing if you make a money making website of your own. Get a website from a reputable hosting company like Justhost.

4. Create a Web Page About Your Experience with the Product
   People like to see personal proof, before they buy something. You can even make the deal sweeter by offering an exclusive bonus for buying through you. Then you just insert your affiliate link in your webpage. More people will buy your product this way, instead of just getting sent to the main pitch page of the product. When you start affiliate marketing you should create as many web pages as possible to put up some quality content on your site for the search engines.

5. Make a Squeeze Page to Promote
   Set up a web page with a good autoresponder form to get people to “sign up” to your web site for some kind of free offer, like an ebook or training or something else that would be valuable. This way you build a list of targeted prospects that you could market to later. This is a very important aspect when you start affiliate  marketing. It could really boost your profits in the long run.

6. Market Your Affiliate Web Pages
   Probably the most important thing to do after you start with affiliate marketing is to promote it like crazy. There are many ways to get free website traffic and if you get more capital, you can also start using paid advertising like Google Adwords.
   Important: Don’t start with this if you are not sure what you are doing, you could lose a lot of money really quickly. I recommend you educate yourself properly first and get a good guide that tells you how to use Adwords properly and then you could really boost your sales astronomically. I suggest you check out extensive proven guides like Commission Blueprint, Clickbank Affiliate Blueprints, or The Clickbank Code. Compare them first and then decide. There are also others.

Tips when you start Affiliate Marketing:

• Keep it simple
  Start with only a few products (I started with 4 you can see here) and make sure you write loads of articles and post them on Ezinearticles, linking to your affiliate web pages.

• Set yourself goals
  Make sure you stick with your daily goals, even if it is only to write one article, or a few forum comments per day.

• If you see a product is not converting, see what is wrong and fix it
  Maybe it is the product or maybe you can create a better affiliate page. If you get less than 1% conversion on your hits, you will usually not make money.

• Don’t ever give up
  When you start with affiliate marketing, it could feel like you are working hard and not make enough money, but if you follow this set of steps, you will make money, even if it takes weeks to make your first sale. Never give up!

• Simplest way to start Affiliate Marketing
  Check out ClickbankPirate. They give you easy converting squeeze pages, builds a list for you and markets to them. So you can make a nice extra income on autopilot. They do 99% of the work for you, you only need to promote the links. I would only suggest this for the really lazy or newbie affiliates who are looking for some quick income.

Now that you know how to start affiliate marketing, I wish you all the best of luck. Remember, there is no such thing as an instant way to get rich. You need to put in hard work in order to make good money with your online business.

For other valuable insights to the Web Marketing Business see the column to the right

Create Traffic to Your Website

How To Get Free Website Traffic

This is part 2 of the “How to Make Money Online Series“.

As I mentioned before, there are two ways to get traffic to your website:

Paid traffic (Google adwords) and free traffic. I will tell you how to get free website traffic. I understand that most people that start an online business, don’t have the budget for expensive Google ads. You need free traffic and lots of it. I will cut to the chase and tell you my top ways to get free website traffic.

Top ways to get free traffic:

1. Write Lots of Keyword Rich Articles
   You can write a bunch of articles on your niche and publish it on article directories like Ezinearticles or CopyBlogger.com. You can put links to your articles pointing to your site and this way you will get free website traffic that is targeted as well.

2. Go Viral & Submit Your Videos to All Video Sites
   You can use Camtasia (or Camstudio is free) or other video tools to make loads of videos and upload them to various video sites with one click using Tubemogul. Put a link to your site in the video’s description and see your free website traffic skyrocket!

3. Use Social Media (Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, etc.)
   Nothing is easier than to start a free profile with Facebook, Myspace, or whatever other social media you  choose. On Facebook you can start money making groups, post links on your and other people’s groups and also update your status with links to your site. This is a great way to build trust, a steady following to your sites or products and of course to get free website traffic. Same goes for LinkedIn and MySpace. be active and show your true potential.

4. Use Social-bookmarking
   Submit all your articles and web pages to the biggest social bookmarking sites like, digg, stumbleupon, propellor, reddit, delicious, buzz etc. Addthis is a very helpful tool to add to your pages, where you and other people can add the articles to all these sites with the press of one button. This works really well, in the short term and also builds up back links to your site. It’s definitely one of the best ways to get free website traffic, especially in the short term.

5. Become a Twitter Expert
   The new social media and micro-blogging site is becoming very popular and is one of the best ways to get thousands of people to see links and descriptions of your sites. You can get hundreds of free hits every day if you build a big Twitter following. To make this easier, you can use an automated way to get thousands of followers with The Twitter Online system or Twitter Traffic Machine. This way is potentially one of the easiest and best way to get free website traffic on autopilot.

6. Be Active in Forums
   Join a few popular forms in your niche and make a lot of interesting posts and comments. Make sure to have your link in your signature. This will also build some nice back links for free website traffic.

7. Email Marketing
   You should definitely get a good auto responder, like Aweber, and build yourself a list. In a matter of months you can have a huge list of potential customers that you can mail at will with your offers. This could bring you a lot of extra sales.

8. Create a Blog
   Create a blog at Blogspot or use WordPress to write about every product that you promote and comment on other blogs as well. Get free website traffic when you use all your links in these blogs. Blogs tend to rank up pretty high with Google, so it gives you good back links.

9. Use Viral Marketing
   This can really get you a lot of free traffic if you start to promote your link a bit. It’s pretty easy to do. Most sites require you to view a few sites to get started and you then promote your link. All the people that you referred, have to view your site as well and the people that they refer and so, for many levels deep. So if you refer 3 people, and they refer 3 people and so on and so on, you can actually get thousands of hits and get free website traffic easily. I can recommend Million Ez Hits, if you want to try viral traffic.

10. Traffic Exchange sites
    You can get an unlimited amount of free hits to your website with this kind of free website traffic, you are only limited by the time you put in. You have to surf different people’s sites and get credits for doing so. These credits are used to “buy” views for your website, banners or text ads. So, for instance, you view 100 sites, 100 people will view your site. It’s best to use a good splash page for this traffic to get the surfer’s attention. Sign up pages work well. The top Traffic exchanges I can recommend would be Easy Hits 4u, Traffic Splash and Traffic Taxis. Use all 3 at the same time, taking turns surfing the sites, you will build credits quickly.

There are many other ways to get free website traffic, and with experience you will find which ones work best for you. If you are considering using paid advertising, like Adwords, I recommend you get a good guide like The Commission BluePrint , to help you step by step to setup profitable campaigns and make huge commissions. If you don’t you could lose a lot of money very fast.

For other valuable insights to the Web Marketing Business see the column to the right or go back to part 1 of this series:”How to Make Money Online Series“.

How to Make Money Online - part I

So here they are:

Part 1 – Make a Money Making Website

Part 2 – Create Traffic to Your Money Making Website

Part 3 – Start Your Affiliate Marketing Campaign

1. Make a Money Making Website

You can always start an Internet Marketing Business without your own website and you can make some money, but you will never make it big and earn what the super affiliates earn. For that you need to make a money making website, and a good one at that. Creating your own website doesn’t have to be difficult. I am going to tell you step by step what to do so that you can make your own money making website.

What You Need:

1. Select a Reliable & Cheap Web Hosting Company

   I use Justhost, they cost less than $4/month and are very reliable. Their customer service is much better than any other web hosting companies and they use Cpanel which makes it easy to create and edit web pages, without knowing any web coding. Don’t use a free web hosting company. If you want to rank well with Google, you will have to make a money making website with a proper domain name and free sites don’t rank very well.

2. Choose a Good Domain Name

   Any name that is easy to remember and relevant is good enough. Use a .com for your money making website. I chose webproincomemarketing.com (I also have proincomemarketing.com) because I give you straight and to the point information about marketing on the web without all the hoopla.

3. Decide what Money Making Website will you Promote

   You can have a website with a lot of pitch pages, review website or you can choose a specific niche to target and make a website about that. The easiest way that is a sure money maker is probably to make a review website, where you review new products. You insert your links into these pages, and people will get sent to your affiliate offers. Important: Before you start to make a money making website, decide what your angle is going to be, how is your site going to be different from the thousands that are already on the web.

4. Create Content for Your Site

   If you want to get free traffic from the search engines, you need to create a lot of quality content on your website that is very keyword rich. That means that if you have a review site, make sure you create a bunch of reviews. Start with at least 5/day until you have about 30 pages. I suggest having at least 60 quality keyword rich content pages when you make a money making website. Choose long tail keywords and use it a lot of times in your web page. For each page, decide on your keywords and use them throughout. By using these keywords, the search engines will pick it up and get good rankings and more traffic. CONTENT IS KING for creating good sites.

5. Use Good Design in Your Money Making Website

   Make use of pictures, colors, big fonts, videos and whatever so that it is eye catching, yet simple and easy to navigate. Having web design experience will help you a lot, but with the great web editors you get, you can make a pretty decent money making website without too much experience. Make sure it is user friendly, then it should be okay. If you need a FREE template, I built some so feel free to use them: FREE TEMPLATES

6. Buy an Autoresponders to Build Your List

   Aweber is the best and have a special of only $1 for the first month. Put a sign-up form on your website that entices the viewer to sign up for your money making website. Important: Make sure it’s above the fold (the top part of the screen anyone can see). Give away a free money making ebook or some valuable training or hints. You can continue to market to this list and sell to them later. This is a very important marketing tool.

7. Create Links To and From Your Website

   Make sure you put a lot of links of your own pages on your website. Link back to your home page from all your pages and cross link your pages. The more links point to your pages, the better for your Google rank.

   Get a lot of one way links when you make a money making website. Links to your website show Google how popular your website is, so get a lot of them. How? Create posts on blogs and article directories and link to pages on your website. Also make use of forum signatures and make regular comments on money making forums.

   Put links to your website in the forum signatures. You can also contact people from popular sites/blogs and ask them if they will add a link to your site in exchange for you also returning the favor. You can also use a free traffic system to get you hundreds of targeted links automatically.

8. Market Your Money Making Website

   You can spend money or you do all the legwork and advertise for free. You can use Google Adwords to pay for advertising, it works well, but could be costly. So how can you use free advertising?
   
   Signup on my blog to receive fresh information about how you can promote your website.
   You read more about that elsewhere, but here is what you can do to get started – Write keyword rich articles and post them on EzineArticles and other article directories. You can create free blogs and post about your site, linking to it. You can use social media like Facebook. LinkedIn. MySpace and Twitter. You can make a bunch of videos and submit them to YouTube and other video sites.

9. Create Fresh Content
   Continue to create content when you make a money making website, especially if you have an affiliate review site.

10. Rinse & Repeat

    If you are finished with #8, go to #9 again and repeat. Create content and articles, market, repeat. Easy, right?

This sounds like a lot of trouble, but it really isn’t that difficult. Just follow the steps and you should be able to make a money making website in no time at all. If you think making your own site, with autoresponder and marketing it, is too much trouble you, you can still get started with affiliate marketing.

If you get Clickbank Pirate, you get 5 well made money making website squeeze pages with autoresponders build in. They even market to the list that you build with these web pages of yours. So the only thing you have to do is promote your link, it’s very easier like this so I could recommend this to anyone who doesn’t want to go through the steps shown above.

This is good for making money almost instantly, but if you want to build up a good online business, I still recommend you make your own money making website.

For other valuable insights to the Web Marketing Business see other articles to the right.

10 Low Cost Tactics to Build Traffic to Your Website

Advanced website traffic tactics might sound daunting, but if you make it low cost then you have nothing but a win-win situation. Employ low cost advanced website traffic tactics and you’re in for a huge online success.

What are these low cost advanced website traffic tactics anyway? Surprise yourself by finding out that some of these tactics you can practice without having to spend a cent!

1. Write an article
   You write an article, mention your site, submit it to e-zines and garner traffic from curious visitors. It’s as simple as that. Don’t just stop at one website – post your site anywhere possible! Who knows how many hits this low cost advanced website traffic tactic will bring!
2. Exchange links
   Never underestimate the power of link exchange. This is a low cost advanced website traffic tactic that people tend to overlook. How to find out where to do the link exchange? Easy: type your website’s keywords in a major search engine, visit each and every of the top results and ask for the link exchange.
3. Advanced website traffic needs advanced tools
   The web is rich with tools that churn out impressive results. Software packages to try out are those which take care of links and keywords. Once this is taken care of, the rest of this internet marketing job will be easy!
4. Power up with META tags
   Meta tags are what search engines are looking for so it can include your site in the top results. Putting up meta tags in your HTML code is an advanced website traffic tactic that must not be missed! Low cost you ask? Oh yeah!
5. Get Listed in Directories
   Keep submitting your site to directories like there’s no tomorrow! Just take a look at your website and see if it’s directory-worthy. Web directories don’t waste their time on poorly-done websites.
6. Conduct a Survey
   Visit a site similar to yours and announce that you have a survey they can answer. The site and yours reap results so no one’s on the losing end here!
7. Use Social Media Platforms
   Facebook, Linkedin, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter, etc. Post every day and be active on all of them.
8. Build a Blog
   Go to Blogger.com or if you are more of a computer savvy individual construct your own using WordPress. You can find a lot of themes here for free. All you have to do is customize it to your liking; then keep on posting daily.
9. Write for other Blogs
   Look for blogs highly related to your website and make your presence known. Make online friends and let them know about your website. This is an advanced website traffic tactic that advertises subtly but works effectively. Good thing about this is it doesn’t cost you anything at all!
10. Answer Questions
    You can always find questions on Yahoo or any other sites (even Facebook and Linked in) and answer to the best of your ability. Readers will perceive you as an expert and start looking for your site and even folllow your blog.

There are sites available that specialize in low cost advanced website traffic tactics. Search for them online and let your site rise to online popularity! For more great articles on how to promote your business on line see our category of Self Promotion.

What All Articles Should Have

The art of writing and publishing articles on the web are paramount to the online success of today’s websites and internet based companies. They dictate a lot in the success and the drive of traffic onto one’s site. This activity has become a key element in making a site work and earning a profit from it.

A website webmaster and/or owner must have the good sense to include articles that address issues and provide solutions to a market niche. Find that niche, push the right buttons and you will have an army of followers. You articles should include lists of benefits that respond to the same old question: “What’s in it for me?”

Articles have been known to be one of the more sophisticated tools behind driving traffic to a website. The simple inclusion and distribution of articles on the web will generate high rankings in page search and become popular with all the search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, etc. The higher a site ranks the bigger the slice of the traffic pie. With an increased volume in traffic flow, there are more profits and more potential for other income generating schemes as well.

A well written article will catch the eyes and interest of your customers and keep them coming back for more.  They would also be able to recommend your site to others. So, how do you get them interested? You cannot just write and publish articles that are stuffed with keywords. You have to bring something new to the table; you have to share experiences and draw conclusions. You need to inform and educate people so they perceive you as an expert in your field.

Here are some tips to help you write a better article and make your site a profit generator while brimming with traffic.

1. Keywords and Keyword Phrases
   An article must always revolve around keywords and keyword phrases. A web searcher usually goes to a search engine and types in the keywords they are looking for. If you don’t have them – the search engine will simply not list you and look for the next article/site that better matches the search string.The important thing is that you have an article that has the keywords that are related to your site.  You cannot sell shoes and write an article about tattoos in New Guinea. Well – you can but don’t expect someone to find your shoe store based on that article. Unless you somehow describe how the indigenous people were so happy when you donated several hundreds of pair of shoes, they all tattooed your name on their forehead. See the connection?There are many tools in the internet that provides service in helping a webmaster out in determining what keywords and keyword phrases are mostly sought out. You can use this tool to determine what keywords to use and write about.  
2. Keyword Density
   Now that you have your keywords and keyword phrases, you must use them fully. An article must have good keyword density for a search engine to “feel” its presence. Keyword density is the number of times a keyword or keyword phrase is used on an article. The number varies depending on the number of words used in an article. An effective article must have a keyword density that is not too high or too low. Articles should at least have ten to fifteen percent of keyword density in their content for search engines to rank a site high in their search results. Getting a high rank is what articles do best for a site.With a very high density, the essence of the article is lost and may turn off a reader as well as the search engines. Also, a low number of keywords may be ignored by the search engines.
3. Good Article Content
   As previously explained, you cannot just stuff an article with keywords. They must also be regarded as good reading materials. Articles must be able to entertain people as well as provide good information and help for their needs. Articles should be written well with correct spelling and good grammar. If you want people to trust you, make your work good and well thought out.People respond well to figures, facts and statistics. Try to get great information and as many facts as you can. A good and well written article will boost your reputation as an expert in your chosen field or topic. As more people believe in you. They will be able to trust you and your products. For instance, did you know that “As of July 2005 there were an estimated 70 million blogs in the world?”
4. Build Good Links
   When submitting articles to ezines and/or contribute your articles to newsletters and other sites, don’t ever forget to include a link to your site. A little resource box with a brief description of your site and you should always be placed right after your articles that you have submitted. If people like your articles, they will most likely click on the link directing them to your site.
5. Lists
   People love bulleted lists. They will be able to copy them, refer to them later on, etc. so do it often and do it well. As a matter of fact – that is the main reason you stopped and read this article – the title promised you a list.