Stop Analyzing, Start Promoting Your Site!

As web promotion grows more and more popular everyday, so does over analyzing your stats, rankings, page rank, popularity rank, etc. We are all caught up in an analyzing funnel that seems to have no end in sight.

Many of you who have learned how to promote your own website, seem to be forgetting the 1st and most important rule – keep promoting.

Analyzing Is Over Ratted:

As we all have our own methods to base our success online, we also have to make sure that we don’t forget the fact that the more we analyze, the less we promote.
Does This Sound Like You?
- I like to re-check on a daily/hourly basis my Google search engine placements!
- I go to Alexa.com everyday to see if my ranking has gone up/down!
- I check my link popularity once a week, maybe once a day!
- I check to see how many backlinks Google rewards my site!
- I double check my site stats to see if the GoogleBot has been crawling on my site!

If this sounds like you, you might want to re-think how much you are actually contributing to your search marketing efforts.

See most people want to see their efforts being rewarded right away while loosing sight of the real agenda on hand. If you keep promoting and forget to check your rankings, placements, etc, when you actually remember to check your stats, you will be in for a huge surprise!!!

It’s better to explain it like this. Have you ever had a moment that seems like 1 minute took an eternity? On the flip side of that, have you ever had an entire afternoon seem like it flew past and you didn’t notice the time?

It’s the same online. If you sit there and watch that minute go by, it will seem like an eternity to pass and nothing will have been accomplished. On the other hand, if you keep promoting your site daily and never pay too much attention to your stats, minutes will seem like seconds and hours will seem like minutes. You want to be too busy to even care about your stats. If you can accomplish that, you will see the rewards you’ve been after all along.

I Don’t Know Where To Go From Here?

- Start finding better link partners.
- Make contact with other like mended companies.
- Swap services and advertising with others.
- Read more articles about promoting online.
- Join blog sites or forums to expand your knowledge.
- Write an article, or an ebook.
- Find good directories to submit your business to.

There are literally 100’s of ways to improve your search marketing strategy online. What I always say to everyone is this; “Web marketing isn’t just one thing you can do, it’s a combination of 100 different strategies all coming together and pooling into one web site.”

In Conclusion:
Try and stay away from ANY stat whatsoever for 1 week and promote your business. At the end of the week, check to see if your progress is working. If not, learn new strategies and again, promote your site for another week. At the end of the week, check your progress. If you keep to this method of checking your progress, you are guaranteed to see different results every week as long as you promote your business once a day. It doesn’t take much sometimes, it may only be 20 minutes a day that makes all that difference in your online promoting campaign.

Until next time, keep promoting!

The list needs to be cleansed on a timely basis. The cleansing process can be done manually or through list hygiene service by which incorrectly formatted addresses, and invalid typos and domains can be checked for. Most of the companies experience an email address churn of two to three percent per month. Here the Email Change of Address service or ECOA service can be employed to deal with this problem. According to reports, many of the ECOA companies receive at least one million email address changes every month.

Email addresses need to be confirmed regularly. This can be done by sending auto-reply confirmation to customers when they register, subscribe or make a purchase. If the message bounces, attempt can be made to correct the email address. The problem can be tackled by including a second email address line in the opt-in form which can confirm whether the email address entered was correct or not.

One of the basic steps to be taken is to make the update process easier by including the website account and subscription management link in the emails. The customers must be prompted to update information. They can be asked to verify or to update information at the time of completion of transaction in the shopping cart. If any transaction has not been made in a while, phone or direct mail can be used for information update. People who have bad email addresses and whose phone numbers or postal addresses are stored with the company can be contacted for email address correction.

Major domains such as Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail, etc. can be used to track bounces and open rates. If one is different from the others or if there is a sudden change, this can be attributed to blacklisting or filtering. Therefore, it is also a good idea to check major blacklists and spam databases for your companyís or email providerís name. If the name has been blacklisted, no bounce message will be received even if the message wasnít delivered. Monitoring and understanding of spam filters helps in dealing with spam complaints more efficiently. The terms and conditions of the spam filters must be reviewed carefully.  Quite often the spam flag addresses are added maliciously. These flags must be removed. Email providers also process bounces. Only understanding them can solve the problem. The basis on which soft and hard bounces are to be pronounced should be studied and later on, managed accordingly.

Because of financial troubles, mergers, and other announcements a big list of service users of one particular ISP decide to shift over to a different ISP or account for their email. Such members on the subscribers list must be emailed with a question raised on the domain name. They should be asked whether they want to update their email and other information. It is a good practice to pretest the emails before distributing the email to the entire list of subscribers. The test can be performed on oneself, company employees and a trusted group of current readers. Try including all the major email services being used by majority of the subscriber list members.

When every other attempt fails, it is best to delete or suppress recurring bouncers. For this purpose a suiting bounce deletion and suppression strategy should be designed according to the email program. Hard bounces should land directly in the trashed list as they are permanently undeliverable.

Promoting your affiliate sites can simply start by enticing your website visitors to try out this particular product you are endorsing. If you are running a blog, you can simply shift your entries to the products advantage. Here’s an example.

You are currently promoting an Xbox website which caters to online gamers. The products range from Xbox accessories to online down loadable games. Your blog is about your everyday living experience, sort of a journal like website. So how would you shift your blog so it could help your affiliate to boost up its products sales? It is pretty simple. You could make your entry for one day something like ñ you are bored and tried to look for something to do. Luckily your cousins arrived and look what they have brought ñ an Xbox! So you hurriedly setup the console and played to your hearts content! You must emphasize how you have enjoyed the experience, hence, now you are longing to buy yourself that same console. That’s when you will introduce the affiliate website that you have. You will then mention there how they will save if they go to these certain website and order. You know the drill  just make sure that you always say good things regarding your affiliate.

Here ís another example. Same thing you have a blog and your affiliate site is for a Nintendo Wii. You could make your entry for one day something like this. You are bored and tried to look for something to do. Luckily your cousins arrived and look what they have brought ñ a Nintendo Wii! So you hurriedly setup the console and played to your heartís content! You must emphasize how you have enjoyed the experience, hence, now you are longing to buy yourself that same console. That’s when you will introduce the affiliate website that you have. You will then mention there how they will save if they go to these certain website and order. You know the drill, you have to detail the good testimonies you have regarding the website you want them to visit.

If you are running a blog, you can simply shift your entries t the productís advantage. Thatís when you will introduce the affiliate website that you have. Promoting your affiliate sites can simply start by enticing your website visitors to try out this particular product you are endorsing. Thatís when you will introduce the affiliate website that you have. You will then mention there how they will save if they go to these certain website and order. If you are running a blog, you can simply shift your entries t the productís advantage.

In this manner, promotion of the affiliate sites will be much easier. No pressure on your part and the effect will be colossal. You can simply make the most out of your advertisement by simply using your blog to your advantage. It is like telling a story and at the same time, enticing to your target audience. Now thatís what I call effective blogging marketing.

Assuming you are already into an affiliate program, what would be the next thing you would want to do? Double, or even triple, your commissions, right? How do you do that?

Here are some powerful tips on how to boost your affiliate program commissions overnight.

1. Know the best program and products to promote. Obviously, you would want to promote a program that will enable you to achieve the greatest profits in the shortest possible time.
There are several factors to consider in selecting such a program. Choose the ones that have a generous commission structure. Have products that fit in with your target audience. And that has a solid track record of paying their affiliate easily and on time. If you cannot seem to increase your investments, dump that program and keep looking for better ones.
There are thousands of affiliate programs online which gives you the reason to be picky. You may want to select the best to avoid losing your advertising dollars.
Write free reports or short ebooks to distribute from your site. There is a great possibility that you are competing with other affiliates that are promoting the same program. If you start writing short report related to the product you are promoting, you will be able to distinguish yourself from the other affiliates.
In the reports, provide some valuable information for free. If possible, add some recommendations about the products. With ebooks, you get credibility. Customers will see that in you and they will be enticed to try out what you are offering.

2. Collect and save the email addresses of those who download your free ebooks. It is a known fact that people do not make a purchase on the first solicitation. You may want to send out your message more than six times to make a sale.
This is the simple reason why you should collect the contact information of those who downloaded your reports and ebooks. You can make follow-ups on these contacts to remind them to make a purchase from you.
Get the contact information of a prospect before sending them to the vendorís website. Keep in mind that you are providing free advertisement for the product owners. You get paid only when you make a sale. If you send prospects directly to the vendors, chances are they would be lost to you forever.
But when you get their names, you can always send other marketing messages to them to be able to earn an ongoing commission instead of a one-time sale only.
Publish an online newsletter or Ezine. It is always best to recommend a product to someone you know than to sell to a stranger. This is the purpose behind publishing your own newsletter. This also allows you to develop a relationship based on trust with your subscribers.
This strategy is a delicate balance between providing useful information with a sales pitch. If you continue to write informative editorials you will be able to build a sense of reciprocity in your readers that may lead them to support you by buying your products.

3. Ask for higher than normal commission from merchants. If you are already successful with a particular promotion, you should try and approach the merchant and negotiate a percentage commission for your sales.
If the merchant is smart, he or she will likely grant your request rather than lose a valuable asset in you. Keep in mind that you are a zero-risk investment to your merchant; so do not be shy about requesting for addition in your commissions. Just try to be reasonable about it.
Write strong pay Per Click ads. PPC search engine is the most effective means of advertising online. As an affiliate, you can make a small income just by managing PPC campaigns such as Google AdWords and Overture. Then you should try and monitor them to see which ads are more effective and which ones to dispose of.

Try out these strategies and see the difference it can make to your commission checks in the shortest of time.

It is true enough that affiliate marketing is financially rewarding.  People who have gone through everything to be able to succeed in this business are reaping the seeds that they untiringly sowed.  Many of them enjoy the kind of existence that was not possible for them to have had under ordinary circumstances.  Having gone through the A-Z of affiliate marketing, however, these people are the ones who know that while such business is lucrative, there is absolutely no easy money in it.

Ignorance of this fact is one of the main reasons why there are people who fail miserably in the internet business.  There are those who believe in myths concerning the easy money involved in systems such as affiliate marketing.  They do not know that there are those who have wasted time, effort and too many resources in trying to pursue the life of ease that they believe this business will give them.  And so they go into affiliate marketing armed with nothing but myths and fantastical notions of wealth swimming in their consciousness, never realizing that they bound to make mistakes that would prove to be their downfall.

What may be the reason why in businesses such as affiliate marketing, many are called but few are chosen?  Perhaps the answer lies on the fact that many affiliates make mistakes that result from their ignorance of facts concerning how the entire business runs.  Affiliate marketing is not as simple as an affiliate promoting a merchantís wares through his website and getting paid for it.  It is also about knowing the market and the customers at hand.

Discovering what the most common mistakes affiliates make can perhaps dispel the gloom about myths surrounding affiliate marketing by correcting some wrong notions about it.  It might also be able to make those concerned understand that like any other business, there are dos and donts involved in this one if they want to make each of their steps count.  The first common mistake affiliates make is their lack of knowledge concerning principles involved in their business.  This refers to the affiliateís knowledge of search engines in particular.

Affiliate marketing involves advertising, and advertising through the internet could not have been better without the existence of search engines.  What every affiliate has to do is to make these search engines his best friend through studying search engine optimization closely.  This way, he is able to know what to do in connection with building a better website to ultimately use for his business.

The second is that affiliates make the mistake of stuffing their sites with banners that do not provide enough information about the product at hand.  The best way to battle this mistake is to provide good content hand-in-hand with such banners.  It is important for customers to know and understand the features of a product, and good content will be able to help them realize this goal.

The third is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting only one product.  Consequently, customers are not given enough options to choose from.  There is also the risk of generating fewer sales as compared to having more options for customers ponder about.  It is always better to give them a few better alternatives than to give them only one.

The fourth is that there are affiliates who make the mistake of promoting too many products.  As a result, customers are confused and end up beyond making a choice.  It is perhaps good to give them only the best choices.  This is because it is ultimately up to them to judge which one is the best for them to patronize.

All in all, affiliates that are doomed to fail in this business are those who do not exert enough effort to understand everything involved in the industry that they are in.  Knowing their path step by careful step will prove to be beneficial to them, as there is no other way to succeed than to go through any path slowly but surely.

I have synthesized these principles into a list I call The 7 Principles of the Successful Affiliate. It important to note that each successful affiliate closely and meticulously adheres to each one of these affiliate principles.

Some of these principles may seem ridiculously obvious, but you would be amazed at how many affiliate marketers either…

✔ don’t know these principles (failure to read and study)
✔ skip or skimp on them (take the easy or cheap route)
✔ or, ignore them altogether (“I’m going to do it my way.”)

…resulting in their own failure or greatly diminished profits. If you are involved in affiliate program marketing and want to greatly improve your results, you must learn and follow these affiliate principles.

1. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires work. You must treat it as a job. It is not a pastime. It is not a hobby. It is not a get-rich-quick scheme. It is not a “do nothing, make money” proposition. It requires hard work on your part. The harder you work, the more sales you will make.

2. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires financial investments. You must be willing to spend money to make money. You need to spend money on professional training resources, affiliate products for “first hand knowledge”, a well-planned and executed website, and solid advertising and marketing strategies. If done properly, your investments will make you huge profits.

3. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires education and preparation. You must tap into professional training resources. You need to read and study the proven models. With knowledge of these, you can replicate the success of others and increase your sales.

4. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires knowledge of the best affiliate products and merchants. You must closely examine the pros and cons of each you consider. You need to determine which ones will benefit you the most. Quality increases quantity of your sales.

5. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires a well-planned and executed website. You must satisfy your viewers and the search engines. You need to gain high rankings and presell your viewers with content-rich information. If you do this properly sales will increase.

6. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires constant traffic interested in your message and effective tracking methods. You must attract huge numbers that stay on your website to read your message. You need to know what methods work well and which are wasting your advertising dollar. Happy viewers from reliable sources bring you more sales.

7. Successful Affiliate Program Marketing requires ongoing familiarity with the latest strategies and techniques. You must keep up to date on the cutting edge in the industry. You need to never rest in your quest to be the best. Knowledge is power; power brings you more money.

These are The 7 Principles of the Successful Affiliate. If you are not prepared to implement them to the best of your ability, you are wasting your time as an affiliate. Do something else! If you are ready to be successful, make a copy of these affiliate principles and affix it to the wall right next to your computer. It will serve as inspiration and a reminder of what you want to accomplish.

The first step is for you to have your own website. It is very essential for you to have your own website in considering affiliate marketing as your professional career. Secondly, potential customers primarily go to websites in order for them to search and sometimes purchase items they were looking for. For the same reason that it is much easier to remember than a certain URL that you may be using and you can just point to your visitors the affiliate page in your website.

Step two remember to have your own ad. A lot of times affiliates marketers have published the same ad two or three times done by advertisers. In this case, you may email the owner of your affiliate program asking that you make your own ads. This way, people may not become immune to ads, because sometimes seeing the same ads over and over again, may just make your potential customers to just skip it all together.  Besides, your primarily purpose is to attract or encourage people to click and read your ads and be curios enough to click through your website.

Step three, have some products of your won which are only available through your website. Once you have your website going, it is important to have some products or services that your customers canít find with other affiliateís site. You want your customers to keep coming to your site and the best way to do that is to have something on your site that they canít find on others. Being an affiliate marketer we must then choose a certain market segment where you can have a potential leadership or at least a strong challenger role.

The fourth step is to build a strong relationship with people who already buy your product. Now, in order for you as the marketer to fully answer the query of your potential customers, it is best to try and buy the product by yourself. With this particular notion, you can better sell the product that you are trying to market. You can share to your potential customers what a great experience you had with the product, and this can make them interested enough to buy the product. You may also be able to provide a support if necessary or you may provide a confident tutorial or steps on how to use the product that you are trying to market based on your personal experience. Entailing this idea is to be totally honest about the product that you are trying to market. If you find out that the program you were promoting is a scam, stop promoting it and inform your readers about it. This will help you build credibility with your lists.

We all make mistakes and admitting your mistake will boost your readerís confidence in you. Lastly, donít try to market everything you see. With services such as click bank, it is easy to become overwhelmed and try to market everything in the click bank marketplace. That is not a good idea. Itís better to focus on one market and market products that they would want. This is called niche marketing.

Try also to promote a certain product, which conforms to the specifications measured through indications of customer-satisfaction, rather than indicators of self-gratification. It is the customer who decides what to buy and not the company or the affiliate marketer. The company simply produces products catering to the needs and wants of their chosen market segment.

Today, different types of business are emerging from all over the world in a multinational level to reign supreme on their specific market segment that they are trying to dominate, and affiliate marketing is one of them. Affiliate marketing is definitely here to stay and it can become a great way to earn extra or even part time income. However, it wonít happen overnight. Like everything else in life, youíre going to have to put a lot of hard work into it. Good luck to you in your new venture.

There are different internet marketing techniques that you can use. All these techniques and methods aim at increasing your website traffic. You must find a way for web surfers to find your site. To do this, you must put yourself in the shoes of your prospective visitors and future clients and see the internet through their eyes. Where do they usually go whenever they are looking up something on the web? The answer is the search engine; in fact, the two most popular websites on the web today are both search engines and portals. Thus, you should focus your internet marketing efforts on the search engine.

People will usually search for something using a search engine and click on the top results that these engines give. Therefore, you must use the right internet marketing techniques to get a high search engine ranking. To gain a high ranking in search results, you can use several internet marketing techniques. Search engine optimization is a set of methods that are aimed at improving the visibility of your site in search engine results. Since a search engine indexes sites by looking at its keyword density, your site’s content must have favorable keyword density that is search engine friendly. Content is one of the most important internet marketing technique itself. If you have excellent content that is geared towards achieving a high search engine ranking as well as provide information then you can expect a high search engine ranking. However, this is not as easy as it sounds. Countless other sites may be using the same internet marketing technique as you do. Thus, you must continuously find new ways of attracting more website traffic.

Aside from the traditional marketing techniques such as print ads, billboards, brochures, testimonials, flyers etc. you must use other more effective internet marketing techniques to gain more website traffic. One of the most popular internet marketing technique today is submitting articles. Writing and submitting articles is an extremely powerful method for promoting your websites, products, and services.

By writing short articles on the topic related to your website, you can offer these articles for other website owners or newsletter publishers to use by submitting them to an article directory.

These directories get spidered by the search engines on a regular basis because of the high value of the content they provide. If you have not yet been picked up by the search engines this is the easiest way to get them to find you. You also get exposure to those who look for articles in the directories for use on their sites.

When they make use of your articles on their websites or in their newsletters, you will get the credit as the author along with a link to your website. Not only will you gain visitors, but you will benefit from the hyperlinks that are created.

This internet marketing technique is now being used by thousands of site owners. It is also gaining popularity because of its relatively high success rate in attracting high website traffic.

The best way to gain free web promotion is through the use of press releases, which highlight upcoming news, events and headlines regarding your company.  In order to write an effective press release, your business must be involved in something noteworthy.  Whether it be a contest, a grand opening, a special sale or other event, a press release is the perfect way to advertise your business happenings for free.  There are a number of press release submission websites, which allow business owners to submit their news for free.  In addition, submitting your press release to newspaper and magazine editors may increase your chances of being published both online and in print.  Before sending a press release, which should be no more than one page in length, make sure that your name, mailing address and telephone number is included at the top of the page.  Many editors require that contact information be present before they will even consider publishing a press release.  The reasoning behind this is to confirm the identity of the person submitting the news.

Web promotion can perhaps best be utilized through successful positioning on internet search engines.  By making sure that your website content is rich with information, links and updated information, search engines will be more likely to position your site among the top ranks.  In addition, a descriptive website will also find itís way to the top.  For example, if your business deals with collectibles, make sure that your content is rich in keywords dealing with collectibles and the product line that you offer.  Avoid stuffing keywords, but make sure that your website clearly indicates itís subject matter.

One of the best avenues for web promotion is through article marketing.  While many website owners are still somewhat unfamiliar with this approach, others are cashing in on a surge of traffic generated from properly marketing their articles.  The key to successful web promotion via article marketing is to write an informative article that everyone will want to read.  At the bottom of the article, include a brief paragraph featuring your name, the name of your business and a website address.  The next step is to submit your article to as many article directories as possible.  The more exposure, the better.  As other webmasters log on to article directories in search of content for their website, they may select your article to be featured on their site.  The more webmasters that feature your work, the more free web promotion your business will receive.

There are a number of ways to acquire paid marketing opportunities and an equal, or greater, number of ways to get free web promotion.  If done correctly, web promotion doesnít have to empty the entire expense account.  In some cases, it wonít even cost you a cent.

Also women’s magazines are a great place to look for what good copy writers write for good landing pages. Some women’s magazines have the very best writers on staff so itís a great place to look for ideas when you go to write headlines. A smashing heading and some good copy and youíre on your way to making a great landing page that can convert your customers into buyers.

Nothing is more frustrating than having a lot of web traffic visiting a site but getting very few leads or sign-ups. If you can put together a simple web page that customer will land on and fill it with some good pictures and have a good clean design you can make a great landing page.

Great colorful pictures and pretty borders and great at keeping a readers attention on a landing page and you have either paid traffic of free traffic.  You also want to keep you speech very simple so all readers can understand your copy.

Landing pages are not a good place to impress your readers with your extensive vocabulary. You want to use simple words and simple sentence structure. Making your heading lines bold so reader can scan the page quickly youíre your offer.

Bullet points are a great way to list if youíre trying to explain some benefits or features of your offer. They are easy to read and make your copy easy to scan. The close of your copy should invoke a deep interest from your reader to ask for additional information or collect an email address or newsletter sign-up.

My system to make a landing page is like this:

★    Bold Headline
★    Some eye catching copy
★    Bullet point of some benefits
★    Closing copy
★    Offer
★    Test conversions and make changes
★    Retest pages