TIPs*6*Day 7&8: Generating Traffic To Your Website--

TIPs#6#

Here is the number one question that I receive regarding Affiliate Marketing:

"What are the best ways to get high-quality traffic to my website at the lowest cost?"

Traffic is vital to any internet business. No matter how good your squeeze page is converting, and no matter how good your product is, you won't be able to build a list or make any sales without any traffic.

However, be careful not to get too carried away with traffic generation. Once you start to get traffic to your site, you need to focus on improving your visitor-experience rather than getting more traffic.

After you have perfected your website in many aspects for a while, you can then focus more on generating even more traffic. This should NOT be the focus until after at least the first few months.
 
You are about to learn EXACTLY what I do to generate traffic
I am not going to share any theories of what should work or any techniques that I read in some other e-book.

Everything contained in the next few lessons are derived from my own experiences, and only those techniques that I have used and worked.

I prefer to remain inside my own experiences so that I don't waste your time.
 
The Pay-Per-Click Methodology
 
The first source of traffic is my least favorite, but it is the best one out there as it can generate a lot of targeted traffic very quickly.

It is called Pay-Per-Click (PPC).
 
With PPC, you exchange money for traffic. You pay whenever someone clicks on your PPC ads and landed on your website.

The biggest providers of this service are Google and Yahoo:

* Google Adwords
* Yahoo Search Marketing

I am going to focus on Google Adwords in this lesson as it is the biggest PPC search engine.

Google Adwords is the easiest and quickest way for you to get traffic to your site. The only downside is the cost, which can be quite high if you aren't careful. However, if you keep track of your conversion rates, you can be sure that you are spending less than you are making.

For example, if you sell an e-book for $50 and are paying $0.50 per click to get visitors there, you need to make at least one sale for every 100 visitors just to break even (100 x $0.50 = $50). If you are making more than one sale per 100 visitors, then you have a nett profit.

At first it will be hard to tell if you are making a profit as you might not have anything to sell. If you are just running the Ask email campaign then you might be wondering how much you should spend to get started.

I would say a healthy amount to pay per subscriber is anywhere below $2 to $3. So if you are paying $0.50 per click then you should aim for a 15% conversion rate (15% will give you 1 subscriber for every 6 visitors, or in other words, for every $3 that you spend).

Obviously if you pay less per click you will pay even less per visitor, but concentrate more on raising your conversion rates rather than lowering your cost-per-click (CPC), as this should be your long-term goal.

I will typically use Google Adwords to get my first 100 signups, and then I will switch over to other methods that I will be describing in later chapter. However, if you start promoting or selling products and you notice that you are making a profit with Google Adwords, then there is no reason to stop using them at all.

Day 8: How Online Communities Can Get You Tons Of Traffics

Today I want to focus on another method that I have used successfully in the past to generate traffic to my websites. This method is free and very effective but it requires your investment of time.

How Online Communities Are Your Online Gold-Mines...
One thing that the internet has provided is an outlet for people of all professions to express their feelings on any subject.

Many online communities have formed because of the ease of communication on the internet. These have taken many forms, such as bulletin boards (otherwise known as forums), Newsgroups, "MySpace" type of social networking websites and more.

Some of these communities receive thousands of visitors every day, some even more than that. There are certain ways that you can tap into this immense amount of traffic in such a way that greatly benefits your business.

However, before I continue I want to make one thing clear:

You Need To Become a PART of These Communities, Not Just a "Marketer In Their Midst"
Don't think for one moment that you will have any success by spamming message boards and blogs with your advertising. Not only will this get you next to no traffic, but it will give you a bad reputation.

Instead, your goal should be becoming part of these communities and contribute to the communities. You will be greatly rewarded with new traffic, new subscribers, and new customers in return after you became a respected member of their communities and gained their trusted.

I will focus on one type of online community - forums. A forum basically acts as a type of message board where members can come to post their feelings and opinions as well as seeking out the help of others.

Four Easy Steps To Generating Traffic From Forums
Ok, these are going to seem simple, but skipping just one of them will make all of your efforts futile. Here they are:

1. Find a forum that gets high traffic and is visited by your target market

You can do a simple Google search for "[Insert Your Market] forum" to find the major forums in your market.

How do you know if they get a lot of traffic? Simply look at the number of members and how many posts are on the forum. Also, make sure that it is not against forum rules to advertise in your signature.

I'll talk more about this in step #3.

2. Join the forum and contribute greatly to it

Join the forum that you have found and start posting. Answer questions, ask questions, give your opinions, and generally post good quality information regularly.

DO NOT ADVERTISE YOUR WEBSITES! Doing this can get (and often will) get you banned from the forum.

3. Include your website(s) in your signature

Create a signature that includes your website(s). Make sure that your signature isn't overbearing, but at the same time make sure it delivers your message clearly.

4. Find another forum and do it again!

You should probably spend on average 10-20 minutes a day on the forum that you have already found, which leaves a lot of time for other forums as well.

I recommend finding at least two or three other forums as well and repeating the above method. Once you are more established and are getting steady traffic you can leave this method as it is time-consuming (although as mentioned above, it is free).