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-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= FEATURE ARTICLE =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
"TRAFFIC GENERATION ~
The Number One Skill That Will Generate Cash Flow."
© Ron Hutton - All Rights reserved
pluginprofittoolbox.com
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If you're feeling a bit of confusion and frustration about how to get visitors to your website and generate more sales, I know exactly how you feel. I felt the same way until I stopped listening to every "big time" marketer that came along with the latest traffic generating trick.
You've got dozens of gurus vying for your attention and every one of them has the solution to all of your problems. Right? The proliferation of messages that promise a traffic explosion using new techniques can become overwhelming.
Time out.
Take a deep breath.
Sit back in your chair.
Relax.
Now, if you will focus your energy on a very short list of traffic generation strategies that actually DO work, and commit to continually improving your skills in these few areas, you will be amazed at what you can achieve… WILL achieve.
Websites come in a wide variety of flavors, including...
- Minisites designed to sell individual products
- Portal sites designed to sell a broad selection of products
- Content sites designed to provide information
Of the above site species (minisites,
portal sites and content sites), which do you think has the
best chance of selling a product and putting income in your
bank account?
ANSWER: Minisites.
Let's talk about web traffic.
Imagine 5 different internet users going to Google, MSN, Yahoo
or whatever their favorite search engine happened to be, and
each individual enters one of the following search queries:
Search #1: hazards
Search #2: household hazards
Search #3: chemical household hazards
Search #4: chemical household hazards for infants
Search #5: protecting infants from chemical household hazards
If you had a website that sold a device that guaranteed the
safety of infants by locking cabinets containing hazardous household
chemicals, which of the above visitors do you think would be
most likely to buy what you're selling? I know. I
hear you. "That's pretty obvious, Ron."
We want internet user #5 most. We may also want #3 and
#4. Do we want #1 and #2? Maybe... Maybe not.
The answer to that is going to depend on what it takes
to get them to our site.
But before we attempt to answer that question,
HERE'S SOMETHING CRITICAL…
My Question to You: "If you were assured that you could get
visitor #5 to your website, where would you send them?"
Let's say that your website had a variety of home safety products
available. You sell everything from fire extinguishers
to first aid kits to carbon monoxide detectors to child safe
locks.
Your site's home page has just a little bit of information
on each of your home safety product lines. Would you send
visitor #5 to your home page? Or…
Since visitor #5 just did a search for "protecting infants
from chemical household hazards", would you have better results
by sending them directly and immediately to the web page where
they can order your device that guarantees the safety of their
child from chemical household hazards?
Please don't think that I'm trying to insult your intelligence.
I'm not. It's just that I have received correspondence from other direct marketers online concerned about the low sales of their websites only to find
out that whenever that person sent traffic to their site,
the traffic was going to their home page rather than to a page that spoke directly to the needs and desires of the visitor.
Alrighty then? Traffic time.
There are only 3 ways to get traffic to your website:
1) Buy it.
2) Borrow it.
3) Steal it.
Since #3 is not an option we're going to consider, that leaves
us with "buy it" and "borrow it".
Before we go any further, let's talk about the "Holy Grail"
of web traffic. What is it? FREE TRAFFIC! I
want it. You want it. Every disillusioned internet
marketer wants it.
Here's the truth...
It's a myth.
It doesn't exist.
There is no such thing as free website traffic.
"Ya but Ron, what if I could be #1 in Google for 'Internet
Marketing' or 'Website Tools'?"
If you were able to get there or anywhere close, what would
be required? What investment in time and resources would
be required to land a prized spot such as this? Would
you be able to get there for free? Furthermore, how long
would you stay there?
Let's face it, neither Google, Yahoo, Altavista nor MSN wants
any individual to be able to control the results of their search
engines. That's why they spend millions upon millions
of dollars every year taking steps to ensure that nobody has
the knowledge to control all of the top positions.
Is search engine positioning something to aspire to? Perhaps.
Given time. But it will not put any money in your
pocket in the short term. That's pretty well guaranteed.
There are only 3 2 ways to get traffic
to your website:
1) Buy it.
2) Borrow it.
Buy it? Yes, buy it. We're not talking about fortunes
changing hands. There's no need to take out a second or
third mortgage on you home to use this strategy. Traffic
can be generated to your site for literally pennies per visitor.
Where will you buy traffic to your website? PPC Search
Engines. PPC ("Pay Per Click") search engines give you
the best opportunity to find the most motivated buyers and get
them to visit your website. This is what you should be
considering for your primary method of generating traffic to
your website.
Remember above where we considered searcher #1 - searcher #5?
We want searcher number five on our website, right? Right.
We can and will find searcher #5 on the PPC search engines
if we take the right approach.
In a little bit I'll give you a list of PPC search engines
to consider using, but first let's formulate a game plan.
Here's the basics of PPC advertising.
1) We have a product to sell.
2) We determine what the product has to offer and why someone
might want to buy our product. (hint: focus on benefits, not
features)
3) We do some keyword research to see if people are out there
actually looking for the solution that our product offers.
4) Assuming that there's sufficient demand for our product /
solution, we make a list of the keywords and keyword phrases
that people are actually using to conduct their searches.
5) We write an ad for our product in such a way that it gets
the attention of the searcher. This may mean changing
ad copy slightly from one keyword phrase to the next. Try
to put yourself in the position of the person doing the search.
6) We bid on the keywords that we're targeting with the ad that
we've written and…
Wa-la! Traffic.
Is this a viable option? Absolutely. Google Adwords
ads can be had for as little as $0.05 per click. Overture
traffic can be had for as little as $0.10 per click.
If you're selling a product for $19.95, how many clicks can
you buy and still be profitable? One sale out of 199 clicks
and you're profitable. At this rate you only made a nickel,
but that was at a conversion rate of only 0.5%! What if
you had a conversion rate of 3%? 3% (3 visitors out of
100 become customers) doesn't sound like too much does it? If
you did indeed have a 3% conversion rate on a $19.95 product
and were able to buy traffic for $0.10 per visitor, here's how
the math works:
100 visitors cost you $10.00
3 visitors became customers and spent a total of $59.85.
Subtract your $10.00 advertising cost from your $59.85 revenue,
and you have profited $49.85 (or somewhere close after PayPal's
fees).
So now, how much can you afford to spend on traffic? If
you've been running the above advertising campaign long enough
to feel confident that a 3% conversion ratio is something that
you can count on, then do the math backwards.
Your net profit is $49.85 for 100 visitors. Therefore,
your "per visitor" value is $0.50 (I'm rounding up very slightly).
Knowing this is a huge advantage. Can you find more
visitors to your site for $0.20, $0.30 or even $0.40? Of
course you can, and it will still be profitable! Obviously,
the less you spend on advertising, the more you keep. But
if you could find a source of automatic traffic that you knew
was profitable, wouldn't you buy as much as you could find?
This is exciting stuff! PPC traffic can work for you.
Yes, there's a little bit of a learning curve, but that's
true with anything new that you do.
Here's a list of PPC Search Engines that you should consider
starting with:
Google AdWords (http://www.adwords.google.com)
Overture (http://www.overture.com)
FindWhat (http://www.findwhat.com)
Enhance Interactive (http://www.enhance.com)
GoClick (http://www.goclick.com)
7Search (http://www.7search.com)
Kanoodle (http://www.kanoodle.com)
ePilot (http://www.ePilot.com)
Search123 (http://www.search123.com)
SearchFeed Interactive (http://www.searchfeed.com)
eSpotting (http://www.espotting.com)
Xuppa (http://www.xuppa.com)
There are only 3 2 ways to get traffic
to your website:
1) Buy it.
2) Borrow it.
We're still on #1 - Buy it.
Ezine advertising.
I'll spare you all of the details regarding conversion ratios,
etc. since we've already covered that. Ezine advertising
is another viable way to pay for traffic, but don't use it until
you've formulated a profitable ad in the PPC search engines.
It's important that you know you have a winning ad before
spending money on ezine advertising. Use something that's
proven to get results.
Ezine ads can be purchased at reasonable rates and the cost
will vary from one ezine to another depending on the newsletter's
circulation, track record of producing sales and the exposure
that you'll get.
By exposure, what I'm referring to is the type of ad that you
buy. Your options typically include solo ads, top sponsor
ads, middle sponsor ads, bottom sponsor ads and classified ads.
A solo ad is sent in an email with no other distractions.
You get all of the attention, and for this reason it's
also the most expensive form of ezine advertising. Top
sponsor ads allow you between 5 and 8 lines of copy and are
included in regular ezine issues near the very beginning of
the newsletter. Middle sponsor and bottom sponsor ads
will be similar to top sponsor ads with the exception of the
position within the newsletter. And lastly, classified
ads are usually shown in groups near the end of a newsletter
and are the lowest cost.
My personal opinion is not to advertise in ezines that you
haven't subscribed to. If you're considering advertising
in any particular ezine, subscribe to it and read it for a few
weeks before spending any money there. That way you'll
be able to get a feel for the value of the content, the kind
of reader that will be interested in the publication and whether
or not the advertising opportunity is a good one.
Here are a few sites where you can begin researching ezines
that accept advertising:
http://www.directoryofezines.com
http://emailuniverse.com/
http://www.ezineadvertising.com
http://www.ezinehub.com
http://www.ezine-marketing.com
http://www.ezinewizard.com
There are only 3 2 ways to get traffic
to your website:
1) Buy it.
2) Borrow it.
We've discussed what your first two priorities should be for
buying website traffic. Next, let's talk about borrowing
traffic.
There are 2 traffic borrowing strategies that we'll talk about
here.
1) Search engines.
2) Writing and submitting articles.
There's no disguising the fact that the print books, ebooks
and reports written on these two strategies number in the hundreds
and even thousands. Therefore, I'll make no attempt to
provide comprehensive treatment on either of them.
However, they're both important and worthy of at least a primer.
So, let's start with search engines.
If you want to make money with your website today, this week
or this year, what is the absolute worst investment of your
time?
Search engine optimization.
I know that some marketers don't want to hear this,
but it's a fact for some of the reasons stated above and plenty
of others. The mathematical (im)probabilities of achieving
a top ranking for a search phrase that will result in meaningful
traffic that includes buyers is… let's just say the odds
aren't in your favor.
There are strategies that work with search engines to drive
traffic to websites, but one thing they absolutely do not include
is any attempt to optimize a sales page or for that matter an entire
website that's designed to convert visitors into customers.
The strategies that work with search engines offer them
what they crave most, which is content. Perhaps in the
future we can discuss this in some detail.
The next big time waster that's closely related to search engine
optimization is submitting your website to the search engines.
If your site won't be listed in the top 2, 3 or 4 pages
of a search engine, nobody's going to see it anyways. This
debate rages back and forth even with SEO experts who make their
full time living doing nothing but consulting on SEO. Submit?
Don't submit?
Following is an excerpt from Jill Whalen's High Ranking ezine.
Jill does this stuff full time and she's well respected.
I'm including this because it's enlightening. Here
we go…
*** BEGIN EXCERPT ***
READER QUESTION: Is manually submitting each site better?
JW: You don't actually need to submit your site at all to search
engines -- neither manually nor in an automated fashion. They
all have spiders that "crawl" the Web and find all pages that
exist, as long as there is a link to them from a page they already
know about.
READER QUESTION: Once submitted ...do you keep submitting ...if
so how often? (So you don't get kicked out.)
JW: Never.
READER QUESTION: The Microsoft submit supposedly submits to
hundreds of search engines and directories
JW: It's a waste of time and bandwidth.
READER QUESTION: Is this good or bad (the number of SE's submitted
to)
JW: It's neither, just useless.
READER QUESTION: I heard the more the better ...but there are
some pretty cheesy search engines out there
JW: "The more the better" is incorrect. There are only
4 major search databases that matter: Google, Yahoo, MSN, and
Ask Jeeves. Their databases power all of the other engines
that make a difference.
*** END EXCERPT ***
Interesting, huh? So, let's move on.
Writing and Submitting Articles:
I KNOW that there are talented writers online who have not capitalized on their writing skills yet.
If you're in this group, you need to write and submit articles.
IF YOU'RE NOT IN THIS GROUP, you need to write and submit articles.
You see, nobody is out there grading you. Google does
not moralize over your ability (or lack thereof) to write a
coherent article. Google will, however, spider the links
back to your IBSoftShop if you include it in your article's resource
box. The more you do this, the better you'll get.
Writing and submitting articles is a long term approach to
generating traffic that you should start right now. Set
time aside weekly to consistently get your name and your site's
URL out there in various article directories. Can you
spare one hour a week? If yes, do this.
I just published an article on this topic titled "How to Vote
for Your 0wn Website in the Search Engines." You can read
it here:
http://www.gothrive.com/articles/vote-for-your-own-website.html
Next, can I save you some time?
Here's a short list of activities and "programs" that will
consume your time with very little if any result:
- Start Page Networks
- Exit Traffic Exchanges
- Safelists
- FFA Pages
- Lurking in Forums
There are others too, but who really benefits from a start
page network, exit traffic exchange, safelist or FFA page? The
person who owns and runs it. They benefit because they
get to market to you and you get to market to other people who
want nothing other than free traffic. Remember free traffic?
Forget it.
You could spend the next year whiling away the hours on free
traffic schemes or you could find PPC traffic that will turn
your $10 investment into $49.85 in profit and then duplicate
this success 10 times, 50 times or 100 times. Which will
you choose?
If you're reading this article and you have a question that I might be able to help you with, please feel free to contact me by CLICKING HERE.
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ABOUT THIS ARTICLE'S AUTHOR ~ Ron Hutton is a 20 year sales and marketing veteran with a passion for coaching and training. Subscribe to Ron's ezine, "GoThrive Online", for big juicy marketing tips in small, easy-to-chew, bite size servings. Start with 17 fr*e Cool Tools... http://www.gothrive.com
Also visit http://www.pluginprofittoolbox.com
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-=-=-=-=-=-=-= FEATURE ARTICLE PROVIDED BY =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Ron Hutton at Plug-In Profit Toolbox.
One thing that's absolutely, undeniably certain about internet marketing is
that to grow your business fast... EXPLOSIVELY QUICK!
...you need an offer that stops people in their tracks.
Get yours here.
Plug-In Profit Toolbox
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To your success,
Ron Hutton
GoThrive.com
Breakaway Marketing
167 Deep Woods Way
Ormond Beach, FL 32174
Phone: 386.671.9134 | Fax: 309.416.4629
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