Simple Solutions For Making Money Online

Archive for October, 2008

Forum Marketing - Key Must Know Tips

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Forums have achieved tremendous popularity for many business owners these days. They are a great tool for marketing products online. However, many an online marketer has crossed the line with regard to forum etiquette and have suffered as a result.

Here are some nuggets / tidbits of advice when it comes to marketing in forums;

1. You have to become a frequent contributor and participant in the forums that you choose to participate in. It is a matter of becoming part of the community and contributing value before you try to focus on self-promotion. Ask questions and answer questions where you have knowledge to share.

2. Never just say “Nice post” in reply to another post. It creates internet trash, adds no value and infuriates mostly everyone as they have to scroll through that nonsense to find the good information.

3. It is okay to mention your website within your post if it is relevant to the topic at hand.
Otherwise leave your promotions to your forum signature

4. ALWAYS have a forum signature which promotes your website. Some forums allow you to promote more than one website so do so where possible. Signatures are known as promotions so nobody will be offended if your links are shown in your signature file.

5. Remember the 4 “H’s” when posting to the forums. Be heartfelt, human, helpful and add humor. This way you will be more relatable and you will build long-lasting relationships with the members who may become your customers or partners.

6. Be aware that you do not own the forum and if you do not follow the rules you can get kicked out and blocked from ever posting again so be sure to be considerate of others and the forum’s rules to avoid this happening.

In the end, forums are a fun, fast and easy way to direct free targeted traffic to your website and definitely should be included in your traffic arsenal. Good luck.

Bookmark and Share
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [LinkedIn] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Share This Post

Posted: October 28th, 2008 under Solutions.
Comments: none

Useful Tools & Resources For Bloggers

No doubt you want to know what it takes to be a successful blogger if you are planning on launching your own blog. Keep in mind that a blog is something that requires patience and care and regular updating in order to succeed. You want to always be adding fresh and unique content to your blog so that you can stay ahead of your competition.

The first item on the list of recommended blogging tools & resources is WordPress which is actually the simplest blogging software to use to build your blog. You can download this software at Wordpress’s website. Just as a side note, the search engines love blogs and they also love WordPress blogs so this is another reason you will do well to make this your blogging software of choice.

Another useful tool you may want to use is a keyword research tool known as Wordtracker. At the time of writing this they have a 7 Day Free trial and you can find this resource at Wordtracker’s website. You want to have a main keyword that your blog is targeting and Wordtracker is an excellent tool to use for your research on keywords. There are also many free keyword research tools so you may want to do a search for this if you are on a tight budget.

When you get your WordPress blog setup, one of the most useful things with WordPress is the amount of plugins that are available. Plugins add functionality to your blog. For example, there are plugins that will update Twitter everytime you submit a post. There are others that allow you to put Social Bookmarking tools after your posts so that your readers can bookmark your posts which helps you to get backlinks to your blog which drives further traffic to your blog.

Since you will want to stay abreast of what your competitors are doing another recommended blogging tool you can make use of is Google’s blog search. Using this tool you can find all of your competitors and check out their traffic generation methods. You can also see what marketing methods they are using to attract and retain their readers.

You should do a Google search and look up blog directories as there are many that you should submit your blog to. One of the most important is Technorati so, at the very least make sure you submit your blog to Technorati and ping them with every post you make.

I hope you take these recommendations and make use of them to build yourself a successful blog.

Bookmark and Share
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [LinkedIn] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Share This Post

Posted: October 18th, 2008 under Solutions.
Comments: none

Autoresponder Hints

Getting started with an autoresponder can be an overwhelming task at first so it is important to break it down to simple tasks and make a plan to maximize its use.

Sometimes when just getting started you may wonder what on earth should you put into your auto-responder messages that will be sent out to your list. The last thing you want as you are building your list is to see people unsubscribing on the backend after you have done all of this hard work to get them onto your list in the first place.

If you do not yet have an autoresponder account I highly suggest you get one through Aweber.

So you need interesting, useful and helpful content to provide your subscribers with.
What you must remember is the topic that attracted your optin subscribers to join your list in the first place. Stay on topic with your auto-responder messages. The fastest way to lose your subscribers is to stray away from the main topic of your website that got them to sign up initially.
One of the simplest ways to provide value (being useful and helpful) is to create an e-course to send to your subscribers on the topic that your website focuses on. An example would be if your site is about Affiliate Marketing, you could do an e-course as follows;

1. Qualities of a successful Affiliate Marketer
2. Top Mistakes Most Affiliate Marketers Make
3. Useful Tools For Affiliate Marketers
4. How To Make Money As Affiliate
5. How To Choose Affiliate Products etc.

I’m sure you get the point about how that will work. It will also keep your readers looking out for more as with each message you will tell them to look out for another and so on.

Your readers don’t want to feel pressured so remember that while they expect you will be promoting either your own products or others, try not to over do the links in your emails. One or two links maximum per email is enough. Try to send them an occasional freebie as well. It will help you create goodwill with your followers.

To your success,
Chris

P.S. Here is that link again for you to go get setup with your autoresponder account at Aweber now.

Bookmark and Share
[del.icio.us] [Digg] [Google] [LinkedIn] [StumbleUpon] [Windows Live] [Yahoo!] [Email] More »
Powered by Bookmarkify™

Share This Post

Posted: October 13th, 2008 under News, Solutions.
Comments: none

Useful Tools To Make Money Blogging

No doubt you want to know what it takes to be a successful blogger if you are planning on launching your own blog. Keep in mind that a blog is something that requires patience and care and regular updating in order to succeed. You want to always be adding fresh and unique content to your blog so that you can stay ahead of your competition and make money blogging.

The first item on the list of recommended blogging tools & resources is WordPress which is actually the simplest blogging software to use to build your blog. You can download this software at WordPress.org. Just as a side note, the search engines love blogs and they also love WordPress blogs so this is another reason you will do well to make this your blogging software of choice.

Another useful tool you may want to use is a keyword research tool known as Wordtracker. At the time of writing this they have a 7 Day Free trial and you can find this resource at Wordtracker.com . You want to have a main keyword that your blog is targeting and Wordtracker is an excellent tool to use for your research on keywords. There are also many free keyword research tools so you may want to do a search for this if you are on a tight budget.

When you get your WordPress blog setup, one of the most useful things with WordPress is the amount of plugins that are available. Plugins add functionality to your blog. For example, there are plugins that will update Twitter everytime you submit a post. There are others that allow you to put Social Bookmarking tools after your posts so that your readers can bookmark your posts which helps you to get backlinks to your blog which drives further traffic to your blog.

Since you will want to stay abreast of what your competitors are doing another recommended blogging tool you can make use of is Google’s blog search which you will find here Google Blog Search . Using this tool you can find all of your competitors and check out their traffic generation methods. You can also see what marketing methods they are using to attract and retain their readers.

You should do a Google search and look up blog directories as there are many that you should submit your blog to. One of the most important is Technorati so, at the very least make sure you submit your blog to Technorati and ping them with every post you make.

I hope you take these recommendations and make use of them to build yourself a successful blog.

One of the most successful bloggers today is Yaro Starak from Australia. You may want to check out Yaro’s program called Blog Mastermind for other useful tips, tools and resources to make money blogging.

Bookmark and Share
Close Bookmark and Share This Page