How To Create and Use Affiliate Programs to Drive More Traffic To A Website

Website Traffic. Perhaps one of the most low-profile Internet marketing schemes is affiliate marketing. However, low-profile does not mean unsuccessful, because this type of marketing continues to play a significant role in e-commerce.

What is affiliate marketing?

In a nutshell, affiliate marketing works on a reward system, wherein one website drives traffic to another website in exchange for reward points. Basically, it works this way: if you are an affiliate (or associate) of an online-based company, you create your own website, which links back to that company. Any visitor to your site that you manage to re-direct to that company's website will earn you rewards points. The more points you have, the more rewards you can actually reap. Some businesses prefer this type of marketing scheme because it is a pay-per-performance package deal.

In the non-Internet based business lingo, this type of reward system is called revenue sharing.

How to Create and Use Affiliate Marketing Programs

For the first few years, online business owners only allowed for affiliates with their own websites (or at the very least, their own webpages.) These days however, anyone can become an affiliate by simply: engaging in online discussions (chats, forums, message boards, etc.); using e-mail marketing, using offline promotions; writing e-books; or writing ezine articles.

There are certain advantages though, of having your own website. One: some online businesses require their affiliates to have one. Two: since it is your site, you can creatively promote one or all your affiliate programs, all at the same time. Lastly: a website has greater potential to reach more customers than forums or e-mail marketing strategies.

How to Choose an Affiliate Program

Choosing an affiliate program is equally important. Don't grab the first one that comes along. You can visit Internet Affiliate Marketing Program Networks to compare and study different programs. Plus, most of the advertising merchants here will let new affiliates sign up for free. Choose a few of the programs that seem stable, and a few of those merchants with the longest history of sales and affiliate marketing success. Try not to be dazzled by the promises of millions of dollars, etc. etc. etc.

Once you've sized down your list, look into the quality of the products and services that these merchants are carrying. Your goal is to entice people to check out the goods. If you are not convinced of the quality of these products and services, what makes you think that your site visitors will be convinced as well? Besides, if the goods do fall short of expectations, your name as a marketer is on the line as well. Choose one (or more) which you think will be a credit to you, and not otherwise.

Creating the Site Itself

Once you've chosen from the affiliate program lot, you can either choose a program that can help you "build" your website by providing the necessary tools like banners, graphics and articles. If they can provide you with online training about how to effectively market their goods, then your life will be easier. If not, you then have to dedicate more time and energy into marketing your chosen product and goods.

Try to calculate if the time you spend creating product banners and articles is worth the compensation you will be getting from the company you've applied for. If it is not, it would be best to move on to another program.

The most essential key here is to create quality content in your site. People are looking to yours to see whether you can give them new insights or provide advice to their dilemma or verify a fact about something. A theme-based website will even bolster your reputation as an "expert" in your chosen niche, so try to limit your website to one theme only. Weave all your different affiliate programs in all your pages, but do so in a manner that will be attractive but not overwhelming.

At the end of your creative process, try to sit back and ask yourself if you are convinced with what you have on your site, and if you would consent to buying the products and services advertised within. If the answer is a "no," or a "maybe" then you may want to check out other sites to see how you can improve your own.

How to Choose a Domain Name that will Drive MORE Traffic to a Website

Website Traffic. Creating a website can be tricky, but choosing the right domain name is even trickier. A good domain name can drive more traffic to your website, and a not so good domain name may cause a stagnant website. The concept of having your own website is that it should effectively represent your purpose, whether it will be for personal or business use. Once you create your website, it follows that you should and must register your own domain name.

So what is a domain name? It is a unique alphanumeric name that gives identity to a website on the World Wide Web. A domain name has a maximum length of 67 characters, this includes the 0 to 9 numbers, English alphabet composed of 26 letters, and the hyphens. Hyphens in a domain name can only be used within and not at the beginning or the ending of the name.

Domain names have suffixes, and they are called Top Level Domain (TLD). Domain name TLD's are based on the category of organization that they are related to. The following are several of the most popular TLD's:

1. .gov for government agency
2. .edu for educational institution
3. .org for nonprofit organizations
4. .net for commercial network
5. .com for commercial business domain

Since domain names gives identity to a website, it follows that choosing the right one can be a bit complicated. Your objective is to opt for a name that is easy to remember, search engine optimization friendly, and more importantly a domain name that mirrors the content, and/or products and services that your website provides. At the end of the day your chosen domain name can make or break you.

Do's and Don'ts in choosing a Domain Name

Obviously, a domain name should be related to your websites content. If you're selling shirts then do not choose a name such as pants.com. Choosing unrelated names will confuse site visitors and frankly it doesn't make any sense at all.

A domain name as discussed earlier should be easy to remember. So choosing too long of a name is a No-No. Which is better yourshirts.com or your-shirts-in-different-styles-and-colors.com?

However, a short name is also not advisable, because a short name will not have much impact in driving traffic to your website. Try to purchase a domain name with few keywords with relevance to the content of your website. Which is better yourshirts.com or shirt.com?
Integrating keywords in choosing a domain name will help, because it will result in a higher ranking on search engines. Which is better yourshirts.com or yoursite.com? With yourshirts.com you can immediately identify that the website is about shirts as opposed to yoursite.com wherein you are at lost as to what the website is all about, you will loose potential website traffic if you do it that way.

How Relationship Building Can Drive Traffic to a Website

The only traffic known to man that is wholly accepted with open arms is, of course, website traffic. Every website owner loves traffic because the steadier the flow, the more probable that it will result in earnings. But the fact of the matter is that it is hard to achieve, let alone maintain, especially for new internet marketers and website owners.

Do not let this stop you from realizing your goals. You should be able to cleverly utilize all obtainable techniques to drive traffic to your website. There are lots of ways, and one of them is to build a long lasting relationship within the World Wide Web's vast community. In this article we will discuss two of them:

Relationship Building with Customer

The credit should go to e-mails, because since its conception the communication practice hasn't been the same. Whether existing or would be customers, you should always try to communicate with them in such a way that they will feel important and not stalked. It is advisable to adhere to the best practices in achieving that much needed website traffic and traffic conversion. By all means, try to avoid spam e-mails, which will only result to receiving hate e-mails, or even crashing the website's internal e-mail system.

An average user has at least two to four e-mail accounts, and they log in more than five times in a day. It is not surprising that before anything else some of them reach first for the mouse to check for incoming e-mails every morning. That alone translates to exceptional probabilities for website owners. To utilize the e-mail to catch the attention of prospective customers and to build a powerful long lasting relationship with the existing ones will definitely drive traffic to your website.

Towards the end of each day, e-mail does not only change our routines, it also has an impact of the very way we communicate. A marketing technique that uses e-mail promotions will give you a chance to get to know your customers. Moreover, you achieve visibality into the type of content that customers are interested in, and by providing these contents you are developing a progressive customer online relationship.

Relationship Building with other Websites

Other websites in reality are also your competitors, especially if you provide the same products and services or if you have similar contents, but as the saying goes - "No Man is an Island". Even in this cut-throat world of "who-gets-it-first", relationship building is still essential.

It would surprise you that building relationships with other website owners can drive traffic to your website. But also keep in mind that you just do not build your relationship with just any other website, you should always bear in mind that there should be a level of similarity in the content that both websites provide.
At the end of each day, relationship building is all about the quality of the content that your website provides, it is more than just backlinks and page ranks, and oftentimes that is what some people tend to forget.

How Long Does It Take To See Traffic Results From Blogging?

You can see your first traffic from blogging literally overnight, mostly from your initial pinging, Will it be a lot of traffic? Not necessarily. If you post at the right time of day for your site, you may see as many as 100 visitors come to your blog in its first day, due to a new blog post, just from pinging. You can see more than that if you let your existing traffic know about your blog.

After a certain number of posts, to lay the foundation of an active feed, you will also start to see a trickle of traffic from promoting your RSS feed or blog in directories and feed-specfic search engines. That can happen as soon as three days in, and sometimes after 7 to 10 days. The timing you can expect will depend on your blog.

You can see your first search engine results from blogging in as little as a week. With the combination of methods I teach, it really does take just a week to start seeing your initial first page rankings. Will this mean that suddenly thousands of people come to your site as a result of that ranking?
Not yet.

The first results are like poking a hole in the side of a dam. A little trickle of traffic will come flowing out - that’s the immediate, apparent effect. The slower, more dramatic effects happen over the course of the first 80 - 180 days, depending on the difficulty of your keywords, your volume and frequency of quality content, and your persistence in keeping up your linking efforts.

The one thing you’ll need to understand about blogging for business reasons is that when your intentions are tied to your business, you aren’t going to get a lot of general b2b traffic, or general consumer traffic, which means you probably aren’t going to become one of blogging’s superstars. But if you really take the time to know your client base, you will become admired and respected by them, which is what really matters.

7 Surefire Ways To Increase Your Traffic Starting Yesterday

by: Terry Leslie

Internet. Business. Profit. To fully integrate all of these words into a successful merging you will need another word. Traffic. Every article you will find about making your site or company successful would always include the importance of generating traffic.

So, we all know that in the core of it all, traffic is the most essential thing to a successful internet based business company. Aside from ensuring that you have a great product to sell, and you have your company’s internal organization well taken core of, it would be time to get to the nitty gritty of things, generating traffic.

If you already have a site and you want think that you're not getting the traffic that you're supposed to be getting, then its time to reconsider. If you are contending in these very competitive business, you should always be a step ahead of your competition, increasing your traffic flow should have been done starting yesterday.

Timing is essential, that’s an old adage known to everyone. But with generating traffic, you should always be on your toes and be a day ahead of everyone. Never think of today and tomorrow as a starting point for making your site traffic laden, it should always have been yesterday.

To help you out in generating more traffic for your site, here are some seven surefire ways to increase your traffic starting from yesterday.

1) Invest in good advertising with search engines

Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture provide great advertising schemes that are very truly popular and assures great traffic. Although with this surefire way to increase your traffic would cost some money. While some would shy away from spending money to increase traffic, it is imperative in this case to do so because Adwords and Overture is the top surefire way to increase your traffic.

You could see for yourself the success this search engine advertising methods have reaped rewards for so many companies. Lots of site feature these advertising system and many have signed on to reap the benefits. Do not be left behind. Every penny is worth it with using Google and Yahoo’s advertising.

2) Exchange or Trade Links with other sites

With exchanging links with other sites, both of you will benefit from the efforts both of you do to enhance your sites traffic. When one site features another sites link, they could provide one another with the traffic one site generates. The efforts are doubly beneficial because it would seem like both of you are working to generate more traffic. The more links traded with more sites the more traffic could be expected.

3) Use Viral Marketing

Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only. This is a marketing method that can be quite sneaky; you can attach your company’s name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.

4) Search and use proper keywords or keyword phrases for your sites content

Search engines look for certain keywords that they would show in their results page. In doing so, having the right keyword and keyword phrase is a high requirement in ranking in high in search engine results. You could write your own content or you could hire someone to do it for you.

5) Write Articles that can lead traffic to your site

Submit articles to sites that would contain the same subject that your site deals in. If you sell car parts write press releases and articles about cars and car parts. Attach your sites description and services at the end of the article as well as the link.

6) Join forums and form online communities

Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. When you found a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your site and will pass on to many people their trust. Traffic will certainly increase because they know that you can provide what they need.

7) Lastly, Offer newsletters.

If many people know what you are about and your existence is shared with many others, you will find a loyal traffic that can provide you with more traffic by recommendation. If you arouse the curiosity of your customers they would be pushed to help you with your traffic.

In the mean time, Good Luck on your journey to success…

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How Directories Can Drive Traffic to a Website

There are a lot of ways to drive traffic to your website, and one of the oldest methods is by submitting your website link to Web directories. A Web or link directory is the World Wide Webs directory, and like the yellow pages, it comprises of existing website links in different categories. Its purpose is to link and categorize various websites for surfers to effectively find what they are looking for.

Web directories are different from search engines, because they do not display web page lists that are based on keywords, but rather list a website by its category and its subcategory. The categorization process is normally based on a website as a whole, instead of the content of a page or its keywords, and usually websites are more than often only included in one to two categories. However, Web directories permits website owners to openly submit their website link to be included, and have human editors who evaluate website link submissions for category appropriateness.

RSS directories are also somewhat the same as Web directories, although they contain a compilation of RSS feeds, rather than website links.

Directories in General

Several directories are very much general in range and lists website links throughout a wide scope of languages, regions and categories/subcategories. But there are a handful of niche directories also, which concentrate on a specialist spheres, single languages, or limited regions.

An example of a popular, general, Web directory is the Open Directory Project (ODP) and the Yahoo! Directory. ODP is a major player in Web directories because of its wide-ranging categorization and a vast number of listings. It is also free to use by search engines and other Web directories.

An argument over the quality of these Web databases and directories persists, since search engines utilize ODP's information without any real incorporation, and several test using clustering. A lot of efforts have been done to build a simple directory development, by using links for a type of link submission website that uses a script, or several of the obtainable PHP programs and portals. Currently, social software methods have initiated new attempts in the categorization process, with the aid of adding tags to the contents of a websites pages.

Why to Use Directories

For arguments sake, sometimes a website may only achieve minimal traffic from a directory compared to a search engine, but it does not necessarily mean that you do not need to submit your website links to these directories.


Targeted traffic to a website is a result of directory searches. A surfer who searches using these directories are normally there for a specific purpose, and that is because they are looking for specific needs. This traffic is more than likely to convert to prospective customers for the products and services that a particular website carries.

Search engines rank website link directories, principally those that contain links for a particular significant interest, like an expert website. Whether this is due to the fact that these directories are managed by humans and not some super computers, it explains why it is still one of the trusted sources for information. Website links listed in these directories for that reason are more credible.

Easy Ways to Optimize Your Website

Everybody who's engaged in the internet business devotes their time, money and effort to drive more traffic to their site. There are actually a lot of alternatives and process to achieve this.

One alternative is to optimize your website. Website optimization is very important. Why? So that your website will be found online. Optimizing your website means you have to transform the content of your website to a much smaller and streamlined form. Lessen bandwidth usage while maintaining the way you want your website to look. This will definitely help save time and money.

Optimizing your website to drive traffic can somehow be very technical and complicated. But here are tips to help you optimize your site. Read on to know the basic tips for website optimization.

1. Know your target visitors who will search for your site online. You need to figure out what search phrases the surfers use so they can find your site. Always decide on the keywords that you are going to use. Think of some ideas that the surfer will type about your website.

2. Next thing to do is to define a particular niche. You are certainly going to cover a very broad topic. The rule of the thumb is to optimize your website with the best keyword. Your Keyword should be direct enough so the searcher will find your site right away and he will not get lost.

3. Take a closer look at your title tags. For those who don't know, a title tag describes a particular Web Page. They are actually HTML tags that contains text. When you use a title tag, make sure that it describes exactly the content of your website.

For instance, the articles title is 5 Ways to Lose Belly Fat, and then the title tag should be like that as well. Always place your keywords in the title tag. This way any topic related to your page will be easier to find.

Also make sure that the title tag contains various strategic keywords that have been constructed using guidelines for the web page. Title tag is very important since search engines look for title text when they are going to the index page. Title tags too can be a text link to the found pages in the list of search engines.

Look closely at the title of every article and post. It is very important in optimization since the surfer will definitely use catchy keywords for their convenience.

4. It is very important to analyze keywords. You can use the convenience of the keyword analyzer tool. Many websites offer this service and definitely delivers more traffic too. One of the best and most popular keyword analyzer tools is Google's.

5. Choose a relevant title. Make sure that it is descriptive enough for the surfers convenience. At first you may not get a very good title but as you go through and complete your article, you're going to have a clear idea what your title tag is going to be.

Make a direct and descriptive title. You know, sometimes even if the content of your article is the greatest but your title is not, the chance of having a site visitor is very slim. So watch out for your title.

6. Always consider your keyword density. This is one way to optimize your webpage. Keyword phrases should appear at least three to five times in the article while keywords should appear 10 times or more.

One more tip, it is good that you repeat the main keywords title every 200 words you made. Then for every 400-word article you write, the keyword must be repeated twice.

7. Consider the header. Always place your keyword here when you are going to write the text for your site. Search engines when scanning your site rates the texts in your headline. This is the most important part. So you should place it in the page headline. Header tags are quite large so you need to format it so it becomes smaller than the usual.

These are some of the helpful tips to optimize you website. If you follow them then you will see your sites improvement in the search engine rankings. You really don't have to be an SEO expert and spend a lot of money to optimize. Just follow them and surely you will get more traffic! Good Luck!

Acquiring Leads to Get More Traffic to Your Site

How will you get your site visitors back? It's quite hard to tell. But there is a sure fire way to do this. To target lost prospects for your site, you need to acquire leads. FYI, lead is a visitor that might want to purchase your products or services. This is a very critical activity in the process of lead generation.

It's not easy to identify a prospective visitor. Not only will it be a very complex task but it is expensive as well. Some of the visitors might not be overly ready to be converted. To make the meaning of leads easier to understand, I will try to say that acquiring leads just means that you have to bring people to your site.

What are the ways to acquire leads? Simple, you can use the so called email marketing or the opt-in email lists. You can choose to do it yourself or pay a very good amount of money for internet providers who do this kind of service.

When you choose to do it manually, you will use the lead capture form and place it on your sites landing page. Also place them on traffic entry pages that offer significant newsletters.

You must create a lead capture form good enough to ask for the prospective customers email address. They should be asked permission if it is alright to email regularly.

You can find customers from some of the reliable sources. Some sources can provide prospective customers; they let them rent their prospect lists. These prospect lists can come from a professional organizations trade groups, list of brokers and even alumni associations.

Another way to acquire leads is through link exchanges. You can exchange links with the other sites that offer the same services on your site. Just choose one which draws a lot of attention. When you exchange links the chances of acquiring leads is good.

These are some of the ways to buy leads when you choose to do it yourself. Its kind of time consuming but it really makes sense when you achieve the site traffic you wanted.

The other way to acquire leads is to get email opt in lists, sometimes you can find a lot of lists online. Here are some examples of the Opt in Email List providers: acquirelist.net, AllmediaInc., Aboutlists.com, 24/7media, 1touchmarketing.com and 1000lists.com. These are just some of the providers that can help you. If you prefer another list, then you can search online for more lists.

The following are some of the payment options and terms that will definitely suit your preferences.

CPA or Cost Per Acquisition and the term of payment depends on the results of the emails being sent out. It's like paying on how many customers you get. This is more of a per sale basis. The good thing here is that you and the provider somehow become partners.

CPM or Cost Per M, M means a thousand. Some of the providers offer this kind of service, particularly brokers. Here they are going to send you email. For instance, they will send 50,000 emails, the CPM is $40/M, and then, that would cost you $2000. You are going to pay them on this basis whether you make sales or not.

CPC or Cost per click is when the providers give emails and if it goes out, then there will be a link to click, this could be a web page that they can visit to acquire some information etc. The payment term here is actually per click to the targeted URL.

Now when you are going to pay the Opt in List providers, pay them with a credit card. Because if you have been cheated, you have a way out through the credit company because they will help you in such cases.

Is they don't want to be paid with a credit card, then, don't do business with them. Since they may not give refunds.

So here's a word of advice for those who will choose to pay for the list providers. Always make sure that you obtain the lists that you order.

Here are some of the ways to buy leads to generate more traffic. Also, make sure that you give good reasons for these prospective customers to go to your site. Acquiring leads can be easy and affordable. Just make sure that you make the right decisions to get it done.

Definitely you will gain more site traffic. So go on and try these ways for better site traffic!

9 Effective way to Convert Traffic to paying Clients

If you have a website that markets your business, to achieve an online business that generate income from affiliates or ad programs such as Google AdSense, or, to sell products and services on an online store. You probably know that there are certain search engine marketing techniques, like Search Engine Optimization, Pay-Per-Click such as Google AdWords, and, other promotional techniques to drive that much needed traffic to your site.

Now that you have achieved that, what happens when traffic builds up on your website? Are you able to convert them to paying clients? Building traffic to your web site is just one thing, but if nobody is buying your products or services, your online business is doomed to fail.

Conversion Optimization - A Success Factor

What is conversion optimization? It is the process in which you maximize the percentage of site visitors to complete a preferred action. This percentage is called conversion rate.

If you are not doing it yet, conversion rates should be tracked. Percentage for pay-per-click ads, it's the percentage of visitors who clicked on your ad, and, is directed to your website, and, made some actions - like completing and submitting a contract form, request for an estimate, and other actions. This can be measured, for you to know if you have successful ads.

How Conversion Rates are Calculated?

Pay-per-click ads conversion rates, are calculated as follows:

Number of site visitors making an action - divided by - number of site visitors that clicks your ad - multiplied by - 100 - is equivalent to - Conversion Rate Percentage

Online stores conversion rates, are calculated simply as follows:

Number of orders made - divided by - number of site visitors - multiplied by - 100 - is equivalent to - Conversion Rate Percentage

The importance of improving the conversion rate is so crucial, because it can escalate your sales transactions with the same quantity of website traffic by just increasing your conversion rate.

As the website traffic increases - and it should increase as expected over a period of time, granting you are properly managing your website - your profit will proliferate. You could amplify your conversion rate and amplify your website traffic, your profit will escalate four times, with all the other things being equal.

Here is the much awaited 9 effective ways

You can use the following 9 effective ways to improve your conversion rates and to convert site visitors to paying clients. This is perfect for online stores, but, it is also quite effective for most types of websites that need to improve their conversion rate.

Most of them are reasonably priced ideas, especially when compared to the price of driving additional website traffic or to pay for advertising. Bear in mind, too, that boosting your conversion rate will consequence a better return on investment for your website's promotional expenditures that you use to amplify your website traffic.

1. Use the return policy of your site to convert visitors to paying customers.
2. Give a variety of payment options to attract a lot more paying customers.
3. Offer an easy accessible customer service.
4. Provide a toll-free contact number that is visible to site visitors.
5. Be a mystery shopper to your site.
6. Make your website secure and make sure that everybody knows it.
7. It is best to peek on your competitor's site to see what they are up to.
8. You should welcome feedback, because it will help you improve your services.
9. Offer promos and special discounts and make sure that they are advertised heavily.

It is not enough for your website to be just noticed. You have to aim for sales too!