Traffic Archives - The At Home Couple

Are You Ready For Christmas Traffic?

I’m not feeling 100 % sexy today as I seemed to have picked up some flu-like hitchhiker while driving carelessly through the blogosphere this week. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m going to bank as an affiliate with the gravy boats full of hungry, credit card ninjas that will be shopping online this Christmas – and I’ve also been thinking about what market I’m going to focus my efforts in.

I’m excited because this will be my first Christmas “online” as an imitation money maker, and I really do want to provide some genuine resources for the shopping traffic, rather than setting up a bunch of mistletoe-domains cranked with Adsense and scraped content. I haven’t started a list of possible avenues yet, so why not start my brainstorm right now as I’m typing this prize-winning post:

Where To Find Christmas Ideas

eBay’s Hot Brands section
Google Trends
Amazon
Your nearest shopping mall
Ikea
Your affiliate managers
Your kids

I’m sure you guys could have filled in the bullet points I just listed, but I don’t like assuming that everyone reading this blog already knows how to search for profitable niche markets and products. Personally I prefer studying Amazon’s marketplace over Ebay, simply because the prices are not auctioned off and it gives me a better idea of what people are willing to spend for something “brand new” online. You’d be surprised how much you could learn about the marketplace from your kids and the young children in your family. If anyone has a handle on what is going to be hot this Christmas, it’s them!

Once we’ve got some sort of list going on regarding products/markets, it’s time to think about how we are going to enter this market, our advertising budget (if any) and what mediums we plan to use for traffic generation. Here are a few proven methods:

Promotion Methods

Pay Per Click (most profitable/risky)
Article Marketing
Classified Ads (Craigslist, USFreeAds)
Squidoo, Hub Pages
Forum Marketing
Myspace Groups/Facebook
Link exchanges

I’m confident that most people within my inner circle of collaborators will be utilizing as many free methods as humanly possible, and keeping away from PPC due to lack of experience. ***Warning – If you have never made consistent profit using Pay Per Click marketing to drive traffic to an offer, you will get eaten alive if you try to jump in during the Christmas rush! Christmas is when all the big dogs make their big money, and if you’ve only dreamed of big money, stay away from the big dogs and let them do their thing. I really hate hearing horror stories of how somebody lost their kids college fund on PPC during Christmas… I can see it now “Merry Christmas Johnny! I got your McDonalds application framed for you!”

Go play in traffic dad…

I’m sure you get my point. There are TONS of free ways to generate traffic to your Christmas offers, just be unique and find those niche markets before hand – and don’t forget to make money off your friends and people you work with! It will get more and more difficult to locate profitable keywords, or find good domain names the closer it gets to Christmas, so start to think about what you’d like to do now – and take your time to use the tactics that work for YOU, and make some money to pay for all the wonderful gifts you plan to buy for your friends and family – and if you do super well, you can even grab something indulgent for yourself!

Cheers,

Elijah

Traffic Techniques: Article Marketing Part 3

Traffic Techniques: Article Marketing Part 3 I’ve decided to opt out of doing a video for this installment to my Traffic Techniques Series for two reasons – I have a lot of content I would like to cover, and I want to focus on getting a SocialMarker tutorial up in the next few days. I recently acquired Camtasia Studio 5 and need a day to get the functionality grooving. As Flava Flav would say – Yeaaaaaaaa Boiiiii. If you’re just tuning in and haven’t had a chance to go through the last two videos, you can view part one here, and part two here. Let’s get cracking…

Now that we know why article marketing works, and what the key factors are to writing an article that will perform, it’s time to touch on one of the most important elements to this technique – Article Distribution. If you don’t know where to get your article published, or how to turn those clicks into subscribers, then it won’t matter how well you know your market or how much keyword research you do – your results will not be as spectacular as we know they can be.

How many different ways can I publish my articles online?

The first and most common way of publishing articles online would be to submit your articles to high traffic, high ranking article directories. This has proven to be an effective medium time and time again, and a technique that many a bum marketer have exercised for two reasons – it costs nothing, and article directories get crawled often which means your submissions will get indexed very quickly. I strongly believe that there are people who make a living simply writing how-to style articles and submitting them to high traffic directories, with an affiliate offer redirect in the resource/author box.

The key to making this technique work for you is you have to treat every directory as an individual medium and test accordingly. Each directory will perform differently from the next because they attract different visitors – while one article may convert great on Directory A, it doesn’t mean it will perform well on Directory B or C. This same rule applies to your resource/author box – you might get more clicks on Directory A when you have your “about me” blurb before the “call to action” section, whereas in Directory B it’s the complete opposite. Making money online is all about testing, and article marketing is no different.

***Tip – Don’t be afraid to display your personality within the resource box. Being funny and quirky has always worked well for me and I’ve surprised myself quite a few times when I’ve gone completely off the wall and thought “people aren’t going to take me seriously” and then the article ended up getting a pleasing amount of clicks to my offer. Be fearless and unique and you’ll be rewarded.

I’m sure some of you are thinking “what do I put in the resource box?” or “how do I know if my call to action is good enough?” It’s important to include information about yourself within the resource box because you want to be known as a professional or expert within your niche. List any relevant credentials you may have as well as where you’re from and your professional status. To put it simply, your call to action should do nothing more than tell the reader what to do next. Below is an example of a resource box I might use:

“Elijah Vieau is an accomplished Music Producer and Composer from Toronto, Canada. He is the founder of Basement Theory Productions, where he provides development and consulting services to independent recording artists across the globe.

Head on over to www.Virgostratus.com to hear a free sample of his latest groundbreaking album.

Also, quickly visit www.MrBlueReviews.com to download his free report “Music Marketing On Crack” that shows you how to market and sell albums online using the viral power of social networking.”

***Tip – When it comes to your call to action please try and avoid the “if you would like more information on this topic please feel free to visit www.yoursitehere.com” method. This is article suicide. It does not sound confident or convicting. To me this type of call to action sounds like it belongs in a pamphlet giving information on the Ryan Phelps Foundation for Android Swimmers.

But Elijah, which article directories are the best to use?

I hate to say it, but “the best” is completely subjective. All I can tell you is that there are 3-5 top directories which most successful internet marketers use because of their page rank and traffic, but this doesn’t mean that you can’t find success with a smaller more targeted article directory. If you want to scope out this route just type into Goolge Your Niche+Article Directory and you will find results for smaller niche directories that you can add to your submission list. Below I have listed my personal top 7 list of high traffic article directories that I currently use – in no particular order:

I also found a great resource listing the top 50 article directories by traffic/page rank here. It was last updated on August 17th, 2008.

Originally I had planned to cover Article Distribution and Monetization Methods in one post, but it seems there was so much content that I will have to add a part 4 to my Traffic Techniques Series – so in my next post/video I will discuss the various ways you can monetize your traffic from the article directories to maximize your efforts and hopefully build your list and put some money in the good ‘ol Paypal account.

Cheers,

Elijah

Traffic Techniques: Article Marketing Part 2

This is the second video in my Traffic Techniques series. In this video I touch on my 5 key points to a successful article, and those points are as follows:

Your article must address a problem or issue
Do not sell within the content of your article
Effective use of keywords and key phrases
Using a “call to action” within your resource/author box
Proper Grammar. No spelling mistakes allowed.

I plan to delve into article distribution and monetary tactics within the next video, If you guys have any concerns or specific areas you have questions on – please let me know in the comments below. There might possibly by a 4th part to my article marketing series, but ultimately that depends on the feedback and how much I can fit effectively into the next video.

Cheers,

Elijah

Submit To 1000 Social Bookmarking Sites In 30 Seconds

Yeah right. Actually it’s more like 100+ social bookmarking sites in about 15 minutes. How you ask? By using the free services of a great little site called SocialMarker.com and if you haven’t heard of this site before, and you own a blog or two, then you better hop on over and create an account before they start charging for their services.

I first read about SocialMarker.com back in late June on DatMoney.com, which was around the time Veronica and I were conceptualizing this blog, and I knew at some point I wanted to try out a mass bookmarking service of some kind because we all know how time consuming it is to keep up with all these toolbars, usernames and passwords all in the name of blog traffic. So over the last month I’ve been dabbling with SocialMarker.com and seeing whether or not half of these social bookmarking sites are worth my time, or just another means of feeding social addiction. So what do I think?

SocialMarker.com kicks some serious ass!

The most time riddling aspect of using a service like this is setting up the accounts – but who really needs to use all 100+ social bookmarking sites to benefit from the potential traffic and backlink juice? If you need some help getting started, or are a little overwhelmed by the whole shebang, follow these steps below and you should be on your way:

Go to SocialMarker.com and set up your account. If you have questions, click here to find your answers.
Decide which social bookmarking services you would like to use, aside from the ones you already belong to. I suggest starting off with 10-20 sites and work your way up as you become more comfortable with mass bookmarking.
Click and drag the button they provide into your browser toolbar. When you want to blast a site to all your bookmarking services, select the text and click the SocialMarker button to pre-populate and submit. Super easy!
If you looking for an all-in-one bookmarking plugin for WordPress, they’ve also taken care of that as well. Just copy and paste the code they provide into your WordPress template and you’re good to go.

TheAtHomeCouple.com has been up and active for roughly a month and we’ve already had over 500 unique visitors, 10 subscribers via RSS, and new friends passing by every single week. SocialMarker is one of the main reasons why we are doing so well so early on and if you’re really serious about your blog, and already use social bookmarking and social networking as means of promotion and traffic, than this is for you.

If any of you already use it, I’d love to hear some feedback.

Cheers,

Elijah

Traffic Techniques: Article Marketing Part 1

Article marketing has always been one of my favorite ways to get free targeted traffic to a blog or affiliate website, and all though the majority of people who use this method have no idea what they are doing, it’s really not that complicated.

This video ended up being longer than I anticipated – as I started to rant and jabber – but I promise the next 2 videos will be more focused, and full of secrets and techniques that I’ve learned over the last 8 months of Internet marketing on a low budget.

Watch the video until the very end as I do hit some great tips, and I also have a special guest stop by for some final words – you won’t believe who I paid to come over and share his ultra money making secrets. So get used to seeing my ugly mug because I am using these videos as an experiment with the effectiveness of video marketing as well as providing you guys with some great content at the same time.

Enjoy!

Cheers,

Elijah

5 Traffic Techniques For New Bloggers

5 Traffic Techniques For New Bloggers I’m not yet an Internet marketing guru, and have no desire to be one, but I do have experience generating traffic to websites and blogs. Just to give you a little taste, my very first niche affiliate site INeedVinyl.com became live in March 2008 and ended the month with 60+ unique visitors. By the end of May I had generated over 1000 unique visitors using free, organic traffic building techniques and the count continues to rise. I’m not the type to position myself as Mr. How-To, but I’ve recently met a pretty cool dude by the name of T over at Poverty101.net and he’s just getting started in the blogging world – so I figure I would lend what little hand I have and share some traffic tips that he can use for his super-awesome blog! 🙂 I know you guys are probably sick and tired of outdated, half-ass traffic techniques but I can assure you every technique I list is proven to work, and you will find a lot of these in the top selling “make money online” eBooks. How do I know? Because I’ve read them all – so lets shut up and get to work…

Commenting on Related Blogs – I can’t stress the importance of this method. Will being active in the blogging community bring you hoards of traffic and make you a ton of money by itself? Not unless you spend 16 hours a day doing so. Listen, when I say commenting I don’t mean “hey great post, have a nice weekend” or “that chick with the three thumbs is hot” but unique, quirky and resourceful comments which clearly state your thoughts and display your involvement. This method is the fastest and easiest way to get traffic to a new blog – just stick within your niche, and be consistent. Not sure where to start? Visit Google and type in “Your Keyword+Blog” for example “Vinyl Records+Blog”. Pick 3-5 niche related blogs, visit them daily, become known in the community and make connections. Strive to be a top commentator!
Article Marketing – This can be the most tedious method of generating traffic, especially if you’re lazy, but let me tell you something – it works! The trick with article marketing is you want to keep away from submitting your blog posts as articles because Google no-likey and will slap your ass for duplicate content. What I usually do is take 1 out of every 5 posts and instead of posting it to my blog I will rewrite it 2 or 3 times and submit it to the major article directories. Start with these to get the ball rolling EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com, IdeaMarketers.com, ArticleDashboard.com and ArticleCity.com. There are also sites like AssociatedContent.com who will pay you for the traffic your article receives. Remember, BE RESOURCEFUL! No garbage content. If you can find 150 articles on the same topic, then put a spin on it or write about something different in your niche.
Keyword Research – This should have been first in my opinion, but I am not listing these techniques based on importance. When it comes to organic traffic – meaning the natural traffic sent to your blog from search engines – it all boils down to keywords, your competition and knowing what people are searching for. Here’s an example: I have a blog in the organic gardening niche and after doing some basic keyword research I’ve found that the keyphrase “Indoor Organic Tomatoes” has high demand with little competition (which is what we’re looking for). What I would then do is write a 3 part series on my blog spread over a week with the keyphrase being used in the title and throughout the posts. I’ll use the keyphrase in my tags, meta description, and create a new category or sub if one doesn’t exist titled “Indoor Organic Tomatoes”. See where I’m going with this? I could also write 2 to 3 articles using my keyphrase like “How To Grow Indoor Organic Tomatoes” or “Top 5 Reasons To Grow Indoor Organic Tomatoes” and submit them to the article directories I listed above with my blog address in the author/resource box. Piece of cake!
Naming Your Image Files Correctly – This is becoming more and more important with the likes of the Google Images directory. If you use pictures and images in your blog posts you want to make sure they are named appropriately using relevant keywords and phrases. Within WordPress there are ready-made plugins that will make this process a breeze – I recommend using SEO Friendly Images by Vladimir Prelovac. This plugin will give you the power to control every aspect of your pictures and images with respects to search engine optimization and how the images on your blog are indexed. Using the organic tomatoes example, I would save the image as indoor-organic-tomatoes.jpg, and within the alt text section of the plugin put the post title. Naming your images accordingly will ensure that they are indexed by all the major search engines, and when someone is looking for an image, your blog will pop up on the search results.
Social Bookmarking and Social Networking Sites – I’ve already began posting about the importance, and possible challenges with relation to social networking sites like Twitter, Digg, Myspace etc… But truth be told, these services can provide serious amounts of traffic very quickly if utilized correctly. I think it’s safe to assume that most people reading this post have either a Facebook or Myspace account currently active, or both, in any case take some time and set up accounts for your blog. Add pictures of yourself, give a little introduction and immediately start to add friends who have similar interest by using the search functions within the sites. Another secret way to find your niche markets within these sites is to search within the groups – Myspace in particular has over 65,000 groups already niched out and ready for your love. Scope out these groups and start adding people to your profile, leave comments, post threads and have your blog address in your signatures and all over your profile pages. It’s ridiculous how fast you can get traffic to a site using services like this. If you’re not too familiar with using the power of Myspace and social networking sites to generate traffic I highly recommend picking up a copy of Ryan Moran’s SpaceBankers program.

More traffic techniques to come! The original title to this post was 17 Traffic Techniques For New Bloggers but I had to cut it short as it’s 2:15 a.m. and my eyes are slowly shutting. I promise I will be getting into more detail with regards to building traffic, keyword research and overall techniques to get your blog or website off the ground and running.

Cheers,

Elijah