5 Ways to Create Content to Drive Traffic to Your Site

There are many ways to promote your business online. The difference between online marketing and offline marketing though is profound.

Although advertising can be very effective offline, it isn't nearly so effective online. The reason why is that most people surf the internet looking for information. They aren't usually interested in advertising unless the product or service in question can solve their problems.

There are five strategies that you can implement in your business that will not only create a content strategy for you but will also create a very effective marketing strategy. This strategy will only require a few hours of your time each week.

1. Articles
For those who have read my work, you know that articles not only brand you as an expert but are also a way to create quality content for your site, and search engines love content.

If you don't like writing, or don't write, you can find quality articles to post on your site. The larger your site, the more likely you will be found in the search engines.

Here are a few article directories you can use:

http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.isnare.com
http://www.goarticles.com

2. Blogs/RSS
Blogging is another way to create content for your website, and by using RSS, you can easily distribute your content.

Most don't understand what RSS really is, or how it can most effectively be used to drive traffic to their sites.

Basically, RSS is a form of code that's very search engine friendly. With RSS feeds, which you can add to your website or blog, you can create content that updates itself. Because of this self updating, the search engines will spider your site more often, raising your rankings.

Once you've built your blog and added several entries, you need to "ping" it to get it listed. Here are two tools you can use:

http://www.pingoat.com
http://www.pingomatic.com

3. Press Releases
Press releases are news about your business. Press releases are also an excellent way to get high rankings for your site because you can create content rich press releases and submit them to press release directories. Many of these directories are high traffic.

Here are several sites that accept press releases:

http://www.press-world.com
http://www.free-press-release.com
http://www.prbase.com
http://www.click2newsites.com/
http://www.prweb.com

4. Search Engine Optimization

Optimizing your site for the search engines means creating keyword rich content, exchanging links with other sites, submitting your site to directories, which create backlinks pointing to your site.

You can use tools like Web CEO, http://www.webceo.com, to help you optimize your pages.

Although submitting the search engines is often unecessary, since most search engines will spider through to your site from another site, you still need at least one link pointing back to your site so that your site gets spidered.

Submit your site to Alexa, http://www.alexa.com. Not only will this make sure that your site gets spidered, you'll be able to compare your site to other sites, as well as get statistics on traffic to your site.

5. Free Ebooks and Reports
By writing and giving away free ebooks and reports, you give visitors an incentive to visit your website.

You can also submit your ebooks and reports to ebook directories for free.

http://www.ebookdirectory.com
http://www.ebookpalace.com
http://www.ebookjungle.com/
http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/

If you make your ebook brandable, which means others can place their links inside your ebook, your ebook becomes viral. You give others an incentive to share your ebook and spread it across the internet.

Once you implement these content strategies on your site, add streams of revenue to your site like Adsense and Virtual Portals. These sites will allow you to monetize your site.

http://www.google.com/ads/
http://www.virtual-portals.com

Although adveritising, like pay per clicks, can be effective in promoting your website, it can quickly become expensive. By focusing on creating quality content for website, and then promoting that content, you can continue to drive traffic to your website for years to come.

5 ultimate graphic design mistakes - Things that graphic designers should avoid at all costs

1. Using web graphics on printed material.
With many young designers coming from a pre-dominantly web design background the transfer over from web design to traditional design for print can bring with it a multitude of design sins. Images supplied at 72dpi and crunched down to load fast on a website are going to reproduce very badly in print you can get away with small thumbnails but blowing things up to any appreciable size is going to be pushing your luck. There are a number of online sites offering free or very cheap quality hi resolution images which are a good source for suitable imagery.

2. Forgetting about or not allowing enough bleed.
A very common error is to send to print a document or flattened image that has no bleed at all. Generally speaking you should allow at least 3mm around every cut off edge. Failing to do so will give the printers no leeway and will either crop off the side of the page or give you a white border. It is always a good idea when supplying image files to save layered psd files then if things need extending or cropping you can do this on the background layer and hopefully cut down your work

3. Using obscure fonts and not embedding or outlining them for output.
We've all been guilty of this at some point and things are generally fine if you are going to be the only person accessing your artwork or documents. However if someone else needs to amend the files or use your vector logo on one of there publications. Unless you package up the used fonts, they are not going to be able to open the files correctly and some software programs may replace any unknown fonts with a default. This is a particular problem when you need to dig out stuff that was created several years previously and you no longer have your old fonts installed.

4. Supplying print ready artwork using spot colours or rgb
There are valid reasons for using spot colours in artwork, logos that need to reference particular pantone colours for example. In general design work however most print is sent through on 4 colour presses CMYK with occasional 5th colour for luminoius or metallic colour or for spot UV varnish. It is very common for lazy designers to just place rgb images into files and expect the vibrant colours seen on screen to reproduce in print.

5. Allowing design illiterate clients to lead you round the houses
The customer is always right, goes the old adage. However it is often said with gritted teeth and a sense of patience that recognizes that these morons will at some stage be handing over a fat cheque for your troubles. It is often a good idea when first submitting visuals to throw in a couple of stinkers to hopefully get them to appreciate the design you would like them to accept. There is the very real danger of course of them loving the piece of absolute arsewipe that you knocked up in five minutes to make them think you've been earning your money. Still it's a living.

5 Unbelievable Secret Facts Of A Sure-Successful Joint Venture.

As you read this article, you'll find that the subject of successful joint venture is certainly no exception.

Joint venturing is the fastest and most preferred way to increase sales and cash flow. It is no longer a secret, business partners are what make a strong company. It is impossible for a person to sit alone and wait for businesses to come, you need to get your influence out there and that is where joint venture partners jump in.

If you have been staying for some time on the Internet, you should know that JV partners are the master key to online success. Here are some reasons of why people are failing to get quality joint ventures:

1. Other marketers will not be waiting for you to reply why they should joint venture with you. Make sure you include the reasons why the other marketer needs to joint venture with you, throw all the benefits in and give a compelling reason why they should.

If you think that giving your product for free to a joint venture partner and expect them to endorse it to their list of subscribers, it won’t work. Even if you offer your joint ventures a greater profit than you do, it still works if both of you get to know each other better and have more joint venture plans in the future.

2. Many JV offers are thrown into the trash bin at first sight. Why? The more famous marketers can receive up to 200 JV offers every week, they can’t afford to just joint venture with any little beings on earth. Which is why, you need to follow-up. It is important that you don’t stop requesting until you are noticed.

Even if they trashed your email for the first time, on the second, third and fourth time, they should be noticing your existence and be urged to open the mail. Be consistent, follow up, and you’re half way there.

If you base what you do on inaccurate information, you might be unpleasantly surprised by the consequences. Make sure you get the whole successful joint venture story from informed sources.

3. If you think sending an autoresponder series of template emails to your potential JV partners is a good idea, you’re killing your own business. People are very busy and to see that you are not even using your own time to write a proper JV offer, they don’t have time for you as well.

Your JV proposals should be more personalized - if possible you will even want to do a research on them so that you can know more about them and include the points in your JV offers. This makes sure that the both of you have a potential of being serious JV partners in the future.

4. JV partners are not affiliates. They are more than just affiliates, they’re potential super affiliates. You need to give them more commissions on any sales they’ve gotten for you. If you offer a 50% of commissions to your affiliates, your JV partners deserve 70% or more.

JV partners turns you targeted customers, they are hungry for similar products. Their subscriber trusts what they endorse, so it is the best way to promote your product. With a list of 10,000, if only 1% which is 100 who purchase your $97 product, you’ll earn $9700 over night with a single endorsement. 1% is a really low conversion, if the conversion rate increases by another 1% - you’ve already received $19,400.

5. Targeting the “big fishes” is not a good idea. You should begin from smaller JV partners, slowly build each other’s publicity, and only approach greater marketers when your subscriber lists are huge. This way, the greater marketers will get a more compelling reason in having a JV with you.

Joint venturing is no doubt the greatest way of getting successful in the Internet online venture, be sure to use it to the extreme and you’ll be delighted with the outcome.

To Your Success!

5 Top Product Promotion Strategies

One of the biggest myths of the Internet is the good old line, “If you build it they will come …” So many people throw up a website and sit back rubbing their hands with glee convinced they are going to become supremely wealthy.

Months later they are wringing their hands with regret wondering why they’ve had five visitors, four of which were their friends!

A website does not just automatically appear high in the search engine rankings and get traffic, you have to do some work in order to get this traffic and start making sales. There are thousands, or even more of sites competing for the same traffic you want – depending on your niche and keywords, there could be millions of sites!

You need to promote your website and get it noticed – not only in the search engines, but in other places where you will get targeted traffic who are interested in your website.

Strategy 1 - Directories

There are a whole host of directories on the Internet. Just search for your keyword and “Directory” or “Link Exchange” or anything similar and you will find hundreds of places to put your links. Yeah, it is hard work to do this, but you will get links and traffic to your site. If it’s too much like hard work for you – hire someone to do it!

Strategy 2 - Articles

Articles are an excellent way to gain traffic and promote your site. Submitting your article to directories will get you backlinks and if they are quality articles, will get you known across the Internet as an expert. Newsletter and website owners will pick up your articles and use them as content. This will help to promote your site to a much wider audience.

Strategy 3 – Affiliate Program

Running an affiliate program for your product is an excellent way to promote your site. Instead of you working on promoting your site, you have all these affiliates doing the work for you. And the best thing is – you don’t pay them a penny unless they make a sale. Depending on how much you offer as a commission, you could have hundreds of hungry affiliates aggressively marketing your product all over the Internet.

Strategy 4 – Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a concept that has been around for some time. It’s a very powerful method of getting traffic to your site. You have all seen those cute or funny emails and videos that people send to all their friends? That is viral marketing. If you can tap into this through a book, a video, games or anything people will want to pass on to their friends, suddenly you have a whole lot of people promoting your site – for free!

Strategy 5 – Forums

Forums are an excellent way to market your website. As you participate in a forum so you can establish yourself as an authority and trusted expert on your chosen subject, which will make people come to visit your website to find out more information. Be aware though, that if you blatantly promote your business without adding value or spam the forums you will do more harm than good to your reputation and your business.

Promoting your website will get you targeted traffic. It will also allow you to organically move up the search engine rankings through backlinks and the use of keywords. If you are someone who is serious about making money online, then you need to start taking your website promotion seriously. Remember though – spam and other unethical practises will harm your business in the long term. Promote your site ethically and responsibly, and you can be reaping the rewards for years to come.

5 Tips To Roll Customers Your Way With Promotional Items

Hopefully, you've had a few promotional items that have been total failures, ones that you thought were totally fabulous but turned out to be complete flops.

What, you're asking, I'm hoping you've had some failures in the promotional items area?  What kind of person am I, anyway?

I'm a person who wants you to have some experience being sold promotional items and products that never work so you won't be taken by them again, but are, instead, ready to break the mold and hit it big with your promotions.

Which also happens to be chief tip number one!  Break away from the promotional item pack, and be a leader instead!  I love pens, but the truth is, I have at least a hundred right now with different company names on them, and if yours is one of them, I most likely couldn't find it to call you if I searched all day and night.  And I'm no different from everyone else out there.  But if I had, say, a notepad handy with your name and address on it, well, that I could definitely put my hands on-which means I would be able to call you!

So the very first tip is to do something different with your promotional items that's different.  And as for tip number two, that would be to deliver your promotional items in a different way.  For instance, instead of mailing 1,000 whatnots, have 300 or so hand delivered.  I can guarantee that hand delivering promotional items will earn you enough business so that you can afford to hand deliver the next 300 and so on.

Now, the third tip is to let the professionals handle it.  And I don't mean promotional item manufacturers and bulk distributors.  I mean hire some real advertising and marketing people at a real advertising agency to advise you and develop your promotions and promotional ideas for you.  Yes, you'll spend a little more money upfront, but you'll have a promotion where all the pieces and parts work together to get your message and call to action across to your customers-which means your customers will be more likely to call you rather than the other guy.

And that's tip number four.  Remember that there is more to an effective promotion than handing out one item.  There are pieces and parts to it.  It takes a consumer an average of six to seven times of seeing and/or hearing your promotional message before they “get” it and take action of any kind-even saying no thank you.  No, it's not because your target audience is stupid:  it's because they're constantly being bombarded with marketing promotions from all sorts of businesses.

Which brings us to tip number five.  Know your target audience.  If your promotion is for teens and young adults, for example, don't give them refrigerator magnets-they don't usually have refrigerators!  At least not of their own yet.  Give them a cool key chain or CD holder, or even better, a CD instead. 

No matter how wonderful and unique a promotional item is, if it's given to the wrong target audience that has no use for it, they will have no use for you.

5 tips to invest and do business in China

1. Have clear understanding of China

It is essential to understand the culture of the country before investing in it. Understanding China is vital as China is a land of vast diversity. As such it is important for the company to understand the culture and the society’s values before establishing operations in China. Only through understanding the culture and values strong foundations can be built and higher chance of success can thus be achieved.

 2. Understand local business practices

Given China’s distinct culture differences from the rest of the world, understanding China’s business culture is extremely crucial. What works in one’s country will not be applicable at all in China. Understanding how the local people think and their business practices can allow one to engage better and faster with them. Original organizational culture and practices may have to change in order to accustom to China’s practices. Thus flexibility and adaptability is the key for any organization to be successful in China.

3. Acquire local knowledge and establish local presence

Establishing a representative office in conjunction with a strong domestic private sector partner that has access to all necessary information and contacts in their field is the widely practiced formula practiced by foreign firms who already enjoyed success in China. Another way will be through setting up joint venture. Most importantly it has to be the selection of the correct partner. Finding the right partner may require more time, patience and experience but it is never a hassle to spend more efforts in choosing the partner because a wrong partner will definitely guarantees failure.  Chinese expertise and local talent must also be incorporated into management or consulted during decision-making since local knowledge is essential as a source of information, access to networks and social and cultural learning, especially in China. 

4. Need for establishing business relationships

Guanxi (relationship) is an important element in achieving successful business in China. Top management must learn to nurture close relationships with their local counterparts. This not only helps them to understand the Chinese domestic market, but also creates avenues for help in times of trouble or in need of assistance. Building strong relationships with business partners can aid in mitigating strategic and operational risks.

5. Establish close relations with government officials

Because the China government plays an important role in influencing market movement and administering foreign investments, a strong government relationship remains an important factor to do business successfully in China. Fewer hiccups may be met during paperwork applications or achieving local authorization if a strong relationship with government officials is in place.

5 Tips to Help You Identify WHO To Market To

If you have your own small business, it's important to decide exactly who you will be marketing your products or services to. After all, you probably don't have the time or the money to market to everyone. And even if you did, it is not recommended.

You'll want to select what is called a "target audience." This is an identifiable group of people you believe will be the best prospects for your business.

But for many small business owners, narrowing their focus to one primary group of people can be a challenging task. They want to help everyone — and very often their product or service CAN help a variety of people.

It also goes against human nature to narrow your focus in order to grow a business. Common sense seems to tell us if we want to grow our business big, we need to appeal to more people.

In reality the opposite is true. When we narrow our focus to a particular group of people we become an expert in solving their particular problems. We get to know them very well and we can develop additional products and services to fill their needs.

So how do you decide who to market to?

Following are 5 tips:

1) Think about the type of people who can MOST benefit from what you have to offer.

2) Think about who you would most enjoy helping, or working with.

3. Think about the type of people who will be easiest to reach, AND who will be most receptive to what you are selling. These will be people who KNOW they have THE problem you can solve and are LOOKING for a solution.

4) Know that just because you select a particular group of people to focus your marketing on, does NOT mean you can't help others who may come to you. It only means you're going to focus your proactive marketing efforts on the target group you select.

5) Lastly, don't over-think it. Listen to your gut, pick a group you feel you can really help and proceed with the development of your marketing plan. Marketing is a fluid process. The important thing is to start. You can always refine your audience and your plan later as you learn more.

(C) 2005 Debbie LaChusa