Traffic Generation

submitted by Bruce Bird

The recurring theme in our efforts to develop our online businesses is how we are to generate meaningful traffic to our web sites.  By meaningful I include both volume of traffic and whether it is targeted or not, i.e. visitors who are looking for our type of product and are therefore more likely to buy than those just ‘surfing by’.

I give full credit to Stephen Pierce for the entirety of what follows and having not only bought into his products but also listened to him in person as he expounds on these ideas I can only recommend him to you all. 

Recognising that for a start up business our main criteria is minimum cost, the overarching strategy that he uses in what he refers to as NicheBlitz™ is that none of these activities should cost money.  They simply increase the presence of your website, your name, your product, your links all over the internet.  It is the cumulative effect of increased volume that is the objective.  Naturally, all of them require some work, but none of them require a lot.  There is a very salient point that no business owner aims to depend on one source of revenue.  To have one product, one delivery van, one method of advertising, is never a good idea.  Put simply, what happens when your delivery van breaks down?  Similarly, even if you find that one method produces great returns, maybe Google Adwords, you should not neglect any of the others.  What happens to your business if Google stops doing Adwords?  You would be dead in the water.

Do a press release.

Identify some newsworthy angle related to your product.  In particular, watch the daily news for something you can tie in to your product.  If the news attracts searches and the search engines are looking for relevant material to present then your press release can be associated with it.  Most obvious recent events lead you to think if your product was inflatable boats and you issued a press release immediately after Hurricane Katrina.

You can subscribe to Google News with keyword(s) so that Google will feed relevant news items to your email to alert you to relevant current news.  Publish you press release to www.prweb.com.  If you want PRWeb to distribute to Google and Yahoo this will cost $200 and a premium position on the PRWeb site will cost minimum $80.  Some rules:

1.      Hook into something newsworthy.

2.      Give the journalist something that he/she can write about.  Something that they did not know before.

3.      Emulate existing press releases.  Get the format right so that it can be recycled into print or web with minimum effort by the journalist or editor.

4.      Don’t sell!!  Just make sure your web site and details are referred to and you can include your site and contact details in your signature.

Sell on  www.eBay.com

eBay is the only buyers search engine/market place.  And aren’t buyers what we are looking for.  So go where they gather – eBay.  Main purpose is to build awareness.  Do the usual relevant keyword research and get your product listed.  Find some free public domain item you can repackage and give away in exchange for an opt-in to your list.  You may sell nothing – it doesn’t matter because you’ve got an additional and relevant name for your targeted list.

Sell on www.Amazon.com

You need an ISBN number to sell a book whether real or digital on Amazon.  Once you get listed on Amazon then you can put their logo on your website.  Even if they click through and buy on Amazon and you get less money, the link is recognized by the search engine bots and improves your ranking with the search engines and your credibility with your customers.  Split test with and without the amazon icon just to check what effect it has.  If its good then you can also use on higher value back end products associated with the book.

How to get an ISBN number.

Go to www.isbn.org.  Get an ISBN Publisher Prefix.  10 numbers will cost you $225.  100 numbers will cost $800.

Assign a number to your book with a barcode.  Use www.bowkerlink.com who will produce the required barcode for you to include in the product.

Sign up for the Amazon Advantage program and submit your book.

Sell on Froogle  (www.froogle.google.com.)

Its Google’s new marketplace – get on it!  Get position. See Information for Merchants on the page.

Start a Blog

Use 2 blogs – one meaningful for visitors, one blog and ping for the search engines.

On your meaningful blog find relevant news and rehash it – google news, yahoo news.  Ensure you have keywords in all your posts.  Give value content all the time.  Can be short but must be meaningful.  Do not sell!!  But make sure there is a link back to a content page which to your selling site.

Post comments on other people’s blogs.

Research search engines for relevant blogs.  (subject keyword +blog)

Set up a news aggregator so the blog posts come automatically to you and you can read whenever convenient to you.  Post comments on the other blogs – make sure your signature includes your name and a link back to your blog – not your selling page.

Write a report for www.wiki.ehow.com/contribute-to-wikiHow

As before, sign yourself off with name and links.

You can also contribute/expand on other peoples reports and add your name/links.

Write regular articles

Contribute articles to www.ideamarketers.com and www.submityourarticles.com

Use content from your ebook or product as the basis for your article.

Signature link to free content site – not your sales page.

Promote affiliate program

Have an affiliate program for each product.  Affiliates are ‘force multipliers’.  They can reach the lists that you don’t even know exist.

Look after your affiliates.  Make their life easy by providing links/icons etc. Acknowledge them, thank them, send them birthday cards!  (Stephen employs a ‘virtual assistant’ whose sole job is to send out thank you cards in the mail.  Every buyer gets one.  Massage your customers ego!

Use www.jvmining.com to find affiliates and jv partners.

Turn ebooks into audiobooks and sell on www.audible.com

Go to Contact Us then Business Marketing then Content Partners.  (I see you need a minimum of 5 – maybe they can be persuaded)

Convert ebooks into eReader format – sell on www.ereader.com

I believe this is the format for PDAs.

Links from relevant sites

The most effective method to improve search engine ranking – to have links from other relevant sites.  Use www.jvmining.com to find relevant sites and search engines (search for ‘add URL’ and ‘add link’ to find sites which are inviting you to link to them.

Check the quality of the site!  Do not link to directory sites.  Link to a content site – not a sales page.

You will note that throughout almost all of these methods the advice is to link to a content site, not a sales page.  Stephen’s advice throughout is to continuously give away valuable content to build a relationship with which the customer is comfortable.  Then you can point the customer to something new you have to sell or they will find their own way to your existing product. 

Go to www.stephenlive.com to see this whole principle in action.  This is a series of videos where Stephen gives away ‘valuable’ tips on making money.  He also:

• asks for your email address – for his list
• asks you to give him four more email address of friends who might be interested – so he can mail them and offer them the same free advice – and opportunity to opt inn.
• gives away a free mobile phone ring tone.  If it’s the one I heard it could be “the money’s in the list…the money’s in the list”
• offers RSS feed
• offers podcast feed
• gives away money in a competition.  (No, no I can hear you say.  They’re supposed to give me money!)

I hope this is useful to you all.  It will certainly keep your days full for the foreseeable future.  But the idea is that you should progressively work through these actions which, once completed often only need an occasional nudge on the tiller to keep them on track.  But you do need to keep on putting your identity out there for the customer to fall over.

Bruce Bird