Website Marketing Strategies for the Internet Entrepreneur

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Website Marketing Strategies for the Internet Entrepreneur

Internet entrepreneurs need to use websites, but websites only have any value or use if they have traffic flowing to them. A fancy website is worthless without traffic, and even the most simple site can make a fortune if it is flooded with visitors. Here are some simple, effective, free ways to generate more targeted website traffic to grow your business.

Search Engine Marketing for Free Traffic
Free advertising is widely available online, and the search engines are one of the most powerful examples of free internet marketing. Websites that get ranked well in the search results get free traffic on autopilot.  Website owners should put effort into getting their websites found, listed, and ranked well in the major internet search engines. Search engine optimization takes time to do successfully, but the result it an automated source of free and targeted website traffic. Mastering the search engines takes time, and taking shortcuts will not offer lasting results. Other aspects include keyword usage and link popularity.

Using Free Article Submission Site
One of the simplest ways to get targeted traffic to your website is by writing and submitting articles to article directories like this one. There are two benefits to this. First of all, anyone who reads your article will be exposed to a link to your website. And secondly, your articles provide quality in pointing links from credible websites to your website, which is one of the biggest components of SEO. Write short articles on topics that will attract the kind of readers who would enjoy your website. You can submit your articles to various free article sites which can lead to a nice traffic and search engine ranking boost. Having a hard time coming up with ideas of articles? Just think about what types of things your target audience would enjoy reading, or take content from your own website and reword it and expand it into various articles.

Social Media Sites Are Useful
Just about everyone is into social networking, and that includes business owners, entrepreneurs, and webmasters. You can drive great traffic by becoming valued member of niche related community sites. Find and join groups that are related to your niches. You can even begin your own groups. Do not go overboard with promotion, and take time to build a reputable presence, to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Then people will be more than happy to visit your site for more info. Using social media will not give you instant results, but you can begin planting seeds that will one day be very profitable for you.

Use a Blog/RSS
To grow an ever-increasing number of visitors to your website, you will want to focus on getting more unique visitors (first timers) and return visitors. A simple, informative, content rich blog with an RSS feed is a perfect way to establish a large following of return traffic. And there is another benefit of a blog, and that is that the search engines love fresh content, and therefore they love blogs. Your blog can get some great exposure to your site from the search engines leading to more free traffic.

Becoming an Internet Entrepreneur – Tips and Tricks!!!

admin    Website Tips     Becoming, Entrepreneur, Internet, Tips, Tricks

Becoming an Internet Entrepreneur – Tips and Tricks!!!

Hello, and congratulations on becoming an Internet Entrepreneur with your very own Web Business!!! To get you fast-tracked, we have included a vast selection of tips and tricks to make your online business a success that it deserves to be.

1) First of all, choose a domain name that is somehow related to the business you are in. For example, if you are looking for a domain name for your pillow business, you might want to try using a name like www.SquarePillows.com or www.PillowSleep.com. It is important to use a “real” domain name. Your visitors will not take your business seriously if you use a free domain name like www.tripod.com/squarepillows , or www.angelfire.com/pillowsleep . A lot of the good domain names are already spoken for, but if you are patient enough, you will search and find one that is still available. If you think that you will need more than one domain name, get that one now too, as thousands of names are taken up each day. Do a search under “Google” using “cheap domain names” as your search words. You will find some very reasonably priced domain registrars. The cheapest one that I have found so far is at www.GoDaddy.com. They are a full service operation offering web hosting and cheap, cheap, cheap domain registration.

2) You will need a hosting service for your domain name. The hosting service allows your domain name and all of its content to be viewed on the internet. This is easy to handle. You have basically two choices here. You can pay for the hosting service or get it for free. If money is not really a problem for you, then you may want to choose the paid version. Just do a search using “Google” with “web hosting” as your search words, and take your pick from the thousands of sites. You will find that the price charged varies wildly depending the services required. Now if you want to explore the free version…. There are a lot of free hosting companies on the internet. The problem with these free hosting companies is that they all require some sort of pop-up banner, static header or footer banner, or both, to be placed on each and every web page. These banners can contain all kinds of advertising, and some, or all of it, may not be welcome to the viewers on your web site. The free hosting option is certainly not the best one to explore. To save you time, I would recommend www.GoDaddy.com again for the most economical hosting of your web site.

3) Once you have your domain name and hosting service taken care of, you will probably need a way of uploading your web content to your site. Sometimes your web hosting service provider includes a site manager that allows this function. If not, then you might want to look into downloading some FTP software such as WS_FTP for example at www.ipswitch.com. While you are downloading software, you may also want to add WINZIP – located at www.WinZip.com to your download list. WINZIP allows you to “unzip” your “PillowSleep” file for example. A file is initially “zipped” to compress it for ease of downloading. To use this download zip file, you will have to “unzip” it first.

4) Your “PillowSleep” site probably needs a little more customizing. Look at other pillow sites on the internet for comparison and see what could be improved visually on your site. Does it need any flashy graphics? There are many free graphics available on the internet – just do a search with google. Once you are happy with the way your web site looks, it’s now time to focus on that fun part – html coding. Unless you are very comfortable using “html” coding, don’t touch the “html” coding on the “PillowSleep” pages at all. If you are comfortable using “hml”, then you could add things like Title, Meta Keywords, Meta Descriptions, etc., which would allow the search engines to find your web site much easier. The use of “keyword phrases” is much more useful than just using “keywords”, because it makes your web site more search specific. Go ahead and add a “Pillow” links page too. Another tip is always keep a hard copy of your web pages somewhere, either on a floppy, cd, or dvd. There are few things worse than customizing a web site and if something bad happens to your computer or hard drive, losing the web content forever.

5) At this point, you probably already have uploaded your web site and have it online. Now you need to “drive” visitors to your site. One popular way of bringing traffic to your site is to use a free link exchange or free link trading service. For the free link exchange service, you just sign up and put a little bit of code on your “Pillow” web site (this allows other Pillow web site banners to be viewed on your site and vice versa). The free link trading service is very simple also. You simply add another pillow’s link to your links page and vice versa. This trading of links increases your sites popularity greatly with the search engines. One of the most important things you can do to gain traffic is to get listed with the major search engines. Go to each search engine, or use a free service like www.AddMe.com and add your web site there. There is also what is called “pay-per-click” search engines where you actually pay for traffic sent to your web site. Other search engines require payment in order to get listed with them at all. “Yahoo” is one of these “pay” search engines.

6) Please be advised that is illegal to “Spam” on the internet or via e-mail. Spamming is sending unwanted e-mails or putting internet advertising material, or internet material in general where it should not be. That being said, another method of marketing and promoting your site is to add your site to casino and gambling message boards and free for all links pages. Please check to see if it is ok to post your info there first, and in which category, and anywhere else before posting there. If you “Spam”, you risk losing your internet service provider, and possibly your web host with all of your web content. It’s just not worth the trouble.

7) Another way of promoting your site is to add your web site address to your business cards, and/or make up flyers and posters. Don’t forget to get permission before you post anything anywhere. If you have other web sites, add a banner and/or link to your “Pillow” site there. Make a t-shirt with your “Pillow” graphic and web address on it (on both sides of the t-shirt) for yourself to wear. If you want, add your “Pillow” graphic logo and web address to different products like baseball caps and coffee mugs, and give them away as promotional items. Buy an ad on a bus stop, or a small classified ad in the local paper, or radio ad, etc. How about getting two of those “12 inch x 12 inch” sticky, bendable, removable, flat, “magnet ads” made up at your local printing store to put on the sides of your vehicle’s doors. When you drive around the city, every body will see your web site ad and when you get to your destination, simply take the sign off until you leave again. How about putting one of your “Pillow” flyers or small posters on the inside of your vehicle’s rear side glass areas. Just make sure it doesn’t obscure your vision. The idea is to use your creativity here.

I hope these pointers are of good use to you. Good luck with your online web business!!!

Sandy Johnson

http://www.TemplatesCD.com

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Business Help and Tips for the Online Entrepreneur

admin    Twitter Marketing     Business, Entrepreneur, Help, Online, Tips

Business Help and Tips for the Online Entrepreneur

Running a business online has many benefits from a traditional career or small business. You are able to save money by not needing to maintain a physical location, likely working out of your home you are able to save time and money by not having to commute to work and possibly not requiring child care, and you are able to work at whatever hours are most convenient for you. All of these traits contribute to an enhanced quality of living and, through their cost-savings, may enable you to start your own business without seeking financing. However, there are several challenges unique to the world of the online entrepreneur that you will need to keep in mind.

Finding Clients

Finding clients is a common issue for the online entrepreneur. In a traditional business, you may have foot traffic, you get visibility from your location, you may get clients that found you in the phonebook, and you can run ads in local newspapers or on radio stations to gain exposure. None of these methods can be easily applied to the online entrepreneur. Online entrepreneurs have to look towards methods such as blogging or article writing, social media outlets (i.e LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook) and other such resources to gain exposure for products and services.

Market Awareness

As an online entrepreneur, it can also be difficult to see market trends as they emerge and to understand the elative magnitude of those trends. For example, people are shopping online for just about everything, but do you know what percentage of people looking for your service look online as opposed to a phonebook? How many of those people prefer to deal exclusively online? How many require face-to-face contact? Knowing the answer to these questions can mean the difference between a successful online entrepreneur and an unsuccessful one, even if online sales/services are only a fraction of your business.

New Opportunities

There are many online business opportunities available to the savvy online entrepreneur, be they a particular marketing niche or partnering with an online business opportunity provider. Making sure that you are aware of these opportunities and that you know how to maximize them is a good step towards finding your own success online. By reading forums, both those related to your target customer and those concerned with your trade itself, staying abreast of articles and postings, and perusing independent reviews of the market and business opportunities, you can gain a solid knowledge of online entrepreneurship. Also, if you do choose an online business opportunity provider, make sure that you find one that offers ongoing support and tools for lead generation and the closing of sales.

If you are unsure how to find clients, what the market is doing or where the best opportunities for you lie, consider hiring a business coach. There are a variety of training companies , some of which are online business opportunity providers as well, that provide training, assistance and support for all aspects of your business. Visit www.HelpingYouHelpYourself.com for great business tips for the online entrepreneur and to get a complete help package to help you become an online entrepreneur and gain the time freedom you have always wanted.

Online Business Entrepreneur Talks About Linking And SEO

admin    Buy Inbound Links     About, Business, Entrepreneur, Linking, Online, Talks

All online business entrepreneurs worth their salt know that to create a long term successful business it’s virtually a necessity to get a good ranking in Google and the other Search Engines. Other methods of traffic generation such as PPC and even simply buying traffic can be useful in the short term but as ‘Google Adwords’

‘Cost per Click’ seem to be rising all the time this ‘bought traffic’ is getting to be more and more a short term measure and not something webmasters should see a

long term solution to getting sustainable traffic to their websites.

When Google changed it’s algorithm and decided to mainly rank sites according to link popularity this was the signal for lots of link farms to spring up and the

reason for lots of emails in our inboxes asking for reciprocal links. Initially people didn’t really understand the fact that the pages the links were on had to be relevant to the subject of the linked website and you could have a Garden Online Business being approached by a Watches For Sale website for a reciprocal link. This was soon found to have no value and even relevant reciprocal links have now lost most of their value as Google rapidly became aware that people were merely swapping links to try to manipulate the Search Engines.

If you ask any Online Business Owner what they consider to be the most effective medium to long term solution to getting visitors to their websites they will tell You “Get as many inbound one way links to your website from other websites where the content on the page is relate to what your website is about.”

This sounds very complicated – How are you to get webmasters of other websites to put a link on their pages to your website when they don’t expect you to reciprocate?

The answer is very simple. The first option, and any serious online business owner should already have been doing this, is to submit your website to Website Directories. These Directories are nothing more than privately owned ‘libraries’ if you like where you can search for websites in different categories. There are lots of resources for doing this and you can even buy software to help speed up the process. Normally you enter all the details normally required by the Directories and then as you go to the next Directory in the list the software pastes the information straight in to the fields required.

The next option for getting quality one way inbound links is now considered to be one of the most powerful advertising tactics available and that is Article Writing and Submitting. Article Writing can have a two fold benefit for the online business owner.

1, The article is submitted with a resource box which contains a link back to the writers website. This is a one way – targeted – highly relevant link. Great stuff!

2, People go to Article Directories, where the writers have submitted their articles and read articles about things they are interested in. They are also allowed to take away these articles and use them for their own sites Providing they leave the resource box intact – that’s another quality link back to the online business owner’s website.

Also people very often click these links in resource boxes, especially if it’s a well written article, which brings instant traffic.

A well written article properly submitted can bring the online business owner highly targeted traffic for years to come, not bad for an hours work.

“website Tips Every Internet Entrepreneur Should Know”

admin    Website Tips     Entrepreneur, Every, Internet, Know”, Should, Tips, “website

If you have an Internet business then your website or websites are the foundation of your business. The look, feel, and perception of your website can make or break your success. Therefore, you want to maximize the effectiveness of your website to bring in subscribers and boost sales. Following are common questions regarding Internet business websites that every Internet entrepreneur should know.

Website Question #1: How do you set up a squeeze page?

The basic steps for setting up a squeeze page include:

1. Make sure you have a domain and hosting account.

2. Verify that your domain is on your hosting account.

3. Go into Microsoft FrontPage and build a website. Microsoft FrontPage is simple to use and will walk you through the steps to build a website.

4. Make sure that your Autoresponder form matches the form on your squeeze page so that your Autoresponder will correctly capture personal information from the squeeze page.

Other tips include writing a catchy headline that will grab visitors’ attention. Entice people to subscribe to your list by giving them free items such as a free newsletter, bonus report, or eBook.

Website Question #2: Should you have a photo of yourself on your squeeze page?

Be careful of having photos on your squeeze page because photos have large file sizes. If you do use a photo you need to make sure that you shrink the size of the photo file otherwise it will take too long to boot up your squeeze page. This will frustrate visitors and they may skip going to your page because they have to wait too long.

Also, when visitors view your squeeze page their eyes will first be attracted to a photo before they read anything else. Sometimes they may miss important information on your website if they are distracted by a photo. Therefore, it is recommended that you avoid using photos on your squeeze page and stick to text. Text is easier and your squeeze page will load much faster.

Follow these website tips and visitors will be subscribing at a rapid pace!