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Navigating the Article The Zen of Traffic Dancing With Search Engines Pay-per-Click Writing for Traffic Classic Advertising Affiliate Programs Joint Ventures Concluding Thoughts Hobbyist or Businessperson? Nothing raises this fundamental issue more powerfully than writing for traffic. You have something you are interested in. You get your web site going. You write your content. And you write and write and write and you never have enough. This is the "hobbyist" entrapped by the content. Or you do all the above, but you rigidly carve out time to optimize the site for the search engines, ensure your articles are going out, form links with partners, and ensure your email list is exploited. Plus you spend lots of time MONETIZING  your site.  This is the "businessperson". Now there is nothing wrong with being a hobbyist. Hobbyists generate followings that trust them because, in part, of their lack of commercial aggression. Indeed, Hobbyists can fall in love with that market positioning - "the honest advisor and friend." But few people today expect it. A modicum of commecialism is not only acceptable it is expected. It's all in how you write and what you say and the crassness of your monetization approaches. Think about it!  Continuous Improvement "Remember, get an idea and get it out on the web as fast as possible. Then test and improve it. Whatever you are doing, your web site will NEVER be as bad as it is right NOW." Attributed to John Reese. For more on this remarkable man go to John Reese VERY IMPORTANT Newsletters and Co-registration If you have a newsletter, you can use it as a vehicle for driving list building. Co-registration services are firms that advertise a whole slew of newsletters and allow people to pick the ones they would like to subscribe to. You are not getting visitors - you are getting direct subscribers who are self-targetted to a significant degree. The service HBB Research uses for its Insights Letter is Glen Hopkins - List Builder Similar, but not quite the same is Freedom List Links from Traffic Swarm On each page of HBB Review we have links for business opportunities drawn from Traffic Swarm. They are there to give subscribers a chance to browse (HBB Research gets no gain from any link), and also to build our SEO position. Go to Traffic Swarm and check it out...it's a neat idea!

Page 1  2   Writing for Traffic Can you imagine ‘infecting’ the web with references to your web site; references that lead people to go to your site and perhaps buy?  That is the essence of viral marketing. The mechanics are simple, though they take a little skill, something worth saying, and some discipline. There are eight primary vehicles for viral advertising: Articles Newsletters Press releases Knowledge bases Blogs E-books Refer-a-Friend Scripts Text Links  The Gift of Content If you look beneath the froth, everything on the web is geared to content. The web is about information. That's the #1 reason people go online -along with  the desire to communicate by email and MSN. The search engines - especially Google - are in a perpetual hunt for content as they try to improve their search algorithms. As everyone knows this, the demand for content is insatiable; with webmasters searching for articles and other forms of viral content to fill their sites and attract the search engines. So articles, newsletters, special reports, viral books, blogs (which automatically add more and more content), are perhaps the best marketing tools on the web - and the one's with the longest life as the written word seems to hang around for ever. It almost doesn't matter what web marketing business model you use - e-books, affiliate sales, thematic malls, virtual real estate, or what you are specifically selling - golf clubs, computers, or hairdryers - writing content for it will drive traffic over time. I repeat - the web is about content. Go with the flow!! Articles There are millions of sites on the web and large numbers of them try to deliver fresh ‘content’ to their users – ideas, theories, techniques, news, opinions but traditional and outrageous, indeed anything that will hold people’s attention. However, the demand for content far exceeds the capacity of most webmasters to create it. So many search the web and pick up articles written by others and reprint them (with permission) on their sites.  The article, as well as entertaining the reader, will have a link, usually at the bottom in a ‘source’ line that points back to the writer’s site.  This is the viral element and it achieves two things it creates a direct linkage that readers may follow and it adds a link for the search engines so boosting (even if briefly) your search engine standing. Moreover, these are inbound links to you that really impress the spiders. Writing an article requires you to have something to say. It may not be new – there is very little that is truly new – but it must be fresh and well written. Well written means in a conversational, simple style that is grammatically sound (but not pedantic) and which holds the reader’s interest. Articles should be short, say 500 to 750 words (about column length in a regular newspaper. Or they can be a longer piece at say 1500 words. If it is a longer piece, it had better be REALLY interesting. If you have such a piece ask yourself if it could be broken into two articles or shortened. As a hint, you shouldn’t write anything – article, press release or e-book, unless you have a clear idea of the audience you are writing for. Before you start develop a quick profile of the reader and ask yourself what is likely to interest that person. Simply writing for yourself is fun, but usually pointless from a commercial point of view! Once you have written your article you need to distribute it. If you have direct contact with various webmasters then approach them directly, but the majority of writers use one of the established article exchanges on the web. Examples are: SubmitYourArticle.com IdeaMarketers.com Writing articles for publication is a HUGELY effective way of promoting your site. Newsletters People go on line for information. So it should come as no surprise that they like newsletters. Newsletters in this context are filled with news and new ideas. They keep people up to date on things that are happening. True newsletters can serve several functions for the web marketer, chief amongst which are: Gathering names for an email list and then repeat mailing Keeping in touch regularly with your customers: remember most people have to be exposed 7 to 10 times to a product before they buy Establishing yourself as an expert, delivering value to the customer and building trust Contributing to a viral campaign by encouraging people to forward the newsletter to their friends or even to reprint articles from the newsletter on their site And, of course, encouraging sales of your and affiliate products through hyperlinks. Avoid heavy selling, the pitches should be integrated into the text Newsletters are hard work. You have to find the content. You have to write the newsletters, you have to maintain the email list and do the mailing. Newsletters can be really worth the effort, but they are a substantial user of time and effort. Writing An Article - Pointers Be clear on its purpose Write as if holding a one-on-one conversation in a coffee shop Use simple vocabulary and avoid jargon Don’t pitch products, it is inappropriate Think about signing it s the editor – imposing a personality on it Keep the title snappy and interesting Keep a consistent format from issue to issue Find out what they want to know and give it to them Sorter and snappier is always better than long and wordy Send out weekly or fortnightly Always send it out at the same time of day Use printer-friendly formats Always test it out first Based on ideas in The Idiots Guide to Web Marketing by Rick & Ron Davies Press Releases Press releases or news releases are short documents used to communicate news to the regular media. They are not advertising. If correctly done press releases combine wide coverage with the stamp of approval of a disinterested (trusted) third party. You should consider a press release when: You launch your web site You do a public speaking engagement You add new products or services You run contests You create new partnerships You get a major award Writing a good press release takes some real skill. Clearly the must be interesting and newsworthy. It must also not be over-hyped or it will be thrown out. Write it in the third person (you are reporting) and follow the journalist’s mantra of Who, What, When, Where and Why? If you can answer those questions you have the content. Then it is a matter of writing it in grammatically sound language without spelling errors and in an interesting way.  All newspaper stories have an ‘angle’. Ask yourself what yours is and write it sticking to the angle. Don’t create a piece that wanders all over the place. Keep it tight and close to the point.  If you can add quotes from other people – just as is done in the real world of newspapers. As a last hint, get your most important point in the first paragraph, that way you will hook your reader’s interest.  Once you’ve written the text, create a headline that will get people’s attention and you are done. Add a note at the end that provides biographical information on you, your company and any contact information. Now you face the final problem: actually getting it published!  Make sure you do your research on the publications that may be of use to you. Look for ezines and newspapers, radio stations or magazines that have a history of publishing in your area of interest.  Even better try to find individual editors or reporters who have a direct interest and who have published in this field. Press releases sent to individuals generally get better response than an anonymous mailing.  Indeed, if you simply send out mass releases you could be accused of spamming. As to how you send it: mail, email or fax are the commonest means; and if you send by email cut and paste the release into the body of the email, don’t send it as an attachment. You can also submit your release to online newswires and news web sites. These may require payment. A couple of good free ones are PRWeb.com and Free-Press-Release.com   Page 1  2  Warning! If you arrived at this site through a search engine, you need to know where you are. You have landed on a subscriber page for HBB Research's Insights Letter or of the HBB Review. HBB Research is one of the first research programs into web home business linked to a business school. The Insights Letter and the HBB Review are FREE newsletters that provide ideas and insights to mostly new web entrepreneurs Subscribe to "The Insights Letter" Now!! Sign up for HBB Research's FREE "Insights Letter" and receive a long series of FREE insights into the coming boom on web home-based business plus your FREE subscription to HBB Review.  No obligation Enter Your Name: Enter your Email:

Top Clickbank Sellers on Traffic Type the word Articles or Writing into the search box below and find the best selling books and tools sold through Clickbank   For those of you who are not aware, Clickbank is the web's leading supplier of digital products and is an enormously powerful affiliate engine. If you join nothing else, seriously consider becoming an affiliate of Clickbank. To find out more CLICK HERE If you have a digital product, CLICKBANK is the place to sell it with over 100,000 affiliates and a strong administrative system to deal with returns. CLICK HERE Getting Your Articles Out There Writing your article is half the problem, getting it out there to the thousands of ezines is the other half. Simply finding them, then signing up, then making sure your article layout and content fits is a huge job. That's where a service like SubmitYourArticle.com comes in. They automatically distribute your articles to publishers across the Internet, via email and automated submission to online forms. They submit to major article directory hubs that attract several thousand publishers a day, to category-specific web sites, and to high-quality publishers on their in-house list who have requested your type of article submissions. Doing this manually would take you hours ... SubmitYourArticle.com  can do it for you automatically, in seconds. If you are going to get into an Article campaign, look at: SubmitYourArticle.com Special Reports The web is full of them. Short documents - say, up to 20 pages - that contain a few nuggets of information. They also contain links that point back to the writer's site. Special Reports can be given away for onward publication - viral marketing - or sold. Find out more by looking at: Special Report Bible Getting the Articles Written! If you are going to write a whole bunch of articles but you aren't really strong in writing don't give up. Article writing is a process and articles fall into a few basic categories. Get command of these basics and you are on your way to a campaign. There are many excellent articles on how to write on the SubmitYourArticle web site. For something more specialized look at: 30 Minute Article Writing System Sending out Press Releases Press Releases are an under-appreciated way of getting publcity - PLUS a whole lot of backlinks. The backlinks are one-way - stuff the search engines love. Many of your releases will, of course, be there today and gone from the ezine or whatever tomorrow. But a portion will be archived and will sit on the web attracting spiders for a long time. People tend to under rate press releases for administrative reasons. How do I write one? What infomation do I need to give the recipient? Who do I send it to? Well, we talked about SubmitYourArticle above. Now there is a variant of that kind of tool specifically for press releases. It is called Press Equalizer and it does all the same things as SubmitYourArticle. It structures the writing pproblem and shoots your press release out to eager recipients at times and dates determined by you. If you are looking for a ways to get traffic and search engine rankings out of the press release concept Press Equalizer could be the tool of choice Go to Press Equalizer

© Michael Kay HBB Research 2006