If you’re just starting out on the Internet, you probably have one big question on your mind; “where do I start from?” Well, I’ve heard webmasters ask that question time and time again. This article will help you get started on the right foot with your Internet business. I’m going to show you simple steps to take and start earning 1000’s of dollars immediately – even if you’re brand new to computers. And I’m not kidding! These are little-known internet marketing strategies. Alright, without any further ado, let’s go!

Step One: Test Your Website

Only a few webmasters realize they should test their websites before rolling out a large scale Internet marketing campaign. The importance of this can not be overemphasized, as failure to do so could ruin your business, even before it sees the light of day. So what are going to test on your site? Test everything! That’s right… test everything that makes up your sales process. However, for a start you may only concern yourself with the…
• Sales copy especially the headline (You want to be sure it grabs your visitors’ attention and compels them to read your sales letter).
• Site Navigation (You don’t want the order page too far from the home page. If possible one click away).
• Opt in Offer (Are you successfully capturing your visitors’ contact information?)
• Order Process (You want to make this as simple as possible)

To conduct these tests, I think you’ll agree with me that you need a reasonable amount of traffic. Then here’s what to do?

Step Two: Buy Cheap Instant Traffic from PPC Search Engines

Pay-per-click search engines are a cheap source of quality traffic for your website. They operate like auctions. You are allowed to bid for top positions under keywords of your choice. Then for every web searcher that searches for these key words and clicks through your site, you pay the amount you bid.

This is, in fact, the best place to start driving traffic to your site. I earlier said to test your site, but in reality you can’t test a site that gets very little or no traffic. So, here’s where you begin your testing.

I will advice to start with Yahoo Search Marketing ( http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com ). Bid for any one of the first 3 positions under the keyword people use to find sites like yours. The top 3 results of Yahoo Search Marketing also appear on MSN, All The Web, Alta Vista, Net Zero, Info Space & Yahoo. So these will bring just enough traffic to help you test and tweak your website for a maximum visitors to sales conversion ratio.

Here’s a little strategy to apply when bidding on PPC search engines. Bid on targeted keywords (descriptive keywords). For example, don’t bid on “directory”, bid on “stock newsletter directory”. Bid on key phrases – made up of two to three words – that get traffic.

Key phrases are usually cheaper than general keywords. And more important, they will bring you qualified traffic. Which means only those who are interested in your information will click through your site. Once you’ve tweaked your website, then it’s time to roll out a full scale campaign on the PPC search engines. Start bidding for keywords on these PPC search engines:
Find What (http://www.findwhat.com )
Look Smart ( http://www.looksmart.com )
Enhance ( http://www.enhance.com )
Kanoodle ( http://www.kanoodle.com )

Step Three: Get oodles of Free Traffic from the Traditional Search Engines Search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN can be a great source of FREE traffic. Once you’ve got good positions under the right keywords in the PPC search engines, this is the next thing to do. Start working to get on top of the Free Search Engines.

The first step is to manually submit your website details to each search engine following their guideline. And that’s important, as each search engine has its unique submission guideline. So, don’t try to use a submission service to submit your site to all of them at once. You’ll only be ruining your chances of getting a top rank. In fact, you should only concern yourself with submitting your site to Google< http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addur l>, Yahoo < http://submit.search.yahoo.com > and MSN < http://search.msn.com/docs/submit.aspx > and don’t bother about others. These three account for 85% of Internet searchers and power the smaller search engines. But be sure to submit your site to important directories too, checkout:
Yahoo Directory < http://docs.yahoo.com/info/suggest/ >
Open Directory Project < http://dmoz.org/add.htm l>
About.Com < http://www.about.com >
Also submit your site to smaller directories; they’ll help your ranking in the search engines.

Step Four: Get Highly Coveted Publicity Giving Away Free Content Free Article marketing has been a good source of free qualified traffic for years and it’s still a very powerful way to get great publicity today. Take out time to write one or two articles with valuable content. The kind that’ll make your readership see you as an expert in your field. Include your byline (along with your URL ) at the end of the article. But don’t try to sell anything in it. Once that is done, go to http://www.ezinearticles.com and submit your article under the appropriate category. Other article databases to submit your articles are:
Idea Marketer < http://www.ideamarketers.com >
Free Sticky < http://www.freesticky.com >
Take this further by contacting other websites that have the same target market with you and ask them to use your articles on their website or newsletter free of charge. Most of them will be very happy to publish your articles on their websites and ezines. In a short while, this articles will start bringing people back to your website. And important, because your article is optimized for your site keyword, it’ll provide very relevant back links wherever it’s published. This will help your ranking on the search engines.

Step Five: Get 1000’s of Websites to Promote for Business FREE
I’m talking about the most powerful Internet Marketing Strategy I’m aware of. How would you like even your competitors to team up with you and promote your business at absolutely no cost to you, until you make a sale? This can only be done with an affiliate program. It’s an extremely powerful way to multiply your efforts around the internet.

However, to start your affiliate program, you need to:
1. Get affiliate tracking software (Checkout http://www.marketingpl.com/track.pl?at&1 ) to track the sales coming from your affiliates, so you can know what to pay them.
2. Set the commission – that’s the amount to be paid to your affiliates when they refer a sale (this is usually between 30% - 50% of your profit)
3. Provide promotional materials for your affiliates (like banners, classified ads, email promotions, text links etc.)
4. Approach those websites that get the most attention in your industry and aggressively persuade them to join your affiliation. How do you know the websites to approach? It’s simple. Download and install the Alexa toolbar (from Alexa.com) on your browser The Alexa toolbar helps you know the rank of the sites you visit how many other sites link there and who these sites are. You also get an idea of the amount of traffic the site receives and the contact information of the website owner among other important information. Any website that ranks below 100,000 on Alexa will be a good potential affiliate for your business. These are the ones you should spend time to ensure they join your affiliate program.


About the Author: Ambrose Ariagiegbe is a recognized authority on the subject of Internet marketing. His website, www.marketingpl.com is jam-packed with valuable informational articles and resources on all you need to know about Internet marketing.

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