But wait, first…

Before you start trying to get traffic to your website, you first need to do some keyword research. Why? Because you have to target these keywords carefully if you are to have any hope of actually generating traffic for them. This means it’s very important to select your keywords properly.

A few things to keep in mind when doing keyword research:

• Will you be able to rank for the selected keywords? It requires doing some competitive analysis to establish the level of competition for each keyword.
• What type of visitors would these keywords attract? Some of the keywords will bring a ton of traffic, but none of them will buy. You would want to attract visitors who are ready to buy.
• Will these keywords attract affiliates? If you want to build a huge business, you are going to need affiliates to help you. This means that some of your traffic focus should be on getting affiliates to your site.

Of course, this all takes time if you plan to do it yourself. And hiring an expert is very expensive. Which is why practically none of your competitors will do this! The smartest marketers use website traffic software to automate this and other aspects of their business. This will not only speed it up. It will give you better results, as well.

Only then can you start getting traffic

Only after doing your keyword research correctly can you start targeting these keywords to generate traffic.

Here’s a short list of sneaky traffic techniques:

• Most people under-estimate the power of Surveys!
• “Help” Websites
• Video Sharing Sites

Surveys

Here’s the thing – people love surveys. It’s human nature. And if you make it interesting, other people will post your survey on their website. And when they put your survey on their site, they will include a link back to your website. This allows you to get free website traffic from other people’s sites! This is a sneaky little idea that most people never even think of. Just make the questions interesting enough that people will want to share it with their own visitors.

“Answer” Sites

Sites like Yahoo! Answers allow users to ask and answer each others’ questions. Once again, the main reason for this site is not the reason you’re interested. You are going to generate traffic, leads and sales from them. Now, you can do this all by hand – visit a classified ads or answers site and one by one copy and paste contact info. But a much smarter method is to use website traffic software to do it for you. These tools put the whole thing on auto-pilot and just deliver the leads to you each day.

Video Marketing

No doubt you’re aware of YouTube and other video websites. YouTube is one of the most highly traffic and search websites on the entire internet! If used properly, video sites can get you more website traffic than you know what to do with.

Even if you don’t think you can make a good video, you could use a webpage or article that you’ve written. Simply record yourself reading the text and the screen with a simple screen capture program. There is software available that can turn articles into videos automatically.

Summary

Trying to figure out how to get visitors to your website is not hard at all. It just takes a little time and some ingenuity. There are software available to automate most of what we have discussed above.

Start right now:

• Doing keyword research first is key
• Then create some surveys – born to go viral
• Take advantage of the “help” sites mentioned
• Capitalize on video marketing

If you’re looking for a way to make money online, you probably have heard of the term ‘affiliate marketing’. In short, affiliate marketing means promoting someone else’s products. It is easy and inexpensive to get started. You don’t have to worry about creating your own product. You also

You simply direct customers to the owner’s product website via a unique affiliate link that identify sales generated by you and get paid accordingly.

The benefits of affiliate marketing

You are able to start immediately with mostly zero or very little investment required. It is typical that you

• don’t have to worry about creating your own product
• don’t have to craft a sales page
• don’t need to create a website with some affiliate programs – as a replica of the main website is given to you),
• don’t have to develop marketing material
• don’t deal with customers,
• don’t deal with billing, handling or shipping issues
• don’t deal with customer support issues.

Affiliate marketing can, when done right, be very worthwhile. Don’t be fooled, there is a learning curve and some affiliates keep struggling for some time. By following a proven system, success can be achieved within a very short time. It is very obvious that affiliate marketing is the ideal gateway to internet marketing success – these benefits make it a clear winner!

OK, but it’s not all rosy…

You work hard to send the traffic to the product owner’s website, but once you do that you will never see those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. The 10% or less that make a purchase now belong to the product owner. The product owner can sell them additional products, but you can never sell to them again.

How can you avoid this pitfall?

Simply put, you need to capture the name and email of your visitors *before* sending them to the product sales page of the product owner. If you do that, you will be building your own list of subscribers and can contact them again and again. This will increase the number of sales you make. And if you’re really on top of your game, you’ll then build a relationship with your subscribers by sending them newsletters and sell to them related or similar products in-between. It is therefore beneficial to have a website of your own.

Here’s what these affiliate marketing strategies will do for you:

1. By building your own list, you’re creating a renewable resource that you can tap in again and again for instant profits.
2. By providing great content without a sales pitch, you put them in a buying mood. So when you do send them to the product website, they’re much more likely to buy.

In order to set a system like this up, you will need the following affiliate marketing tools:

1. A lead capture page, preferably with video
2. At least a few pages of great content
3. An email series with at least 5 high-quality content emails

You’ll use the squeeze page as the place to send your visitors instead of using the product website. This page is where you collect your visitors’ contact info and add them to your autoresponder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

Your content mini-site builds the good will, so that when you send them to the product sales page, they are in a buying mood. And at the same time, the email series begins following up with them to get them back to the sales page, in case they don’t buy on the first visit.

There’s no doubt that it’s worth the effort to put a system like this in place, because doing so will increase your profits by 500% or more. After setting it up, you simply send visitors to your squeeze page instead of the sales page. And the rest runs on auto-pilot.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to set it all up yourself, you can use something like Affiliate Silver Bullet. With a service like that, you don’t have to do anything. They make the video, build the squeeze page, write the email series, develop the content mini-site, etc. And then just give you a finished package. On the plus side, you’ll save a some time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. One negative aspect is that there will be other people using this same affiliate marketing system. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitors are so small, that it doesn’t really matter.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to “outsource” each of these components. Whichever way you decided to go, it’s critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you’re at all serious about your business.

Your reading this is an indication of your desire to run your own business from home doing affiliate marketing and enjoy the internet lifestyle. Thank you for visiting my blog. My aim is to add value – I therefore hope you would find the information on this blog of benefit to you.

You most likely desire the benefits and freedom of owning your own online business…

- the freedom to make enough money to care for your family and eventually enjoy financial freedom
- the freedom to own your time, doing whatever you want whenever you want with whoever you want – being your own boss!
- the freedom to finally live your dream life…

An online business has the potential of very high return on a somewhat low initial investment. Some basic requirements besides an internet connection are a domain name and hosting services for under $30 per month.

Mindset

Building a successful business online is not difficult, but despite that, many people fail. What clearly differentiates successful online business owners from the unsuccessful ones is MINDSET. Building an online affiliate marketing business, like any other business requires sheer dedication and hard work (at least initially, depending on your long term goal and vision).

Needless to say that everyone wants to achieve success more than anything in the world, yet most of us end up being our worst opposition when we give up too soon, after one or two setbacks.

Guard against the shiny object syndrome. Our tendency for instant gratification makes this a major reason for failure. This has been one of my mistakes as well when I started online. I experienced greater progress and success when I became focused and disciplined in my daily online activities. It definitely does not come natural with me, but gets easier.

Sometimes things first get worse before getting better or before the ultimate breakthrough. Many stories of successful entrepreneurs include a long list of failures before their ultimate success.

I’m a student for life and my aim with this blog is to add value by sharing my experiences and observations in online marketing as well as related information of interest. You are welcome to visit frequently for updates to the blog.

If you purchase anything through a link on this blog, you should assume that I have an affiliate relationship with the company providing the product or service that you purchase, and that I might be paid in some way. I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing anything.

Perservere

I encourage you to persevere… ‘People do not fail at online marketing, they simply give up too soon.’ Invest in your own education and continued learning. Just do what you should and you WILL become motivated.

Note: If there is one thing you should always remember “Information without implementation is worthless”

BELIEF that God made you to be MORE than a conquerer and that you CAN do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Put your game plan to achieve affiliate marketing success from home in action, today.