Let the world know you are here!

One very effective marketing technique that is often overlooked is the press release. If you want a publisher to give your press release even a second glance, it is going to have to be written correctly, be interesting, and extremely newsworthy. Before you even begin writing your press release you must begin to think about it from the publisher’s perspective. They are looking for news. They are not looking for your product or service - they are looking for interesting and relevant news items that are linked to current affairs and trends.

How to write the press release

The secret is to keep it short whilst providing just the right amount of information in getting your message across in the most effective and interesting way. Its very important that the press release is interesting enough to catch the attention of the reporter. After all, who want to read anything that is not interesting In the upper left hand corner of every press release, write the words “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” unless there is time sensitive material involved. The upper right hand corner of the press release should contain your contact information and should always contain your name and telephone number which must be a valid number that is not going to be left unanswered. If a reporter cannot contact you then the article is not going to get printed.

The headline

A major part of the press release will be the title which should grab the attention of the reader and entice to read on. If the headline is not interesting or is irrelevant to the rest of the article then it will not be used. The headline is extremely important and will be the main reason why the release is published so concentrate on an eye-catching phrase that will stop the reader in their tracks and will invoke curiosity to continue reading the article. If the headline is exciting and newsworthy, you will start getting calls. If it isn’t, then most publishers will never get past it

The body

The body contains three major sections:

Summary: This should be a continuation of the headline and should tell the entire story in one short paragraph. Let them know the who, what, when, where, and why so that they would understand the release without having to read any further.

Credentials: The credentials section will involve giving your credentials and/or showing a quote which enforces the power behind the story that you are giving out. In most successful press releases, this section is based on a quote about the story inside of quotation marks. Then, the name and the credentials of the person giving the quote are listed. Make sure that this quote is extremely professional and specific (just as if you were using a testimonial inside of a sales letter).

For example you could write in the third person and quote yourself. You could say: Colin Hartness - Director of Web-At-Work Ltd says ” The new control panel that was introduced will provide clients with Total Domain Control etc……”

Closing Statements: In the last section, you will want to close the sale. The closing statements will advise the reader how to obtain further information but will not try to make a direct sale. The statements will provide enough intrigue and create sufficient interest to provide a follow-up and then hopefully a sale. In other words, don’t tell them how much your product or service costs in this section. You just want to get them to call you or visit your website for more information.

Then, in the center of the page at the bottom of the press release, include the symbol “###” which means that this is the end.

If the press release has been written and created correctly then you are now ready to send your message to the media. TrafficZilla offer a range of media blasters within their members section, one of which is the press release blaster. Simply enter your press release in the box provided and choose the type of recipient that would be interested by category, and submit to a full of potential publishers. Use the Media Blaster to blast your press release to 1,935 Radio stations, over 1000 Cable & TV Stations, over 100 News Syndicates, over 3,000 Newspapers and over 1200 Magazines! If you don’t already have a press release written, you can use the templates provided.

To sign-up to TrafficZilla - Click Here

The Traffic Snowball will feed of itself!

Unlike a computer virus that will destroy your software and damage your business, a traffic virus isn’t harmful at all…except to your competition. A traffic virus is NOT a computer virus but the concept is the same. A virus can spread around the net very quickly. This form of Marketing can be the most effective and far reaching.

Everyone who uses the Net will have heard of Hotmail.com which uses the concept of Viral Marketing to build a massive customer base.

How?

Well, everytime you send a message using a Hotmail account there appears a footnote at the end of each message promoting the Hotmail service. Imagine how many emails are sent out every day promoting their service.

Lets take a look at how we can emulate the same technique to create our own viral marketing plan.

Create an email signature:

As you will be using email a lot you should always make sure that you leave your mark on every message that you send. A signature file is a short message that goes out on the bottom of each of your emails. It should give people your contact info, usually your email address, and contain a benefit .

Here is an example:

————————————————–
Colin Hartness: admin@web-at-work.com
Web-At-Work Ltd
The Cheapest Domains: www.web-at-work.com
Traffic Builder Systems: www.trafficbuildersystems.com
TrafficBuilder can guarantee search engine listings with the potential
to deliver thousands of high targeted visitors to your site
—————————————————-

Of course there are many ways of presenting a signature file. You can basically post as many links or information as you wish as long as you think it will be useful and not distracting from your email content.

A good idea is to direct to an autoresponder rather than a website for providing further information on the products that you are promoting.

You can set-up your signature file(s) within your email client so that you are promoting your business each time you send a message.

Start Your own FREE Web based email service

To take this concept a step further consider again the Hotmail module. Every user that signs up for a Hotmail account will be promotion Hotmail services. We can do exactly the same by offering a FREE email service and branding our clients email with our own promotional message. This service is provided at www.everyone.net

Write articles for ezines

How would you like to reach a couple of million people with your products and services…for FREE? That is exactly what occurs when you start writing articles and submitting them to hundreds of ezines online. Currently there are tens of thousands of ezine publishers online and almost all of them have one thing in common. They are all looking for good content to publish in their newsletter.

If you have good content (not a sales letter cloaked as an article), then you can be their savior. You can give them exactly what they need. Then, they will give you what you need in exchange. They will give you exposure for your business. Every article comes with a resource box attached at the end of it. While your article should not be an effort to promote your business, your 4 to 6 line resource box should be an outright ad for you and your business. You are free to advertise your web site, your products, your services, or any affiliate program that you are a member of.

Recommend a friend

The main obstacle for any online business to completing a sale online is the element of trust. A sale can ONLY be completed if the customer feels secure and safe with parting with credit card information. The problem with online business is that the visitor does not have any idea as to the nature of company that is behind the website. For all he or she knows it could be operated from a back bedroom by a one man band and they may well be correct. Once we have established trust then the visitor will feel good about purchasing from our website.

You have probably heard the phrase “the best form of advertising is word of mouth”. Well this is certainly applicable to Internet business and even more so due to the total lack of physical presence .

Therefore recommendation is very, very important.

There must be a customer testimonials on the website. Get into the habit of storing any positive comments in a separate folder and publishing with permissions on the website.The testimonial is a vital feature and could sway a buyer to go for the purchase. But even more effective is the use of “Recommend a friend” feature.

This is a simple form of viral marketing that uses the “word of mouth” principle of advertising. A visitor may wish to inform others of your website using such a tool installed on your site. You can even offer a prize as an incentive to send the recommendation.

Check out www.recommend-it.com for a remotely hosted service of this type.

Logos

Your logo is important - close you eyes and think of McDonalds and what do you see? A logo will immediately establish identity and confidence. Your logo should be visible on your website but be careful not to over expose it. The logo should be there but not intrusive and subconciously the visitor will remember it and link the image with the product or service. On the Net image is all important . A good business site will be a mixture of corporate identity and sales pitch that establishes confidence with the potential buyer and at the same time pitches the sale.

The offer must be irresistible with a unique selling point and the full benefits laid out with explanations why for every listed feature. Remember the customer is thinking only one thing “What’s in it for me !”

eBooks

eBooks are amongst the most effective methods of viral marketing as they are products since they are both informative and can be used as bonuses for purchases. An ebook can given away free or sold with re-sell rights.

The ebook will be a collection of informative articles that are related to our products and services and will include links to our main website plus additional links to affiliated products that we are indirectly promoting through the leading articles. Once the ebook is completed and complied in the correct format then we can decide whether to give the ebook away as a freebie, either as a bonus for subscribing to our list or for purchasing our products, or we may wish to sell the ebook.

If we decide to sell the ebook then we need to produce a good sales letter and explain that the purchaser will receive the re-sell rights to re-sell the ebook on if they wish. If we decide to give the ebook away we need to include within the content of the ebook a statement that the reader can feel free to give the ebook away as a freebie to compliment their products /services or for any other purpose.

eBooks are a perfect for adding value to products and services and if the ebook is worth reading then readers will be inclined to use it and the word will spread fast!

The advantage of providing the ebook free of charge is that it will be downloaded and may be used many times over. The disadvantage is that it may not be read as often as the paid version. Why? Because there are so many free ebooks out there that lots are downloaded and not really read thoroughly. However if you have paid for the information then you are more likely to read it !

Customizing

As a real incentive for your readers to distribute your ebook you may like to include a customizing feature. This could allow the reader to be able add their own web address.

The Traffic Snowball needs to become linked with others to pick up REAL momentum.

A recent check at linkpopularity.com showed that Yahoo has over one million links sprawled across the web. That’s a lot of links. And while reaching that milestone at your site may seem impossible, it is important to at least grow your links regularly.

The number will have a direct affect on your website traffic in many ways. Here’s an example… Lately I’ve noticed a steady increase in visitors coming to my own site from search engines. But not just the major search engines. Many newer search engines are now directing fresh traffic to my site too. New subscribers to my newsletter have reported finding my site through newer engines.

But why? It’s been a long time since I really put much effort into my search engine ranking.

Well after a little research, my findings pointed directly to one explanation… “Links.” At many search engines, new and old alike, the number of quality links you have into your site plays a key role in their relevancy algorithms. In a nutshell, the more sites you have linking to yours (preferably related sites) the higher your site will rank in their returns.

Power of reciprocal linking is growing and is sought after as the new medium of advertising.

You should set up a Links Page with link access from your homepage, and promote your specific Reciprocal Links Page URL address in all the major search engines. (This way everybody wins). By setting up a reciprocal links page it will help you to get a better listing in the search engines the more links you got coming to your page the popular it becomes so you want as many people linking to you as possible and if you promote your links page you will gain more traffic and increase more links to your site.

With each member promoting each other’s websites, you create a tremendous amount of leverage for minimal effort, and your websites traffic will increase dramatically! This method also gets higher rankings with some Search Engines. Many of the different Search Engines spider your web pages looking for other sites linking to yours. The more sites these spiders find linking to your web site the more popularity ranking your web site gets. This will get you a higher ranking positioning when people search the web.

If you have a lot of links to your web site, the robots will find you faster and more often, as they travel the Internet. They will spider your pages more often and they will believe your site is more popular than the others. This will also automatically submit your pages to search engines, with you never having to do that chore again, once you have the reciprocal links pointing to you. This will put you near the top of their listings.

Zeus Internet Marketing Robot is an automatic reciprocal link generator! One good reciprocal link can give you the same traffic as a major search engine and, with a Zeus robot, you are able to have thousands of reciprocal links. Its an easy-to-use, intelligent, Internet marketing robot that builds a search link directory and creates reciprocal links for your web site. A totally new concept in generating web traffic, this revolutionary software product has features and benefits that enable it to create traffic to your web site.

Zeus Internet Marketing Robot - Automatic Reciprocal Link Generator and Link Directory Creator

Now its time to put our Traffic Snowball on Autopilot!

Auto responders are one of the top promotional tools available online today. They are also known as mailbots, automatic email and email on demand. They were derived from the very popular fax on demand and designed to automatically respond to any email message sent to it with an automatic response.

Their popularity most likely stems from its vast variety of uses as it eliminates the need to manually answer every response. Subsequently saving hours of valuable time. Your information can be available to your prospective customer 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Get your best ad copy ready, load it to your autoresponder and our business is set to autopilot. When your prospective customer sends a message to your autoresponder address, your information will be instantly delivered to their email address.

There are many ways of utilizing the power of autoresponders:

* Sample E-zine Copy for potential subscribers
* Articles For Publication - A great way for writers to distribute their articles
* Offer Free Powerful Reports on various subjects and use your signature file at the end to promote your site or business
* Offer Free Resources with information about your site, product or business
* Information about your Business Opportunity
* Product listings
* Price list
* Welcome letters
* Thank you letters
* Order Confirmations
* Advertising Rates

Advantages

There are many advantages associated with the use of auto responders. Not only do they automate the daily task of manually replying to requests for information, but they provide instant gratification for the recipient. They also enable you to track your ad responses and gather the email addresses of potential customers. A good auto responder service will automatically send you an email notification informing you each time someone requests your information.

Selecting a quality auto responder service:

When selecting a auto responder service, there are many factors that need to be taken into consideration to ensure maximum performance.

* Personalized responses - This makes the recipient feel that the letter was sent specifically to them.
* Automatic follow ups - Studies have shown it may take up to seven contacts before closing a sale.
* Unlimited text length - If you are inhibited by the amount of text your autoresponder may contain, you may be forced to revise a successful sales letter, ultimately costing you business.
* Free Unlimited updating - It is imperative to provide your customers with accurate, up to date information on your products and services.
* Automatic Notification - You must have the ability to track your ads performance. You should be instantly informed each time someone requests your information.

Advertising Tips:

Here are some ways you can take advantage of the use of autoresponders
* Include your autoresponder address in your signature file (see Step 11: Create a Traffic virus) then any enquiry to your advertised email address will be automated.
* When placing classified ads, instead of supplying your regular email address, use your autoresponder address.
* Appropriate News Groups
* Opt in email discussion lists
* Guestbooks
* Business Cards
* Letter Head
* Your web site

Key Coding Your Ads:

Tracking your ads response rate will be the key to your marketing success. Once you test your ads and determine which ad is pulling the most responses, you can easily test which classified ad sites are producing results as well. This will save you a lot of valuable time by only placing your ads at classified ad sites that produce results.

1. Make a list of the classified ad sites you intend to post your ad.
2. Number the list of ad sites.
3. You can key your ad using the subject of your email. Many times, if you ask for a certain “subject” description, it may not be provided.

To avoid this problem you can add a simple code to your email tag. freeinfo@yourautoadd.com?subject=cl1

This code should contain your auto responder address and will automatically fill in the subject with your ad key when clicked on. The “cl1″ stands for the classified ad site number one. The second ad site you have listed should be coded as “cl2″ or classified ad site number two and so on.

By coding your ads you will know exactly where your leads are coming from.

4. Begin submitting your ad and replace your normal email address with your key coded auto responder address. Auto responders can completely change the way you do business and enable you to put your business on autopilot.

Using Auto responders effectively in advertising

Now lets look at ezine advertising from Step 7 from another angle. The object of our advertising is NOT to direct the visitor to our website. The sole purpose is to obtain the email address of that interested party.

Why should want the email address and not send them to the website?

Well, if we have the email address we can sell the website and what our website has to offers to the interested person at our leisure - not once but as many times as we wish and we can do this all automatically.

We should be more interested in collecting the email address of the lead rather that sending to the website and hoping that a sale will result.

Why?

Because once we have that email address we can send carefully crafted sales messages that are pre-designed automatically sent using our autoresponder

Firstly, before we publish our ad we must PREPARE our response. We should have a series of at least 3-7 messages that are part of the series that indirectly sell our product or service.

We should then start testing our ad by starting with classifieds but instead of sending people to our website we should send them to an email address which is an autoresponder. Our advert could offer a FREE report or training series. In this way we will get a greater response as there is no mention of price or cost at this point. Remember, we are competing with other advertisers so our ad must stand out with an irresistible FREE offer.

Then, once we have that email address we can add to our series of letters until the sale is accomplished or until the lead removes him or herself from the series of letters. This method of advertising can not only create leads for the initial offer or product but we can provide different offers for an indefinite period.

For example we could prepare 26 leading articles that indirectly promote our products and set them up in an autoresponder system to send out on a weekly basis. This would give us 6 months of follow up advertising just from from one single email response from our advert. Of course there is always the possibility that the lead will remove themselves from further mailings but in any case this method of automated follow up must be the foundation of of marketing strategy. If we organize and automate our ezine advertising like this then the profits from one single ad will continue to grow and grow into the future.

So where do we start by automating our business.

One highly recommended system for automated follow-up is Bamboobiz Online

Basically it’s the easiest and most effective Web-based email and database management system on the Internet. A simple browser-based interface sets up and manages your data and responses, with unlimited autoresponders, and automatic follow-up for all your email accounts and all of your contact database.

BambooBizOnline has complete automation and integration of email, database building and follow-up marketing. With this sophisticated marketing system, you are able to respond to your contacts with personalized, targeted responses based on their reply to you. Your marketing has never been more effective.

Start collecting email addresses

One of the major attributes that our Traffic Snowball should possess is the ability to collect email addresses . By collecting email addresses of potential clients we are preparing the groundwork for growth.

I DO NOT mean harvesting the internet and collecting as many email addresses as possible !

What we are talking about here are optin email addresses.

The holders email address is added to our list only when we have the permission of the owner. We can then use these email addresses to send out our offers and promote our business.

So first of all we need a mechanism for collecting our visitors email addresses.

There are a number of different systems available but we should use one which has the following features:

1. Ability to collect email by using an online form or by sending an email
2. Abilty to host the list and serve to the list.
3. Capability of sending follow up messages
4. Personalization features

The second step is to make sure that there is there is the possibility of subscribing to the list on every page of the website using a form. There should also be plenty of incentives to join the list, such as free articles, free ebooks, discount purchases etc…

The third step is to provide a good series of letters indirectly promoting your website services. You can use related articles and free information as general lead to what you are promoting.

Basically, you are creating a relationship with your potential client and building trust so that they will visit your site and take you up on your offer.

Its a fact that a visitor very rarely takes up an offer on the first visit to the website. It usually takes at least 7 follow up promotions before a sale is completed.

This is why we must always follow-up with our leads.

If we don’t use the power of follow up then we will lose out. The potential client will go away and forget the website and the offer or move on to a competitor. We need to constantly remind him or her of the benefits of dealing with us. We can introduce time limited offers as incentives for closing the deal. (see Step 9 - Get Automated)

So how do we do all this?

Firstly, we need the software for providing our website visitors the option of submitting their email address. Once the email has been submitted there should be an automated response to confirm subscription that could include details of the bonus for subscribing. This could be links to bonus downloads, free ebooks etc….

The email addresses are automatically entered into a database that will include also the first and last name of the subscriber. We can then send future mailings to our database feeling safe in the knowledge that the recipient has opted to receive our messages and we cannot be accused of Spam. Additionally, there must be a publicized method for unsubscribing from our list.

There are 2 options regarding the method of administering our Optin Mailing list.

1) We can use software that is installed on our computer and uses our own server for sending out the messages.
2) We can use a remotely hosted online system that will use the server facilities for sending messages and managing our list.

There are advantages and disadvantages of both systems.

The main disadvantage of using a system that we install on our own computer is the issue of bandwidth.
If you are hosting mailing list with a company that is limited in terms of bandwidth then you may find that this could be a problem. However many will point out that if there is an issue of bandwidth, which is caused by the volume of emails sent out and received, then the cost can easily be absorbed by the benefits achieved from mailing to such an extensive list. In other words bandwidth is only an issue when your subscribers are in the 1000’s and the bigger the list the greater potential for profit and income.

One of the most effective tools for building an optin list of subscribers is provided by Optin Lightning. OptIn Lightning is a cutting-edge, database driven, extremely versatile stand alone application made for the sole purpose of assisting serious internet marketers to build their mailing lists fast, easy and hassle free.

The main disadvantage of a remotely hosted system is the cost (usually monthly) which over a longer a period can become expensive. However there is not a bandwidth consideration since the list is administered remotely. If you are going to use this method then you will need to consider a system that can provide follow-up and autores
ponders (see Step 9 - Get Automated)

Bamboobiz Online has an amazing array of features and is one of the best tools on the market for the management of optin lists and follow-up marketing that is remotely hosted.

Lets keep the momentum going by placing targeted ezine adverts.

What are ezines?

Ezines and newsletters are basically requested information sent out to a targeted lists of email addresses. These people have opted-in (requested) information concerning a topic of interest, to an ezine that provides such information.

The ezine usually consists of a Sponsorship advert, a relevant article and a series of classified ads.

Ezine advertising can be the most cost effective form of advertising if done correctly.

The list of subscribers to a particular ezine can range from a few hundred to tens of thousands. Each ezine has a particular quality of subscriber so some ezines have better advertising results that others. Like everything else, when it comes to advertsing on the Internet you should test and track your results.

If you don’t know which ezines are good and which are ineffective you can waste time and money advertising.

So where do we start.

First we need to have a system of tracking our ads. We need to know how many click-throughs our ad achieved. There is a system called adminder that will do this. The process of tracking our ad is very simple but often neglected and is fundamental to the success of our marketing strategy.

In fact, a while back a marketing associate of mine told me of a story of one of his major clients . He said that the CEO told him, “we know our advertising works … we just don’t know which half? …”

When you’re dealing with millions of dollars worth of advertising, you BETTER find out which half works … and do it real fast (this is why so many web businesses are going out of business… they just spend and spend and have no idea if they are really making a profit until it’s too late)!

See, even at the top, the same mistakes are being made.

You HAVE to know which ads work the best and invest the majority of your time, money and efforts into those big winners!

When you are a small home-based business, you can’t just go around wasting money like these big companies. They have investors, you don’t. You have to be smart and creative!

Adminder is the simplest and most effective method of tracking all your advertising

Once we have a system in place for tracking our ads, then we can start to compose our ad copy.

There are various options:

1. Classifieds & Sponsor ads: usually 7 lines, sent together with the ezine copy
2. Solo ads: Sent out to the full subscriber list alone.

Again, we need to have that advert jump out from the page and grab the reader by the eyeballs by using an effective headline.

The headline’s main purpose is to SELL the prospect on the idea of reading the rest of the ad. Whenever you write a headline, keep that in mind. People’s time is precious and if you want them to take time out of their day to read your advert, then you better have something catchy in the headline. Otherwise, you have lost them forever!

When writing the advert the most important thing to bear in mind is that the reader will be thinking one thing only “What’s in it for me” Your advert should be very clear in the benefits (using bullet points is effective). The main benefit should be included within the headline of the ad.

For example if you are selling DVD players, you might start with: “Are You Looking for a DVD player At Half the Cost?…” With this kind of example, we call out the audience right there and then. Those who are looking for DVD players will continue to read on. Those who don’t want a DVD player won’t. You have captured your target market’s attention with the main benefit being the price. You could continue the text of the ad listing the features showing the real value for money of the deal.

The last line of the ad is usually a link to the website but this is NOT the most effective method of ezine advertising. (we will come to this point in Step 9 - Get Automated !)

OK lets get the snowball rolling!

Right, so we’ve got the site all nice and sticky, its been optimized for search engines and its been submitted to the major engines and automatically sent to FFA pages, now to give the little guy another push to get him going - But this time its going to cost a little!

We need to get the snowball on its way and kick start the journey down the hill.

So lets get going.

Regular search engines take months to get positions in and start bringing the traffic. The way to get traffic immediately from the search engines is to start dealing with the pay-per-click search engines such as Overture.com. (Other sites that are currently famous is Google Adwords, Google Adsense and www.miva.com)

Overture.com allows you to set up an account and then you only pay a set fee (almost in an auction model) for each visitor to your site. If you bid one penny per visitor, then you only have to pay a single penny for every visitor to your site. If you bid ten cents, you pay ten cents. If you have tested and can bid a dollar per visitor, then that is what you will pay - How much you pay for traffic is up to you.

There are now several hundred search engines following this model. Most of them don’t produce nearly as much traffic as Overture.com, but some of them can be used once you have proven the effectiveness of your keywords at Overture.com first.

The first step is deciding on which keywords to bid on and then how much to bid. Its a good idea to set aside a monthly amount for Overture.com and decide to budget for that amount. Its possible to set-up an account by making a deposit and then having automatic deductions up to a pre-determined monthly limit. When the account is exhausted of funds then the listing is removed from the engine until the next month.

Pay per click search engines are perfect vehicles for providing highly targeted traffic. You are paying only for a visitor who has an interest in your website which will be determined by the link headline and link description.

There is an optimum price which you should pay for every click through or visitor. This price will be determined by the average value of the visitor. This is why you need access to detailed website statistics as you will need to know the average number of daily visitors. Once you have this figure divide the average daily net profit received by the website and this will give the average value of each visitor.

As a rule of thumb a bid of 50% of the average value is a guideline for how much to bid for each keyword. Then it doesn’t matter how much you are spending - you are making profit. So just keep topping the account up as and when required.

There are lots of pay per click engines around at the moment

You can find them at: www.payperclicksearchengines.com

The Traffic Snowball must be sticky!

OK so we have got our traffic snowball on its way down the hill but what we need to do is make the snowball nice and “sticky” so that it will grow and grow.

“Stickiness” can be defined as the websites ability to “cling on” to visitors. The longer the visitor stays then the more likely they will be to take up on what you are offering at your site. In this respect “content is king”.

Basically, the website must be interesting enough for people to want to stay. Graphics are OK but don’t overdue it. Concentrate on the content and the layout of the content on the webpage. If the page is too busy then a reader will become tired and will switch off and go elsewhere.

Headlines are fundamental, the first paragraph is crucial and there should be a ‘PS’, a ‘PPS’ and even a ‘PPPS’ at the end of the page if your text is selling a product or service.

Why ?

Because headlines grab the attention and lead the reader into the first paragraph which must sell to the reader the product and service. Then the reader will be interested enough to continue and even if the attention span is limited then they will be interested enough to scroll to the bottom - skipping the middle- and you will refocus using the PS messages at the end.

Here are some examples of which words to use within headlines:

FREE
DISCOVER
POWERFUL
EASY
GUARANTEED
YOU’LL LOVE THIS
MONEY
HOTTEST
NEW
IMPROVED
PROVEN
RESULTS
REVOLUTIONARY
STATE-OF-THE-ART
FANTASTIC
SAVE
BEST
FOR A LIMITED TIME ONLY
SECRETS
THE BEST KEPT SECRET
UNBELIEVABLE
MUST SEE TO BELIEVE

The twelve most powerful words in the English language, according to Yale University researchers: DISCOVER, EASY, GUARANTEE, HEALTH, LOVE, MONEY, NEW, PROVEN, RESULTS, SAFETY, SAVE, YOU

Although, your website should not be include content that distracts from the mail message, you can compliment the content with relevant and related features that will keep your visitors interested enough to stay and maybe return later.

Here are a few:

Free Information :
The Internet is the “Information Superhighway.” The best way to introduce yourself to your prospects is through providing Free information on your web site. No matter what you are selling: be it nutrition products, cleaning products, business products, etc., you can find information or create information to provide with it. Do a series of continuing articles, where visitors must return to the site every day or two to read the next part.

You can find an amazing range of articles from the Web-At-Work Online Marketing Center that can be used on your website. This unique site is a members only based knowledge bank and included in the membership fee are 10000+ articles with 2500+ categorised plus 1200 + categorised links on internet marketing, loads of downloads plus much more

The Web Poll:
You can set-up a web poll for visitors relating to the product or service that your website provides. People love web polls, and people like to know what others are thinking. For example an effective poll for website providing a travel service could include questions relating to preferred destinations, modes of travel etc.. Not only is this kind of feedback useful to the owner of the website but also the visitors like to know what’s popular and what is not . You can give a deadline for the poll so that visitors may return to see results. Web polls can be set-up for FREE by visiting www.multicity.com

Newsfeeds :
Offer content that changes daily (or even more frequent). This could be news, sports info, investment info, entertainment, daily recipes, etc. You can add the very latest news to your website and target the information by topics and categories that fit your site. Newsfeeds are free and are provided by www.moreover.com

Free software
Why not provide free software downloads for your visitors. This will keep visitors at your site and if you keep the software updated you may find that you will get return visits. Also the downloads do take time to complete and this extra time at your website may result in a sale or extra lead. Free software is an ideal tool to make your site sticky as the visitor is unlikely to leave until the download is at least complete. Free software can be found at www.upload.com, being the most popular. Choose the relevant software and and make a direct download link from your site.

Provide hundreds of links to needed tools.:
Offer a service which people will need to use periodically. For example a website that compresses GIF images. Or a website with a great collection of financial tools and calculators. How about a website which displays current weather conditions. Try to come up with a service related to your industry, that will keep your prospects coming back.

Give your visitors what they want and they will keep coming back and referring their friends.

FFA (Free For All) link pages is the next layer of traffic to collect around your traffic snowball.

These pages are simply a categorized listing of links that are added to by submission services or submission software such as Submit Wolf.

The link is added to the top of the list and is then rotated down as other links are added until the link eventually drops out.

Because of the increasing number of submissions to FFA pages, the link does spend much time on the page before being dropped - sometimes just a few hours - so the exposure of the link to your website can be very limited. Your listing might stay on the FFA site for a few days or a week. On FFA sites which get many submissions, your listing might only stay on the site for a day or less. On a few very busy FFAs, you’ll be on the site for less than an hour before your listing gets bumped down and off the list. (but don’t be concerned, these are only a fraction of the thousands of FFA sites, and in a moment I’m going to explain how you can get on thousands of FFAs)

However, this does not mean that we should not consider FFA pages as a useful tool and in fact if used correctly, FFA pages become a valuable layer on our Traffic Snowball.

One important thing to know is that the majority of the traffic to the FFA sites is from people visiting in order to post their own URL.

But there is good news.

The listings are on the same page as the submission form. That means that all listings are “in your face.” Also, once someone submits their URL, they’ll scan the page to make sure it got listed. In other words, your listing will be seen. If you have an effective attention-getting headline that results in click-throughs, you’re in. And remember, keep in mind who is visiting the FFA sites, and why. Then gear your headlines to attract those type of visitors.

In order to do well with FFA marketing, you’ll need to do batch submissions. And you must do them regularly, because by the nature of FFA sites, your URL will eventually get bumped down and then off the list.

The other side of FFA Marketing

Basically, there are 2 sides of the FFA coin - one side is publicity from submission and the other is publicity from ACCEPTING submissions.

The first is very straightforward in approach. If you can submit your site for FREE to 1000’s of FFA pages with minimum effort and on a regular basis then WHY NOT as you WILL pick up traffic.

The trick is that your advertisements must stand out from the others and you must submit on a regular basis i.e.. daily. The current view on FFA pages is that you need to constantly submit your site in order to see any hits. The theory is if you submit to one hundred FFA sites, you may get a click or two. Automate this process and submit to hundreds and you may end up with a decent amount of traffic.

ROIbot FFA Submission Server solves this problem by creating a completely automated process for submitting to the FFA pages on a continual basis. FFA Submission Server can be setup to submit your sites to our dynamic list of FFA pages on a regular basis. Set it up once and you’re done! You can set it up to submit as often as you like.

The other side of the coin and can be a greater source of building traffic is creating your own FFA page. Remember, there is a good reason why these pages exist and the answer is that they are a mechanism for sending a SPAM free email message to the site owner who has submitted to the FFA page.

FFA pages are configured using CGI scripts to send out an email message to the address that was submitted with the link. The message is simply a thank you message that has the page owners promotional message. As such websites receive 100’s or 1000’s of submissions on a daily basis then the page owners message is automatically being sent to all these people with no effort on behalf of the FFA page owner.

You can get your own FFA page for FREE at: www.ffanet.net

Not only do you get a fully customizable FFA Site, Free AutoResponder, and YOUR banner placed on the top of YOUR site, the FFA Net emailing system is “PC-based” and each morning you’ll receive approximately 250 to 350 VERY high-quality targeted leads in your email box.

Lets give our Traffic Snowball a little push!

So now you have completed the design of your website and you have uploaded the content to your server. The next step is to bring traffic to the website by announcing to the world that your site is live through search engine submission. This should be considered the first little push that we are giving your traffic snowball.

With a rapid increase in the number of web sites competing for exposure, the role of online search engines and directories is becoming critical to any websites success. Eighty seven percent (87%) of web site visitors find their chosen site through search engines.

What’s more, almost all of them use just seven - namely AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, LookSmart, Google, Hotbot and above all, Yahoo

This means that if you don’t have a top listing on these engines, thousands of potential clients will never find you.

There are 3 steps involved in search engine submission
1) Optimization of your web site
2) Submission of your site to the search engines and directories
3) Monitoring of your listings

Lets deal first with Optimization

The website needs to be made “search engine-friendly” before it is submitted to the major search engines This is an art in itself and there are specialist companies, such as Traffic Builder Systems, that deal only in Search engine optimization and rank management.

The first step that is undertaken is to determine the keywords that are relevant to your website.

Some people achieve a top 10 placement in a major search engine and get plenty of traffic. Others do the same but get nothing.

Why?

Simple. The first group selected keywords that many people are searching on, and the second did not!

To find the optimum keywords that are going to bring you the most targeted traffic you could use a tool such as Wordtracker

Wordtracker will compile a database of terms that people search for. You enter some keywords, and they tell you how often people search for them, and also tell you how many competing sites use those keywords. Wordtracker helps you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service - many of which you might never have considered. You’ll find out how popular these keywords really are. Then for each major search engine, they will show you the chances of making the top 10.

Once you have got the correct keywords together you will need to format them into META TAGS to place into the HTML of your webpages

If you are going to submit your site to the search engines individually it must be sensitized with META tags.

There are three META tags used by the popular search engines. META tags are added to your website’s HTML coding, and do not appear on your visible webpage. These tags are placed within the head portion of your HTML document, usually directly beneath your tag.

1) The “Keyword” META Tag

The “keyword” META tag helps meta capable search engines in indexing your website. It tells the search engine under which search terms your website should come up under.

Here is an example of this tag:
<META NAME=”keywords” content=”widgets, cheap widgets, widgets for sale, john store etc..”>

Within this META tag, use your prioritized list of keywords and commanding combinations. Don’t duplicate your keywords too many times. Each keyword should be separated by a comma, and there should be no spaces. Different search engines allow different numbers of keywords. Make sure all keywords listed in your META tag are related to your site.

If you put unrelated keywords in your keyword META tag, some search engines may penalize you or refuse to list you. Be careful not to put competitors’ company names, product names or trademarked names in your META tags. Some companies have sued because they found their names in the META tags of their competitors.

2) The “Description” META Tag

The “description” META tag helps meta capable search engines to summarize your website.

Here is an example of this tag:
<META NAME=”description” CONTENT=”John’s widget shop has the largest and cheapest selection of widgets”>

Within this tag, use a description of your website and keep the tag length under 200 characters. Some search engines allow longer or shorter descriptions. Put the most important part of your description first, for cases where search engines do not use all of it.

Some search engines extract your website’s summary from the first 250 characters of your webpage, so be sure you include a good opening paragraph on your webpage. Make sure everything in your description is related to your site. If you put unrelated words or phrases or sentences in your description META tag, some search engines may penalize you or refuse to list you.

As discussed above, be careful not to put competitors’ company names, product names or trademarked names in your META tags.

3) The “Robots” META Tag

The “robots” META tag tells meta capable search engines which pages should get indexed, and which pages should not. You may have certain pages which you may not want to show up in the search engines. You may have test pages, private pages created for a particular customer, and so on.

If you have a frames site, you wouldn’t want to index your HTML documents which display within the various frames which make up your page.

The following options are available for this tag: all, none, index, noindex, follow, nofollow.

If you wanted all of your pages indexed, you would use this tag on your main page:
<META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”all follow”>

It would tell the search engine spider to index your main page, then follow any links it finds on that page, and spider those links.

Use this tag on a page which you don’t want indexed:
<META NAME=”robots” CONTENT=”noindex”>

After entering the META tags into the HTML of your website pages and then uploading to the server, you will then need to proceed to the search engines to submit your website.

Doorway pages

Most people optimize each of their webpages for all of their keywords, and to be submitted to all the major search engines. For less popular keywords this strategy will often suffice. However for competitive keywords it won’t get favorable listings, mainly because when you overly fine tune a webpage to score well for one search engine, it will likely score lower for other search engine. For competitive keywords you should consider using a “multiple entry page” strategy.

This involves using multiple entry pages (also called doorway pages, bridge pages, jump pages and gateway pages), each optimized for a particular keyword and/or search engine. Entry pages act as “front doors” to your website. These special pages are designed to score high in keyword density and relevance.

Each entry pages can be fine tuned for one or a few keywords, and can be fine tuned for a particular search engine. It is not advisable to use the above page naming convention with all search engines, as certain search engines may detect that you are using multiple doorways.

To be safe use names which do not resemble one another: The second step is the submission to the search engines

You have the following options:

1) Submit your site manually to the search engines by visiting each one individually. This can be very time consuming and also there is the problem that every search engine is different in the sense that they each use different logarithms for analyze and ranking the website submission.

2) The submission service will submit your website to many hundreds of search engines and directories on a regular basis. This is usually an automated process, with the drawback being you get no advice on optimization. You may or may not receive reports charting your success.

3) The meta-tag optimisers will take your site and optimize it for a one off fee. They may also offer a service to submit the site once it has been optimized. With this service you have little idea of how successful the service has been long after your money has gone.

4) A small number of companies are taking a Search Engine Rank Management approach. This involves the specialist company taking complete, ongoing control of your search engine marketing needs by optimizing, submitting and monitoring your ranking activity on an ongoing basis.

High search engine ranking is the key to unlocking the true potential of your company’s web site.
Based on our industry leading knowledge of search engine technology, Traffic Builder Systems brings you Traffic Builder, an affordable rank management solution for all web site owners.

Finally, the choice is yours but remember that search engine promotion is fundamental to your success and should be the start of the the initial push to get noticed. Investment in good search engine promotion will pay dividends later.