Traffic building seems to be the biggest mystery to the newbie. This article may help on the solution to this major problem.
Traffic building is perhaps the most misunderstood and ignored step toward achieving success. The process is comparable to knocking on doors, making contacts and passing out business cards.
When people first delve into internet marketing, they are full of enthusiasm and energy after buying and reading one of the internet courses or ebooks. These newbies will spend hours and hours of hard work building a site that they consider to be perfect in their own eyes. Of course, what they consider to be perfect may well be riddled with dead end avenues and misconceptions. Nevertheless, let us assume that somehow the newbie managed to put together a killer site that borders on perfection.
Okay, now that all is built and ready to go, the average newbie will now go into hibernation and depend on search engine optimization to bring in the traffic. What a mistake this is!
The problem could be psychological. The newbie could suffer a burnout after doing all that construction work. I know how that feels. I have experienced that feeling many times. However, I am telling you that you must never succumb to the feeling that the next step to success should ever be placed on hold. So what is the next step?
The traffic building stage is psychologically the hardest thing to do while being physically one of the easiest things to do.
Your site is live but no one knows it exists. It may take several weeks before the search engines even sniff your web pages. You are wasting time. What do you do?
Run a test on your site by using pay-per-click. If your sales pages and links are in place, you should consider Google Adwords. Bid for a rate of say five cents or less per click on a small premium keyword. If the first one or two hundred visitors do not buy anything after say five days, it will at least serve the purpose of telling you that your pride and joy is really not as good as you may have imagined. At this point, you should come back down from the clouds and face the reality that more work should be done to your sales page or links to it.
At this point, you should proceed with a schedule of performing the following operations of article submissions to directories, running a blog, making comments on message boards, creating press releases and using social networks. These things are free and are easy to do. It is amazing that so many newbies do not even realize that these forms of advertising exist.
Insert the term article directories into your search engine. There are hundreds of these from which to choose. The instructions will be easy to follow at each directory website.
Next, go to blogger (operated by Google) where you can put together your very own blog with easy to follow instructions. You will need to update your blog on a regular basis depending on the nature of the topic. However, the blog will allow you to place direct links in open fashion right to your place of business.
Next, you should become familiar with the major message boards that deal with the subject matter of your particular business. It depends on the message board rules whether or not you will have to be suttle in your approach. If you merely spam, you will be removed or banned. However, if you provide useful information, you should be okay as long as you do not do a sales pitch on the message board.
Social networking is a real challenge, but it is the most interesting of all methods and probably the most misunderstood. These sites have become very popular. The visitors to these sites can create and they can rate the content of others.
When you post an article, other visitors will then vote on that post whether or not to give it a pass or a do not pass. The articles with the most positive votes will climb up the front page. It is like a contest. An example is at dig, stumbleupon, and technorati.
The situation at a social network is unusual, because the visitors are not targeted on a particular field. As a result, your article has to be generalized and it has to be compelling, shocking or just plain out of the ordinary.
For example, if you have an automobile related business, you could do an article concerning what happens when cruise control hits ice. If you have a financial business, you could do an article on how a scam can be perpetrated against investors.
Press releases are friendly to search engines and they are free. Go to PRWeb or some other press release distribution service. These should be written in a factual, journalistic style. Your URL will be inserted at the end of the release as the source. Your chosen keywords will be critical when using those method. The big positive about this method is that not many people are using this avenue of getting traffic. However, press releases are a must.
It is unfortunate that so many people give up in this business. It happens because there is no one that can hold the newbie by the hand. Some people turn negative when not reinforced while others cannot handle rejection at all. It does help if the writer of the course can relate to the feeling that is experienced by the newbie.
As a writer, I always try to develop the instructional presentation by showing the newbie that I myself made mistakes and that I can reveal this with some humor. I instill the idea that I am a teacher, because I made every mistake in the book and that I am still here.
The prospect of success is never over until the fat lady sings. The newbie can become the veteran if he or she can simply perform the steps outlined here every day. Do it!
