Three traffic-producing opportunities using social media or web 2.0

A few years back, you had two ways to drive traffic to your website. You could either pay for it by implementing an advertising campaign or you could try to build a site that you felt the search engines would love in order to get traffic via them. (A third way of course is article marketing.) The maturation of the web has led to a third core means of generating traffic. Social media and other “web 2.0” strategies represent a potentially efficient and effective way to secure visitors to your website.

traffic

Here are three examples of leveraging these traffic sources to your advantage

YouTube Traffic

Video continues to gain traction as it becomes easier to create and edit and as users have greater levels of accessibility through faster Internet access and use of mobile devices such as smart phones and iPads. When done the right way, a short, home-made video can produce a great deal of traffic: often more than a similarly-targeted traditional article.

See my YouTube channels for examples.
http://www.youtube.com/user/VindenGrace

http://www.youtube.com/user/DunedinConsultants

For help on creating videos for your websites, please contact us.

Twitter Traffic

Twitter, often described as a micro-blogging platform, allows you to develop relationships and reach audiences easily and for free. If you handle this opportunity the right way, you can turn the service into a traffic driver that delivers targeted customers.

See our Twitter channels for updates and examples:

@vinden

@vindengrace

@coacheve

@evegracekelly

@LiveSuccessFull

@Coaches4Divorce

FaceBook Traffic

Sometimes it seems like everyone you know is on FaceBook. Between its ease of use, ‘addictiveness’ and that old “six degrees of separation” concept, it’s easy to build a social profile that many people will see. Plus, you can integrate everything else you’re doing with your FaceBook account.

Advertising and SEO still bring home the bacon for many Internet marketers in terms of traffic, but social media is really beginning to have an impact these last couple of years. If you’re not involved, you should be! It’s all in the name of that all-important traffic.

Internet Marketing: Product Creation

In the vast world of Internet marketing, you can be a product owner through product creation or product development or an affiliate. There are good reasons to consider both options. I thought this would be a perfect time to cover a few of the advantages of going the “it’s my product” route vs. being an affiliate as, with such a crowded market-place, you need a way to stand out. That’s by product creation.

Why ‘Product Creation’?

Initially, being your own product owner/creator gives you a chance to bring your unique vision and ideas into the world. There’s nothing quite like seeing “your baby” succeed in the marketplace. That’s a kind of personal fulfillment that you can’t quite replicate as an affiliate, although affiliate marketing can be very lucrative. That’s the joy of product creation or product development.

Benefits of Product Creation

Personal fulfillment, however, doesn’t pay your bills. Most of us involved in Internet Marketing are also interested in making money and that’s another great reason to consider creating and owning your own product through product creation. Instead of being one of many affiliates for someone else’s product or service, you can be the person who has a collection of affiliates working on his or her behalf. Think of how many sales a good affiliate could make for you. Now, start multiplying it by many affiliates. When you’re at the ‘top of the food-chain’, those multiplied earnings flow in your direction. Additonally, it enhances your reputation as a ‘thought-leader’ or trail-blazer to be seen to have your own products.

Product creation

Product Creation Assistance

If you need help with product creation, feel free to contact us about our mentoring programs.

Product creation

Product Creation Summary

There’s a lot of work involved in product creation, it’s true. (We know only too well from our own experience! We’ve written many books, created many face-to-face courses, home-study courses and workbooks.) There’s also work involved in managing affiliates. Successfully launching a new product, even with the help of affiliates, requires some effort and know-how, too. Being the product owner/creator isn’t necessarily the easiest thing in the world. It is, however, the best way to put yourself in a position to maximize your profits. So, crack on with your own product creation.

Do you need Search Engine Traffic?

Search engine traffic is the so-called holy grail of Internet marketing. It’s targeted. It converts. It’s free (at least in the sense that you aren’t forking out cash for every click). The downside? It often requires what feels like a massive effort to rank effectively in competitive niches, such as real estate, Internet marketing, stock-market-related offerings, etc. It also requires quite a bit of patience.

Maybe you aren’t interested in doing the work necessary to appeal to Google and other search engines? Perhaps you want instant results instead of spending the time building a good SEO infrastructure.

Can you skip search engine traffic altogether?

Absolutely. It is possible to live without search engine traffic. There are a variety of different ways to drive traffic that are wholly independent of organic search engine rankings. You can rely on a variety of advertising methods, including pay-per-click (PPC) options. You can use social media tools and other “web 2.0” methods to bypass search engine ranking concerns.

The Search Engine Traffic Challenge

Here’s the challenge though: Unless you’re willing to pay for traffic, it’s going to be hard to get traffic from non-search engine sources. The only way to generate a truly significant and consistent flow of visitors will involve advertising—and that’s going to cost you, potentially quite a lot.

That’s why so many people eventually come back to hunting for the holy grail of high rankings on the search engines. The up-front effort and time investments don’t seem all that onerous when you compare them to the often substantial costs of generating traffic without the search engines.

search engine traffic

We recently managed to get one of our own products (a mindset coaching eBook for traders on the stock market/FX/options, etc.) onto page 1 of Google out of almost 69 million search results! And it only took our team 8 days! If you want search engine ranking results like this, and great search engine traffic just get in touch. Let us help you with your rankings and search engine traffic.

Internet marketing

The “Secret” Code for Success in Internet Marketing Is…

…that there isn’t one!

Internet marketing boils down to business basics.

Internet marketing Basics

There are so many different elements  and choices in the arena of Internet marketing that it can sometimes feel overwhelming and feel impossible to maintain a well-informed “ helicopter view” or have a grasp of the bigger picture . That’s particularly true when you’re just starting out, being bombarded by what feels like an infinite mass of Internet marketing information and ideas, the latest, newest, shiniest object, the next big thing in Internet marketing.

At its core though, Internet marketing isn’t really so very complicated. There’s a simple formula that underlies just about everything we do as Internet or Digital marketers. After you strip away all of the ‘noise’  and start looking at essentials or first principles, there are three things in which we’re really interested.

The formula for Successful Internet marketing

Traffic. In order to make sales, you need customers. In order to get customers, you need prospects. Traffic is one of the “big three”: you can’t make money if you aren’t getting people in front of your offers.

Conversion. After you get the traffic, you need to persuade those individuals to make a purchase or to take some other action (such as getting on your mailing list so that you can market to them and eventually sell them something) that puts money in your pocket. That’s conversion and nothing good happens without it.

Money. Every time someone makes a purchase or “does what you require”, you need to make your money or begin to by getting them into your marketing funnel. This is the end goal of the whole pursuit of Internet marketing. You also need to carefully track how much you make per sale or action.

What happens when we put it all together and get our formula for Internet marketing?

Traffic x Rate of Conversion x $/Conversion = Gross Profit

When you get down to basics, these are the fudnamentals of how Internet marketing works! Don’t let the noise drown out these business essentials. They still apply to Internet marketing.