Don't waste your time submitting to FFAs and safelists. Although some people have had success with these methods in the past, they're effectiveness has dwindled. To get any response at all requires A LOT of work and even then you rarely attract paying customers. If you're on a tight budget you're better to focus on other free traffic generation techniques such as writing articles, optimizing for the search engines and finding Joint Venture partners. To determine whether a free advertising method is worthwhile consider the amount you're making for every hour you put in. For example if it takes you 8 hours per week to manage your safelist submissions and that earns you $50 per week in extra sales you're only making $6.25 an hour. Your time is worth a lot more than that!
Create search engine friendly pages that don't interfere with your main sales page. The problem with optimizing pages for the search engines is that often marketers undo the elements that have made their site convert visitors into buyers. You can get loads of traffic but if the people aren't buying you won't be making any more money. Avoid this problem by creating multiple pages that are specifically designed to rank well in the search engines and that funnel traffic back to the page that is set up to sell. This can be done by simply including enough information on the page to get their attention and then putting a link at the bottom to your main site where they can get more information. The search engines will rank your pages well because they use specific keywords and include useful content and you can still have a site that converts well.
Carefully track all of your traffic. To get a complete picture of your website traffic it's a good idea to use both unique tracking URLs and a website statistics package. Unique tracking URLs will give you exact clickthroughs for every URL you publish. For example if you write an article and include your URL in the resource box you can create a unique tracking URL and know exactly how many people clicked through to your site. Use a different tracking code for every marketing initiative. A great option for creating tracking URLs is ezTrackZ.com. For the big picture you'll need a website statistics package. This will tell you more general information about the number of visitors, how long they stayed on the site, what pages they viewed and the page they exited the site from. A great option for website statistics is Clickalyzer.com. Not only does it do everything mentioned here but it also tells you how far down each page the visitor read. Invaluable information when working on your site's conversion rate!
Buy expired domains that already have traffic going to them. It happens more than you might think that someone creates a website and drives traffic to it through search engines and link exchanges only to let it expire. Usually it's because they never found a way to make money from that traffic. Well their loss can be your gain! If you purchase one of these domains and point it to your site you will get that lost traffic. Some of these domains are even listed in Yahoo so it's a great way to get a free Yahoo listing. Search in Google or Yahoo for 'expired domain services' to learn more.
Include a useful script on your site. There are many programs available which can be used as traffic generators by giving visitors a reason to return to your site over and over again. Tools such as classified ad sites, free-for-all link pages, message boards, chat rooms, ecard sites, and other can all contribute to your traffic building plan. The good news is that most of these programs can be added to your website for little or no cost. For a directory of CGI scripts visit http://cgi.resourceindex.com and for PHP scripts visit http://php.resourceindex.com. Most scripts are not difficult to install but if you're uncomfortable with making changes to your website, there are places that remotely host scripts. For a list check out http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Remotely_Hosted/. That means that they install everything on their servers and you simply place a link to the service on your site to allow your visitors to use it.
Create search engine friendly pages that don't interfere with your main sales page. The problem with optimizing pages for the search engines is that often marketers undo the elements that have made their site convert visitors into buyers. You can get loads of traffic but if the people aren't buying you won't be making any more money. Avoid this problem by creating multiple pages that are specifically designed to rank well in the search engines and that funnel traffic back to the page that is set up to sell. This can be done by simply including enough information on the page to get their attention and then putting a link at the bottom to your main site where they can get more information. The search engines will rank your pages well because they use specific keywords and include useful content and you can still have a site that converts well.
Carefully track all of your traffic. To get a complete picture of your website traffic it's a good idea to use both unique tracking URLs and a website statistics package. Unique tracking URLs will give you exact clickthroughs for every URL you publish. For example if you write an article and include your URL in the resource box you can create a unique tracking URL and know exactly how many people clicked through to your site. Use a different tracking code for every marketing initiative. A great option for creating tracking URLs is ezTrackZ.com. For the big picture you'll need a website statistics package. This will tell you more general information about the number of visitors, how long they stayed on the site, what pages they viewed and the page they exited the site from. A great option for website statistics is Clickalyzer.com. Not only does it do everything mentioned here but it also tells you how far down each page the visitor read. Invaluable information when working on your site's conversion rate!
Buy expired domains that already have traffic going to them. It happens more than you might think that someone creates a website and drives traffic to it through search engines and link exchanges only to let it expire. Usually it's because they never found a way to make money from that traffic. Well their loss can be your gain! If you purchase one of these domains and point it to your site you will get that lost traffic. Some of these domains are even listed in Yahoo so it's a great way to get a free Yahoo listing. Search in Google or Yahoo for 'expired domain services' to learn more.
Include a useful script on your site. There are many programs available which can be used as traffic generators by giving visitors a reason to return to your site over and over again. Tools such as classified ad sites, free-for-all link pages, message boards, chat rooms, ecard sites, and other can all contribute to your traffic building plan. The good news is that most of these programs can be added to your website for little or no cost. For a directory of CGI scripts visit http://cgi.resourceindex.com and for PHP scripts visit http://php.resourceindex.com. Most scripts are not difficult to install but if you're uncomfortable with making changes to your website, there are places that remotely host scripts. For a list check out http://cgi.resourceindex.com/Remotely_Hosted/. That means that they install everything on their servers and you simply place a link to the service on your site to allow your visitors to use it.
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