I've started to promote my site today, not sold anything yet, though

What do you guys think about banner exchanges, page-unders, etc? I have had a bit of traffic from these already - signed up with TrafficZap and FreeBanners - but am now being bombarded with websites advertising teeny girl webcams, which is pretty annoying as my kids use this computer. I need put a stop to that, obviously, as they are a bit young to be looking at that stuff.

Do you have any ideas for cheap, effective advertising that doesn't involve having to put up with other people's unwanted stuff leaping out at you every two minutes?

Hi again,

You could use a utility like 'Ezinepromote' etc..

I would recommend that if you're going to use visitor generation facilities like the ones you're looking at, that you setup a web-based email account with which to sign up.

That way all the spam that inevitably follows goes to a web-based email account that you don't actually care about and will not be accidently viewed by your children.

Anything that involves submitting your site to services that offer traffic almost always results in huge amounts of email to your subscribing address.

I'll see if I can find some decent utilities for you. I actually don't rely on external (3rd party) traffic generation now because of this type of thing.
The traffic you end up getting usually is not the traffic you're after.

I know it's the worst bit about getting yourself up and running (getting visitors before the search engines give you them) but I would focus on establishing relationships with others that send you 'quality' traffic.

I know that's a bit of a cliche, but you only need to track down a couple of good sources and you're well away.


Regards,

LennyT

I've signed up for the Bravenet Traffic Swarm thing, which is another one of those free things. You have to change your Home page and put up with clicking through loads of pages to build up ad credits, but it does work. I bought something myself yesterday. lol And its quite a good way of finding out what other people are doing.

But I guess it would take forever to build up a reasonable amount of traffic that way and it isnt' targetted, so no doubt as soon as I'm bored with the clicking I'll ditch it Certainly not going to rely on it, anyway.

Hi Tweeders,

I've recently been reading a book which covers free advertising and the 'surf to earn visitors' type arrangements.

If you're interested I'll try and condense some good bits into a posting for you....

Regards,

LennyT

Hi Lenny

My head is literally swimming with all the options for free traffic that I've looked at over the last 24 hours! I've joined Traffic Swarm, which is the Bravenet version of Surf To Earn, but I'm not sure if its one of the most effective. You read so much contradictory stuff as you surf that its really hard to sort the wheat from the chaff.

I haven't read anything against the surf to earn method, the only disadvantage seems to be the amount of time you have to spend clicking through other people's sites, plus the never ending temptation to spend money on things that tempt you as you go! I have spent some, and end up wishing I hadn't, although the last thing I bought did at least point out that I can put affiliate links onto the 'Merry Go Round', and hopefully use their sales letters to make a bit of residual money for doing absolutely nothing.

Anyway, all the effort I've put into getting traffic so far has resulted in about 7 hits, and 1 person on my mailing list, who it turns out, is my hubby's best mate. lol Now I'll have to make up an ezine to send him! As it happens, he's a good person to have on my list as he runs a PR agency for internet based companies, so I'm trying to squeeze some free advice out of him, although he only does 'real world' work with magazines and so on, which might not be right for me.

Hi again Tweeders,

He might be the ideal person - not to help you, but for you to help.

If he's not in a position to offer you advice about online marketing etc..... then maybe you already know enough to help HIM.

Tell him you can advertise his (and his clients) services online for a commission on any traffic you generate..

Is it just me or does getting into online marketing make you turn situations upside down and apply your new ideas to everything you see??

As far as your traffic goes, there are some good ppc companies around.
I'm sure you've looked at google adwords etc... (I think they're very good, but not necessarily appropriate if you haven't optimised your page to convert those visitors (who ALL cost you money) into buyers. I suppose that's the fundamental issues with PPCs - If your page sells and you just need traffic they're good, if not - they're a waste of money and you need to work on the site.

Have any of the 7 people bought anything?

I would say your best bet is optimising for search engines, the only problem with this is that it can take time.... that's tha nature of the beast.

If you are confident in your website and your products - look for joint ventures with other related site owners/list owners, submit articles to other ezines and submission sites etc...

I found that making an article out of a few paragraphs of my ebook and submitting that into an article submission directory not only got a few visitors, but also counted as a link-back to my website and increased the search engine optimisation. If you are now feeling like your one ezine subscriber should get some content, take some time (if you can) and plan out the content for 5/6 ezine editions, this way the pressure to do 'the next' one is lessened and you can gradually have the future content as a 'back-burner' project.

The surf-to-earn type traffic can be a hassle, but I read recently about a program which acts as a browser, but can window 6 sites at the same time - i.e. you could set 6 different sites as your home page, this effectively multiplying the efficiency of your surf-to-earn program.

I can also recommend a series of these programs which will spread the effectiveness across a decent timescale.

Also, I came across a good utlity for checking google site positions - it needs to have a google script running on your server, but it will tell you the position of your website for various keywords.

One of my sites which I started (from scratch) 9 days ago is in position 3 in google now and I've hardly scratched the surface of its potential, plus that's without employing any 'smart' pages or sneeky tricks. (i've just checked again and I notice it's gone from 1,200,000 (ish) to 123,000 (ish) on Alexa.

So my advice is do some research into your website - 1) for your page effectiveness - get people who you trust to tell you whether they would buy from it (I know you've already done that to an extent - but don't stop). 2) start playing with all the great utilities that give you information about your page (keyword optimisation etc..) and use something like 'Wordtracker' to make sure you're targetting the search terms people are 'actually' using.
I cam across a program that puts a script on your ISP directory and when you activate it, it shows a percentage next to every link - letting you know the percentage of visitors to your site that click on them. You can get ones that tell you the search terms used to find your site and others that were used.... I think this sort of stuff is something you should focus some attention on.

I know this might all sound 'a bit much', but there's no timescale by which to get it all done, so just get a grip of what you want to achieve and make a plan to work to (just make sure it's one you can stick to).

If all else fails and it's just a case of waiting for search engine traffic (which isn't coming) think about whether you're aiming at a valid market. It may be that the ebook/infor-product/home business market is too competitive and you need to focus your efforts more on a niche area. You can research the search terms etc.. and replicate your site onto some other domains and without too much effort create minisites which focus on a subset of your products that you can market more effectively.

Anyway, I'm sure that's enough to keep you going (and your coffees probably cold now).

Best Wishes,


LennyT

Thanks for all the good advice, Lenny. Glad to see your project is getting such good results so soon, you must be delighted!

I did realise when I started my project that it might not be the best way of getting a decent return, as there is extremely stiff competition and I don't really have the resources or experience to do a bang up professional job, but I kinda viewed it as a learning curve, something I could do to get myself 'out there' in a short space of time, and act as a hub for other, more tightly focussed activities to come along at a later date. I have learned a tremendous lot in the last few weeks, and I don't really expect to be able to run before I can walk.

In fact, since I posted my message this morning, I have had another 20 hits from the various surf to earn projects, although still no sales. LOL Not unexpected from such loosely targetted traffic who are only there so they can make credits for themselves, but you never know. It is at least getting the ball rolling, and I can experiment with different homepage formats on my site to see if I can get a better return.

I'm going to start plugging straightforward affiliate links that way, too. It would seem a good way to go about getting sales, as a lot of people wouldn't even know it was an affiliate link until they had already clicked on it, or had it loaded on to their page.

I don't think my one subscriber will be too fussed about whether or not he hears from me anytime soon. lol But you're right, if I get any more, I will need to have something prepared in advance to send them. Yet another thing to add to the list! It never seems to get any shorter. But I'll get there in the end.

Hi again,

Don't worry about it. I thought I was chucking too much at you, but I figured - you never know you might be able to think about it subconsiously and other readers of the thread might get something out of it. That's why I let myself ramble on sometimes on these posts, you never know when you might type something useful to a newbie whos reading through the posts (or anyone else for that matter - this forums a good place for seeing other people asking questions which help you).

Are you capturing the details of any of your visitors?

That might be a small step in the right direction. If you have a method available - see if you can tweek it to start capturing some of the few visitors you are getting, that way when the traffic picks up you're gonna cath more.

The main point is that you actually did something - lots of people never bother so give yourself a pat on the back. The thing now is to keep up the momentum (even if it is aimed at traffic generation or thinking about how to differentiate yourself from everyone else)

Just keep DOING SOMETHING, it may not be the most efficient something, but hey - it's not your full-time job (yet) it's more of a hobby with potential so there's no problem.

Thanks for your encouragement about my efforts, yes things seem to be working out quite nicely at the moment (funny - After all the work I put in, and 3am bedtimes for weeks on end, it's only when I backed-off and started looking at the big picture that things seemed to start dropping into place on their own)

Anyway - keep on plodding along doing something and you can only move forward, just don't stop.


LennyT

Don't worry about chucking too much at me, I can take it all in.

My bookstore site is very much more suited to the Search Engine type traffic that I'm not getting yet, I realise that, and once it does get onto the engines it might do better. The surf and earn type sites need to have instant impact to grab people's attention, and as I have discovered how to sell on those click surf places using other people's material as an affiliate, I'm going to work on that for now, while I'm waiting for the search engine traffic to come online. Horses for courses, as they say!

I might even stick my neck out and do a bit of cpc, as the chances of being able to do good business with something that's hot is a lot better than risking it on my own site that's untested and might end up costing me a lot more than it makes. I'll see how they go with the surf crowd and then assess the cpc. I have actually paid for some traffic - 3.50 for 1000 visitors! A bargain, I reckon. If I get a couple of sales out of that, it will have paid for itself.

The key to affiliate success is being able to identify the hot stuff as it comes onto the market, and jumping on it quick while its selling well, then move onto the next thing. The only way to do that, is to put a lot of time into research, and one thing I have plenty of is time. I'm going to try a lot of different things, just to see what happens.

Being already familiar with website building and all that entails is a major advantage for me over people who get into this with no knowledge whatsoever, as a major part of the learning curve is already done.

I need to get an opt in automator - I was looking at that one on Richard's resource page yesterday, and was very tempted - but it will have to wait just for now. I think its very important, though, so it might just have to be bought. lol MORE expense. Just have to hide my credit card bill ops: :shock:

Never a truer word was spoken....

I actually found a free unlimited autoresponder the other day.

I'll find the details and post them.


LennyT