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Posting on forums is one of the cheapest and fastest ways in which you can advertise affiliates products on the Internet. However, in order to do this successfully, you must do a number of things carefully.

Warning! Simply starting a thread that contains an affiliate link might be a good way to get banned from a particular forum board, but it will never be a good way to make sales.

The general procedure involves making multiple posts on a forum board before you even setup a signature file, which includes a link to your site. Even if the particular forum you are using does not specifically mandate this, you will want to do this, anyway, as it will increase your credibility – which is your real goal.

You can start by finding a number of forums for your particular niche or marketing angle. You can find massive lists of forums at the following two URLs:

http://www.big-boards.com/

http://board123.com/forum_directory.php

The first resource is currently the largest forum directory on the Internet. The second resource contains lesser directories, but includes some that are not listed on Big Boards.

Now, once you have selected a number of directories that match your specific marketing angle and affiliate product, you will want to investigate to determine whether or not they have excess rules regulating signature files.

For instance, some sites do not allow any links in signature files; others, by contrast, allow links, but do not allow any commercial links. Make sure you know what the rules are before you post. Otherwise, you are simply setting yourself up to be banned from the forum.

Next, take the list of forums you have created – that are both relevant to your topic and allow commercial links – and begin developing a reputation on those forums. Post regularly, avoid meaningless fights and flaming, and contribute useful, on-target information to discussions. In a matter of 1-2 weeks, you will have developed a reputation, provided that the forum receives a considerable amount of traffic.

Once you have developed a good reputation, you will want to begin advertising through your forum signature. Ideally, you will want to include some eye-catching assortment of colors, symbols, and words in your signature.

This will draw people’s attention. You will then want to link them to something other than an affiliate page – whether it be a page you created to sell an affiliate product or an auto responder course used to capture email addresses.

Remember to repeat this process in all applicable forums. Look for high traffic forums that allow commercial link posting in signature files – and that also happen to fit with your specific audience-targeting and marketing angle goals.

Next, create a reputation. Last, add your signature in some attractive way that draws visitors’ attention, but is also likely to convert them into interested clickers. You will find that this form of advertising pays off considerably – and does so faster than other methods available.

Now we’re going to go over solo ads:

For years, Internet marketers have asserted that solo ads are simply outmoded – they’re a dinosaur that no longer has the potential to reap any profits; however, another group of Internet marketers knows that the exact opposite is the truth: solo ads can reap massive profits, but in order to do so, they must be engineered perfectly, as must the selection of the solo ad distributor.

A solo ad can be a number of things. Usually, it is a large ad between 200 and 300 words that is placed at the very center of a page. The rate on solo ads is higher than on all other potential options, but it also captures readers’ attention the most by far. If you have the money to spend on a solo ad, it can be an excellent investment.

However, as with all investments (and advertisements for that matter), you must conduct your due diligence. This involves a considerable amount of research.

Now, when conducting research for a solo ad, there are two things you will want to look at:

1. The first is a list of your potential advertising outlets (in this case, probably e-zines); and
2. A list of potential approaches you can take on your solo ad.

Let’s start with the first part – finding a list of e-zines in which you can put a solo ad. I personally suggest starting with Directory of E-zines, which you can find at the following URL:

http://www.directoryofE-zines.com/

This is the ultimate resource for advertisers who want access to all e-zines and also want tips for advertising in them. If you don’t have any money to spend, I would suggest starting here instead:

http://www.E-zine-dir.com/

Once you have selected reputable e-zines to advertise in, you will then want to begin creating your solo ad. There are a number of writing “formulas” you can use to do this; however, you will always want to keep in mind what it is that your potential customer wants most.

In advertising, it is often easy to project our own wants in a given product onto potential buyers; however, it is important – when communicating with them – that you talk about their wants, not yours.

Now, when it comes to creating solo ads, I personally suggest that you spend some time at the following URL, learning about what it takes to convert readers into buyers: http://www.copywritersboard.com/.

Furthermore, I suggest that you go beyond simply writing copy and write as you would in the specific medium. For instance, if your solo ad will be featured in an e-zine, then you will want to write as if you are contacting members of a mailing list about a special offer or something similar. You may even want to refer to the owner of the list by his/her first name if (s)he allows that.

Keep all of these skills in mind when conducting solo ad campaigns. All you have to do is select the right advertising mediums and create an excellent ad – and your effort will pay off three fold.

Warning! If you’re ever bored and want to stir up some trouble, go to an Internet marketing forum and post a question asking how well E-zine advertising fares in comparison to other marketing methods.

The answers you get are likely to be diametrically opposed. This is not only because each marketer has his own product to sell – and it is in his best interest to justify the purpose of that product – but it is also because there has been a genuine debate raging for the past few years about the effectiveness and direction of E-zines and E-zine advertising.

There are those who posit that E-zine advertising is dead or is near the bottom of a very steep decline. They see the average person as being overwhelmed by superfluous emails on a daily basis – some coming from friends and others coming from businesses and E-zines.

In their eyes, this amounts to a continuing decrease in attention paid to any emails that look business related, even if they specifically subscribed to them.

Additionally, they argue that many people forget that they joined lists and eventually begin to ignore emails coming from that address. And all of this is true – which is precisely why it is important to take it into consideration when you are conducting E-zine advertising campaigns.

So how can you affectively advertise in E-zines and reap a profit from affiliate products?

There are a number of different ways, of which, I will cover three below:

1. Target E-zines that are related to your specific affiliate product.

Create a viral report that is related to your affiliate product (as we discussed in the previous lesson). Purchase sponsor ads in reputable E-zines – and send all of those interested to a page where they can download your viral report for free. This report will have an embedded affiliate link, which will generate sales on your behalf.

2. Create a persuasive solo ad

Again, start off by purchasing solo ad space in cheaper E-zines – ones that are responsive, but have a low subscription count. Test your solo ads to determine your approximate conversion rate with the given affiliate product. Once you have a rough handle on your profit margin, attempt to market your solo ads in larger publications, including e-zines with subscriber bases of over 100,000. Keep in mind that this will be expensive, but it will also pay off if you did your homework in the previous steps.

3. Last, consider targeting high-end online publications with your ads.

These will include ones that don’t normally include their sites in E-zine directories, such as authority sites that publish a monthly E-zine in PDF format. These often have high response rates and will similarly draw the best response if you use them correctly.

For regular E-zines with reasonable fees, you will want to check out the following site, which lists most E-zines that offer advertising:

http://www.E-zineadvertising.com/cgi-bin/pz.cgi

If you’re looking for something less expensive, you may want to check out the following URL:

http://www.E-zinead.net/

http://www.ezines-r-us.com/

The process of using classified ads to generate sales for any product – whether it be an original product or an affiliate product – is often over-simplified and discouraged. This is, in part, because it actually is one of the harder ways in which you can advertise.

It requires you to use a small amount of words to communicate an important point, which will either make or break your ability to garner interest in the product in question. In most cases, supposed experts will discourage you from using classified ads because they themselves have never had much luck using them – NOT because classified ads aren’t a viable method of advertising.

So how can you use classified ads correctly to generate a considerable amount of traffic to your affiliate product sales page?

The first step entails finding viable places to advertise. Again, many of the so-called experts will jump in and either tell you to use free sites or that free sites never work. The truth here, too, is somewhat in between: free sites can work, but you must use them carefully. For instance, if you want to generate traffic from sites that allow you to post free classifieds, you will have to find ones that actually receive traffic themselves.

One example of a site that receives a massive amount of traffic, but also allows you to post classified ads for free is craigslist, which you can find at the following URL:

http://www.craigslist.com

As long as you post classified ads in the proper section, you can do it completely free of charge. Additionally, you can do this on each of the craigslist sites for the metropolitan areas in the United States.

Another place you can post free classified ads is Yahoo. You can find this feature at the following URL: http://classifieds.yahoo.com/.

Again, as long as its on topic, you can post a classified at for whatever you want.

Now, with this in mind, you will want to consider the best way in which you can construct your classified ad. I personally suggest creating a headline or first line that uses psychological triggers.

Remember! With classifieds, you’re not paying by the click. It’s either free or you’re paying for a certain period of time or impressions, so your goal should be to generate as many clicks as possible, so use words like “cheap,” “free,” “proven,” and “shocking” to draw attention to your ad.

Once you have successfully drawn attention to your ad through the headline, you will then want to seal the deal by providing viewers with a reason to click through, provided that your affiliate product is something they will want to buy. You can do this by explicitly stating a quantifiable benefit in the second line of the classified ad – and then stating a crucial feature in the third line.

Once you have gained some experience posting ads on free classified ad mediums, you will want to move on to major electronic publications, including large e-zines and authority sites; however, before you do this, you could be confident in the classified ad and your conversion rate.

I’ll show you how to maximize and get the most out of the traffic you make using the methods we have discussed earlier.

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competition that is all too willing to get a bigger share of the pie. Every scheme and method you can find to augment your sales would be very beneficial.

We have got to admit to ourselves. Most of us are into it for the money. We are not going to waste our time and effort just for the fun of it. Many sites would not wait until hell freezes over just to see their profits. While there are some who takes things lightly there are always those who would rather see profit any given day.

It is common knowledge that without traffic we have no business. Like any business, without any customers you don’t get sales. Traffic represents all the people that gets a chance to see what you have to offer. The more people who see your products the more people there would be to buy them.

Nobody puts up an E-commerce site that doesn’t expect profit. We have a startup capital that needs to be regained. With a consistent traffic, we at least have a fighting chance to achieve that probability. Monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Making Money out of your Traffic

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The Internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundred of thousands of traffic everyday. Most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is looking for something that they need.

The Internet has proven to be a very reliable source in finding what was deemed to be a very unsearchable product. The Internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia.

Generating traffic is not an easy task. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a good number of traffic flow. But if done successfully this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities. One of the benefits is monetizing your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered as a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with the good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have good traffic you have a good number of potential customers, customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than that these are also traffic that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizeable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that happens would spell to more profits.

Affiliate Programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic are affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site.

The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site that can offer a product that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of site linkage.

When purchases are made by customers that was led by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need of carrying or promoting a certain product.

Creativity.

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectiveness of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them more popular. Remember the movie “The Blair Witch Project”?

Many big companies have tried viral marketing and have had many success stories with it. A classic example is Microsoft’s Hotmail. They were the first known big company to utilize the scheme and it has worked wonders for them.

Now it’s your turn to use viral marketing to work wonders for you. Act now and reap the benefits Viral Marketing will provide for you and your sales figures.

There is one hard and fast rule in generating income for your website: A steady flow of website traffic. If no one goes to your site, it hardly bares a chance of generating an income. Many sites have tried and failed in doing so, and these results to the sites demise. It takes money to maintain an income-generating site; it also takes money to make money.

BUT, it doesn’t take a whole caboodle of cash to generate website traffic for your site, either!

Ever wonder how does big hit sites drive traffic top their site? Most of them are spending tons of money to drive the traffic to their sites, investing in many advertising campaigns and different forms of marketing schemes and gimmickries. This is all worthwhile because, well, they are what they are now, high earning, big-hitting websites.

You don’t have to do this if you don’t really have their resources. There are many ways to generate low cost website traffic without having to spend what you don’t have or can’t afford. Many people have banked on high cost methods and have ended up losing their shirt over it.

Here I present to you the Top five ways to generate low cost website traffic that could help your site a whole lot. Even if you only get a small percentage of successful visitors in to client ratio it still works especially if you get a high number of website traffic.

Exchange Links

This is a sure and proven method. Rarely would you see a site where there is no link to another site. Many webmasters are willing to exchange links with one another so that they could produce more public awareness about their sites. You’ll soon see and feel the sudden upsurge of the traffic coming in to your site from other sites.

A major prerequisite in exchanging links with other sites is having the same niche or content as the other site. They should share a common subject so that there is continuity in the providing of service and information to what interests your target traffic.

Exchanging links also boosts your chances of getting a high ranking in Search Engine results. It is common knowledge that Search Engines ranks high sites that have inbound and outbound theme-related links. With a good ranking position in the Search Engines, you will generate more traffic in your website without the high costs.

Traffic Exchange

This is like exchanging links but on a different higher level. This may cost a bit more than exchanging or trading links but could be made cheaper because you get to earn credits. You can use those credits when viewing others traffic, while you earn credits when someone views yours.

Traffic exchange services are the viewing of another’s site or page. This is done vice versa where a site can use your sites contents and so can you to his or her site. You both benefit from each others efforts to generate traffic. The other sites visitors can go to your pages and know more about your site as well as theirs. Once again the public awareness of your sites existence is boosted.

Write and Submit Articles

There are many e-zines and online encyclopedias in the Internet which provides free space for articles to be submitted. If you want to save costs, you can do the articles yourself. There are many freelance writers who are willing to write for you for a small fee, but to save money, it is wise to do those articles yourself.

Write articles that are themed along with the niche of your site. Write something that you have expertise on so that when they read it, they can feel your knowledge about the subject and will be eager to go to your site. Write articles that produce tips and guidelines to the subject or niche your site has.

Include a resource box at the end of your article that can link them to your site. Write a little about yourself and your site. If you provide a light, information-laden and interesting article, they will go to your site for more.

If you want to leverage on article submission, you can try paid services like http://www.articlemarketer.com/.

E-commerce is a cutthroat business. You have to arm yourself with the proper know-how and the tools to make your site a cut above the rest. Each day, more and more sites are clambering to optimize their rankings in websites and if you lose your guard, you may just get trampled on and be left in the abyss filled with so many failed e-commerce sites.

Search Engine Optimization or SEO is a term widely used today by many e-commerce sites. For the past few years and the next ten years or so, Search Engines would be the most widely used Internet tool to find the sites that they need to go to or the product or information they need.

Most people that use Search Engines use only the ten top search results in the first page. Making it to the first page, more so to the top three is a barometer of a sites success in Search Engine optimization. You will get a higher ratio of probability in being clicked on when you rank high. The more traffic for your site, the more business you rake in.

But, it is essential to grab a hold of that spot or make your ranking even better. As I aforementioned, each day is a new day for all e-commerce sites to make them selves rank higher using Search Engine optimization. It is imperative to make your site better and better everyday.

So just what is Search Engine optimization and do you have to use it? The answer to why you have to use it is an easy one. You need Search Engine optimization to be number one, or maybe at least make your site income generating. Period.

With Search Engine optimization you can get the benefit of generating a high traffic volume. Let’s just say you get only a turn out of successful sales with 10 to 20 percent of your traffic. If you get a hundred hits or more a day, you get a good turn out of sales already. If you get only twenty to ten hits a day, you only get one or two if not any at all.

So once again, what is Search Engine optimization? Search Engine optimization is utilizing tools and methods in making your site top ranking in the results of Search Engines. Getting yourself in the first page and better yet in the top half of the page will ensure that your site will generate public awareness of your site’s existence and subsequently generate more traffic, traffic that could lead to potential income and business.

Search Engine optimization requires a lot of work to be fully realized. There are many aspects you have to change in your site or add as well to get Search Engine optimization. These will include getting lots of information about the keyword phrases that are popular in regards to your sites niche or theme.

You may also need to rewrite your sites contents so that you could get the right keyword phrases in your site without making it too commercial but light and informative. There are certain rules and guidelines to be followed with making your site’s content applicable and conducive to Search Engine optimization.

You will also need to collaborate with many other sites so that you could get link exchanges and page transfers. The more inbound and outbound traffics generated by sites among others are one of the components Search Engines uses to rank sites.

Try to search the Internet for many useful help. Tips, guidelines and methods for Search Engine optimization are plenty to be found. Read many articles that can help you optimize your site in Search Engine results. The more knowledge and information you gather the better. This will all help you in getting those high rankings. This may require a little time and effort in your part but the benefits will be astounding.

If you can part with some money, there are many sites in the Internet that can help you in Search Engine optimization. There are many sites that help in tracking keyword phrases that can help your site. There are also some content writers that have lots of experience in making good keyword laden content for your sites that have good quality.

Putting up a company would of course require a lot of things, to get straight to the point, you need some capital. To make money requires money as well. But of course, with the versatility the Internet offers, there are many ways you could find that could help optimize the potential of your site or business in generating traffic.

While there are ways to jump start your traffic flows, many sites don’t have the resources that others have to generate more traffic for your site. Well, you don’t have to spend a cent; all you need is the proper mindset and a lot of eagerness. You also must have the drive and perseverance to do hard work and research to generate more traffic for your site.

How sweet it is to have more traffic for your site without spending a single cent. Now it’s a sure thing that many sites have articles that offer tips and guidelines in how to generate traffic using only free methods. Because it is possible, you don’t need to speed a single cent, it may take time, to say honestly, I’m not going to beat around the bush with you. You get better chances by paying for your advertisements, but at least you get a fighting chance with some of these free methods I’m about to tell you.

Take advantage of online forums and online communities. The great thing about forums and online communities is that you can target a certain group that fits the certain demographic that you are looking for. You can discuss about lots of things about the niche that you represent or offer. Another great advantage is that you know what you are getting into and you will be prepared.

With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. Show them what you are made of and wow them with your range of expertise about the subject, with that you can build a reputation and build trust with the people in your expertise and knowledge.

You can also make use of newsletters. Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting and entertaining articles. If you make it really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be that will go to your site increasing your traffic.

While the first two methods above have been discussed briefly earlier, here’s another:

Another great idea is trading links with other sites. You don’t have to spend a cent. All you have to do is reach an agreement with another webmaster. With exchanging links, the efforts both sites do will benefit both sites. Every traffic that goes to the site could potentially click on the link of your site and visit your site as well. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche.

Write articles that could pique the attention of people that have interest in your product. Try writing articles that will provide tips and guides to other aficionados. Writing articles that provide good service and knowledge to other people would provide the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs.

Many sites offer free submission and posting of your articles. When people find interest in your articles they have a good chance of following the track by finding out where the article originated. Include a link or a brief description of your company with the article and there’s a great probability that they will go to your site.

Write good content for your site. Many Search Engines track down the keywords and keyword phrases your site uses and how they are used. It is not a requirement that a content should be done by a professional content writer. You could do your on but you have to make content for your site that is entertaining as well as informational. It should provide certain requirements as well as great quality.

Generally, Internet users use Search Engines to find what they are looking for. Search Engines in return use keyword searching in aiding their search results. With the right keywords, you could get high rankings in Search Engine results without the costs.

All of these methods and more will drive more traffic to your site for free. All it takes is a bit of effort and extended man-hours. Learn all you can about the methods depicted here and you will soon have a site with a great traffic flow without the usual costs that come with it.