Using Giveaways To Build Your List

Using giveaways to build your list is becoming an increasingly popular method, and providing you do it right it’s easy to generate a large amount of subscribers in very little time.

A giveaway event is basically a website where marketers upload products for other people to download for free. These products can be anything – eBooks, short reports, audio products, video products, etc.

In order to gain access to the products, people first have to sign up to the giveaway event (so the organiser of the giveaway gets to build their list) and then people also have to opt-in again to download any individual product (so the person who puts the product on the site gets to build their own list.)

Contributing a free product to a giveaway event can therefore be very lucrative. People sign-up to giveaway events because they’re looking for free products, and if you can provide a product that people want then you should generate plenty of new subscribers.

The most important thing is that you give away a QUALITY product. Many people upload products to giveaway events that are outdated, tired, and are generally rubbish.

You can’t offer crap. Sure you’ll get opt-ins, but if the product is rubbish then people will very quickly unsubscribe.

The other thing to consider is the quality of the giveaway event. Some giveaways seem to be put together in a great hurry, look very unprofessional, and have lots of rubbish products. Do you really want to be associated with a giveaway like that? Probably not.

It’s a good idea to promote the giveaway you’re participating in. By generating referrals to the giveway you will in most cases help your product appear more prominently in the giveaway. On some sites it is a requirement that you generate a certain amount of referrals before you are allowed to contribute a free product.

If you’d like more information on giveaways the following Push Buttton Giveaways might be quite helpful – http://www.craigdawber.com/recommends/PushButtonGiveaways

Essential Squeeze Page Tips

We all know you need to build a list. ‘The money’s in the list’, ‘the gold’s in the list’… and I completely agree. To build it, however, what you need is a great squeeze page. You need a free offer that converts like crazy – something which turns your visitors into subscribers and captures their attention to the point where it’s something they simply can’t refuse.

Here are 4 tips for creating a great squeeze page….

1. 1. Use professional graphics

It’s important that the offer on your squeeze page looks professional and valuable. A great way to do this is to have some eye catching graphics made. If you can’t do it yourself then pay a designer to do it for you. Even though you’ll be shelling out money to create something you’ll be giving away for free, trust me when I say it will be well worth it because it will massively increase the perceived value of your freebie.

1. 2. Offer something of value

Even with a free offer you can’t get away with giving away crap. People are becoming increasingly choosy about what they will opt-in to receive, so make sure your squeeze page offers something which is actually worth having. Make sure it is high quality and if it’s unique to you then even better.

1. 3. Use an exciting title

As well as using the graphics to ‘sell’ your product, you can also increase conversions by giving your product an exciting title. Make it a complete formula or a system.  Use ‘buzz’ words which the top products in your niche use.

1. 4. Use something else other than ‘submit’

Don’t leave ‘submit’ as the text on your opt-in button. Changing it to something else such as ‘free access’ can greatly increase the number of people who join your list. I can’t prove why, but my own theory is that ‘submit’ is quite negative in that it makes people think they are joining a database (which of course they ARE) but what you need to do is refocus their attention on the fact that as soon as they’ve clicked the button they will be able to access their freebie.

As always please leave your comments below

I’m sure you’ll agree that it is pretty important to have a decent flow of regular, targeted traffic to your website. After all, there is little point in having a website if nobody ever sees it!

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but here are 5 strategies for generating website traffic which you might want to consider using:

1. Get Involved with Social Media

There is simply no getting away from social media tools such as Facebook or Twitter. The key to success with this method is to attract potential prospects to become your followers and then also tell them about your websites. You can use a tool such as http://bit.ly to track how many people click on your links (this is an excellent tool which provides real time statistics).

1. Submit Your Website to Directories

This probably isn’t going to drive much website traffic in itself but it does have excellent SEO benefits. By submitting your website url to site directories you will build up a number of backlinks to your website. This can help your ranking in the search engines (ie. How high up the search results your site appears when people search for specific keywords.)

1. Take Part in Giveaways

A giveaway is a special website, usually only live for a specific period of time (for example 30 days) where people come together to exchange freebies. Giveaways are a great strategy for generating website traffic. Simply create or source a good information product (for example a report) and then include links back to your websites within the content. You can also ask people to sign up to your mailing list to download the product, thus increasing your subscriber numbers at the same time.

1. Viral Marketing

This is one of those strategies for generating website traffic which is often overlooked, and yet it remains one of my favourites. The beauty of viral marketing is that it works on autopilot for years to come. The easiest way to launch a viral marketing campaign is by creating a free report (which includes links to your website within the content) and then distributing it to people online. Offer people giveaway/resell rights and encourage other marketers to sell or give away your report. The key to success with this method is making sure that the content you provide is valuable and making it as easy as possible for other marketers to pass your report onto their customers (e.g. give them a ready made sales page).

1. Paid Solo Ads and Adswaps

Fancy an instant surge of traffic to your website? Strike a deal with another marketer to email their mailing list about your product or site. If you have a list yourself you could do this as an adswap, or if you don’t have a list (or just don’t want to email it for whatever reason) you could pay for a solo ad. This is simply where you pay someone to email their list promoting your product. The most important thing to remember if you decide to use this strategy is that you need to be very careful about who you buy the solo ad from. Is their list responsive? Will their subscribers be interested in your offer? Find out the average click rate of the mailing list and ask about the type of subscribers they are. How was the list generated? Etc. Choose wisely and you can achieve excellent results. Get it wrong and you might be extremely disappointed!

Every website owner wants to increase the level of traffic their website receives. It doesn’t matter if you’re already achieving what you consider to be decent levels of traffic – there is always the desire (and usually the scope) for achieving much more.

If you want to increase your traffic levels, one of the first things you need to find out is where your current visitors are coming from and then concentrate some of your efforts on those sources. Let’s say, for example, that you are getting 40 visitors a day from a particular online forum by posting messages and including a link to your website in your signature. A good way of increasing your traffic would be to increase your activity on that forum and then find other similar forums which you could also post to. If you can find the sources which are working for you now, you know which things to spend time on. Over time you will start to see which methods give you the biggest return on the time you spend on them.

Remember however that not all traffic is equal. You always need targeted traffic because there is no use having 1,000 people a day visiting your site if none of them are remotely interested in what you are offering!

Think about the places where your target audience hangs out. If you are reasonably knowledgeable about your niche you’ll probably already know some of the most popular websites in your niche which you could potentially use to generate traffic.

Make sure you don’t overlook paid methods either. Would Google Adwords, for example, be a good way to get more traffic to your website? If you know what you are doing it can be an excellent source of traffic, although it is easy to loose money from it if you don’t. If you would like to trial it without taking much of a risk it’s worth looking out for the free credit vouchers which Google seems to give away on a regular basis to encourage new people to sign up for Adwords.

Traffic generation is all about finding your target audience. If you can do that and then give them a reason to check out your website you should draw visitors in.

Increasing the number of visitors your website receives doesn’t have to be expensive. Below are 5 ideas for increasing website traffic for free:

1.    Start a Blog

Blogs are a great way to boost traffic to your sites. Search engines love blogs because they contain regularly updated, current content (or at least they should do!) and thus they tend to rank well in search results. Blogs are also a great way of demonstrating your knowledge and if you can build up a loyal following they can be an excellent source of free traffic. You can place links within your blog posts or include banners or adverts down the side, on your resources page or ‘about’ page, etc.

2.    Recruit Affiliates

Imagine having an army of people all working to drive traffic to your website. Well, that’s exactly what affiliates can do for you!  Let other people do all the hard work for you and in return you pay them a commission when someone buys something from your website through their affiliate link.

3.    Start a Mailing List

Your own mailing list gives you the ability to drive traffic on tap and is one of the best ways of increasing website traffic for free. If you have a decent sized list you can simply send out a broadcast email and get an instant surge of clicks, or you can set up an autoresponder series and have it drive traffic for you on autopilot.

4.    Arrange Adswaps

Having a mailing list gives you access to this wonderful method. Adswaps have become increasingly popular in recent years and they can be a highly effective traffic generation strategy. Basically you find another marketer with a mailing list and arrange for them to tell their subscribers about your website in exchange for you emailing your subscribers about their website. If you can find someone suitable to swap with (they must be in a similar market) adswaps can provide an instant surge of traffic to your site. The drawback, of course, is that you need to regularly arrange adswaps in order to keep the traffic coming.

5.    Write and Submit Articles

Writing and submitting articles is one of the oldest traffic generation strategies. Basically you write unique articles and at the end you include a resources box with a link back to your website. Doing this generates you backlinks which will improve the ranking of your site, together with generating direct traffic from people who view your articles. Simply submit them to article sites such as EzineArticles.com or use them to create a content site.

As always please leave your comments and thoughts below.

Being able to see where your visitors come from, how long they spend on your website and what content they view etc gives you an absolutely invaluable insight into what is working (and what isn’t) in your business right now…

Let’s say you check your statistics and find that one particular traffic source (for example the Warrior forum) has sent 500 people to your website in the last two days. That’s a pretty hot source and it shows you that you should probably spend some more time promoting your site on the Warrior Forum. You also notice that from that traffic source 100 of them signed up to your mailing list on the homepage – this indicates that the traffic this website is sending to you is pretty targeted and that they are definitely interested in the content you are providing.

Here are the best free tools to monitor website traffic.

1. Google Analytics

This is probably the most well known tool of them all and it provides an excellent level of information. You simply insert some code onto your website (Google provides this for you and it is very easy to install) and from that the system tracks visitors to your site. You can get a general snapshot of your sites traffic, as well as more detailed information such as referring websites, visitor locations, time spent on your website, average page views, the top performing pages, etc (the list is almost endless.) Google Analytics also has the advantage that it links in nicely if you are using Google Adwords to promote your website.

1. StatCounter

This is another pretty well known and (in my opinion) excellent tool. StatCounter provides a similar level of information to monitor website traffic and has its own special features too. It works in a similar way to Analytics, so it is pretty simple to set up.

1. Your Hosting Account

Many hosting accounts come together with a tool already installed which will monitor traffic to your website. The advantage here is that it is all built into your hosting package and there is often no need to install any tracking code (useful if you feel especially daunted by the process of doing so.)

Whichever tool you use (and there are many others besides the ones I have mentioned) the data it provides you is very useful indeed. Look for overall trends and analyse how visitors interact with your website. Doing this on a regular basis can improve the performance of your website in a big way.

As always please leave your comments below as I love to hear your feedback.

A wealthy entrepreneur mindset is mainly about 2 things: keeping a positive attitude and achieving your goals. Let’s look at each in a bit more detail:

Keeping a Positive Attitude

If you engage in entrepreneurship without the utter conviction that you will succeed no matter the obstacles, you are likely to stumble at the first hurdle you come across.

It’s hard to keep a positive attitude in today’s world. Numerous businesses fold daily. People lose money. There is so much competition. The list is endless.

So how do you set yourself apart and make sure that all these happenings do not affect the way you think about your business and your life in general? Try these tips:

1) Get Rid of Limiting Beliefs About Money.

Money is a means of exchange. It’s a means to an end and not an end in itself. Some people have guilt feelings about money; they may think that there is not enough to go round, they feel guilty when they think of themselves having lots of it, or are jealous of people who are wealthy.

How can you get money if all your mental associations with it are negative? They say that lack begets lack. And lack, in this case, is negative thinking.

Be positive. Imagine yourself with lots of it, and using it to better yourself and others. You may have heard of the preacher who condemned wealth from the pulpit and at the end of the sermon asked his congregation to give generously. What kind of messages are you sending to your mind about money?

2) Keep Away from Negativity.

The single most negative source of negative feelings in the world today is the news. An hour of it and you’ll know every possible kind of bad and evil that has cut across the globe in the last 24 hours.

What does that do to your mind? It keeps you in a constant state of negativity. Your subconscious acts like a sponge – it absorbs whatever is out there indiscriminately.

Change your focus to more positive things. Surround yourself with people who are positive and who have the same goals as you. Associate with successes. Learn about the failures but shelve them away as lessons.

3) Stop Undermining Yourself.

It usually comes from the past, where it was put to you that you are no good at some things. Or maybe you tried something and failed. Again, shelve this stuff.

Every day is a new day. Use it for a new beginning, keeping in mind that great things have been done by people just like you. Imagine if the Wright brothers gave up when their first model plane crashed. They kept going and left a legacy.

4) Treat Yourself Well.

You deserve it. If you have read the famous story, “The Richest Man in Babylon”, you know the value in this. He kept away a portion of his income for himself. Every time. And it was not savings – no, savings imply an upcoming rainy day. He was simply paying himself for his efforts.

You may not stash away dollars like him, but use some of the income you make on yourself. Reward yourself and you’ll feel much better about your work. It doesn’t have to be $1000 worth of something. If there is something you really wish you had and its $10, go out and get it for yourself.

Achieving Goals

Goals are tricky, mainly because they have a way of disappearing into thin air. Many people at some point have set goals, and then wondered where they went as time went by.

There is an exact science to goal setting – that’s the part that most people don’t know as they go about setting goals. Here it is:

1) Adopt The Entrepreneurial Mindset.

Before you start setting goals, you need the mindset for it. And since you are setting entrepreneurial goals, you’ll need an entrepreneurial mindset.

You need to think like the best entrepreneur. Seek them out. Read their books and start to understand how they think. When you feel you are now in tune with their thinking, you are ready to start setting goals.

2) Write About Your New Mindset.

Take out some paper and start by writing about your mindset now. What advantages or capabilities would possessing this new mindset have? What would you do now that you have this entrepreneurial mindset?

Whatever you come up with is good, so long as it is in line with the mindset you have now adopted. This part requires total honesty. Don’t get lost in the details too – you can add those on later.

3) Write Down And Internalize Your Goals.

On another sheet of paper, outline in points where you want to be in 5 years. I have seen many creative and different ways of doing this. I have seen people who cut out an image of their dream house and paste it close to the written goal.

Whatever works to help you believe and do what is needed, use it.  Nothing is out of this world. If you can conceive it and believe it, you can achieve it.

4) List Down The Steps.

Take each goal and break it down into what you need to do to achieve it. What actual steps do you need to follow to achieve a great business, for instance? List them.

After you break it down, it starts to look easier. Not easy enough yet? Break it down further into bite sizes – what you know you can do in step by step fashion to get there.

5) Attach a Timeline to Each Goal.

It doesn’t have to be a specific date. A month is good enough. Done? Paste it on your fridge, on your office board or wherever you see it all the time. And then commit to it. Focus and patience are the driving factors to goal achievement.

You may not achieve each goal in the time that you have set against it, but that doesn’t mean that you have failed. Maybe a little re-organization of the goal is all you need. Remember that entrepreneurship is a mindset. Some people are born with it as a gift, but you can develop it and get it to work for you.

Work from home scams are a sad fact of life. A lot of people blame them on the internet, but the truth is that these scams have certainly been around as long as the post office, and probably longer. They used to be run by mail, out of a post office box, with advertising in newspapers, magazines, bulletin boards or leaflets through your door.

These days, the advertisements often arrive in the form of email. Why? Because it’s cheap. In fact, it’s virtually free. There are no direct mailing costs. The spammer (it’s usually spam) has to pay for a web server to send the email from, but this does not cost very much. Still, the ads themselves are often the same old thing that they always were.

1. The Stuffing Envelopes Scam

Filling and addressing envelopes for direct advertising was something that used to be outsourced to homeworkers decades ago, before the invention of word processing and mass mailout machines. These days, it is virtually all done by mailing companies. They can print addresses to look like handwriting if that is what the advertiser wants, and do thousands of envelopes fast and cheaply.

If you see an advertisement telling you to send $10 to find out how to make money by stuffing envelopes, it will probably be a scam. All you will receive will be a letter telling you to put up ads in your local area to have people send you $10 to find out how to make money by stuffing envelopes, so that you can send them the same letter. That is if anybody even replies.

2. The Pyramid Scheme Scam

Pyramid schemes are based around the idea that you pay a sum of money, say $10, then recruit 10 people who pay you, so you make $90. For example you have probably seen a chain letter or email that tells you to send a certain amount to the person at the top of a list, then add your name to the bottom of the list and send the letter on to everybody that you know. That is a pyramid scheme.

Pyramid schemes are illegal. They are different from multi level marketing programs, where you may again aim to recruit a certain number of customers but they are buying a product. If people are buying a product or service that is worth the money, it’s generally OK. If they are just handing over money for nothing, it’s an illegal scam.

3. The Computer Software Scam

This is an updated version of the old work from home scams where you would be sold expensive equipment that would enable you to do some highly skilled job that you were told was in high demand.

For example, when doctors began having to submit claims electronically in the USA, a demand grew up for people to do that for them. They didn’t want to have to buy the special software themselves and then have their skilled nursing staff waste time entering data.

So companies that made this type of software, began marketing it as something that you could do at home. ‘Just spend $500 on our software, train yourself in 24 hours and start making money entering data for doctors!’ said the ads.

A lot of people fell for it, bought the software and then found they had no clients. The doctors were all giving their business to large, reputable data entry companies. They didn’t want random home workers to have access to their patients’ confidential records. The aspiring home workers were out $500 and a lot of wasted time.

Whenever you see an ad that says ‘Buy this and then make $x by using it’, be suspicious. Is there really a demand for the skills that you will have? If not, it could be one of the many work from home scams.

As always please leave your comments below:

This is part 2 of this article on auto-blogging.

If you haven’t read part 1 yet you can read it at the link below.

Part 1 – Simple Steps for Setting an Auto Blog

Creating your site is the most important step in autoblogiing. Your site will contain your blogs and visitors will read the contents of your site. Depending on the contents of your site, you can generate traffic and attract more visitors. The uniqueness of articles, use of correct keywords, search engine optimization and domain name and hosting will either make or break your initial efforts. To create successfully a site, here are some factors to consider.

Choose a Niche

Choosing a profitable and personally interesting niche is quite difficult. From the infinite sites discussing the same niche, you have to make yours stand out. Characteristics of an ideal niche include:

1.     Personal interest

It is extremely vital to choose a niche genuinely interests you. If you have passion for the topic, sustaining the site is easier not to mention the enjoyment that it brings about.

2.     Networking foundation

A stable site has to have networks. Pick a niche where you have active network participation. Online forums where you contribute continuously are good options.

3.     Moderate to high search volume.

Choose a niche that has a high search result in the search engine. Determine the number of people searching for the topic. Choose topics belonging to the top searches of online visitors.

4.     Potential for Monetization.

If you wish to generate money from autoblogging, determine the profitability of the topic by knowing what products or articles are selling best in the internet market. Once you have an idea on the top selling products or articles, then you can align your niche with them.

Keyword Research

Keyword research is a practice of professionals to determine the actual search terms that people enter when doing online search. For your to optimize the search engine, here are some criteria when choosing your keywords.

1.      Look for “long-tail” keywords

When you have the keyword in mind, build a list of all possible combinations. You can enter your main keywords in the online keyword suggestions to obtain all possible combinations. This ensures that you cover the keywords of your potential clients.

2.      Find keyword with 1000 searches a month

Use the keyword obtaining more searches from online searching. You can include this keywords in your niche.

3.      Search from the point-of-view of potential customers

When choosing the keywords for your niche, consider the what runs in the mind of your customers.

Create Unique Content

Your site must contain unique and relevant topics. The content should ideally contain 300 to 400 words and keep it informative and relevant to your niche. Unique articles will satisfy your vistors and make them coming back.

Build Your Blog

Using either HTML editor or WordPress, you can start creating your website. Some websites even offer free HTML editors where you can set up your blog site. Of the two, bloggers prefer wordpress as it has more features for bloggers to enjoy.

Use of Auto blog Software

With the auto blog software, you can automatically update and post your articles. The system automates all previously tedious tasks like article writing, updating and posting.

This is part 2 of this article on auto-blogging.

If you haven’t read part 1 yet you can read it at the link below.

Part 1 – Simple Steps for Setting an Auto Blog

As always leave your comments below

Introduction To Auto Blogging

Blogging is one of the hottest craze in the internet today. People use blogs to interact with people using social forums and to make money online. The insufficient time of many bloggers, the need to update constantly their websites with articles and constant maintenance of the blog are some of the problems that bloggers encounter. Due to these foreseen crises, many bloggers consider autoblogging as the key to their quandary. This mini-course has 5 sections that will teach you how to set up an auto blog that will help you generate income.

1. I. Understanding Autoblogging
2. II. Creating Your Site
3. III. Generating Traffic
4. IV. Making Money Online
5. V. Promoting your Auto blog

Understanding Auto blogging

Auto blogging is the choice of bloggers who lack time to blog everyday, explore new ideas and market their articles. Most of all, it is the option of those who fancy earning six figures annually. As more and more people earn money online, auto blogging is in demand. However, before you start creating your site for your blogs, is best to understand auto blogging.

Definition of Auto blogging

Auto blogging uses automated ways for blogging. Because of automation, you do not need go through the usual way of writing the contents or posting the articles manually. With auto blogging, you can automate the contents of your articles and link them for your blogs.

Benefits of Auto blogging

1. Get your work done

It only takes a few hours to set up an auto blog. When you follow the step-by-step procedures, you can leave your blog on its own and it automatically updates itself.

2. An Up to dated blog

For a blog to get constant traffic, an up to date site is crucial. If you do not constantly update your blog, you will be out of the search engine. The heart of blogging is the visitor who reads your articles. Without an updated blog, you will soon lose visitors to your site and this is not healthy for your blogs. However, constant and regular writing can take much of your time. With auto blogging, you become worry-free because it automatically updates your site.

3. Income generating

Writing is the passion of many bloggers. But nothing is more rewarding than getting income from your passion. With your hobby and interest, you can generate money online. Although for starters the earning is not much, it is still gratifying knowing that you earn by simply posting your articles. As you progress with blogging, an auto blog helps you create hundreds to thousands of blogs. The more blogs you create, the higher your earnings will be.

4. Maintenance-free site

Once you set up your auto blogging, you do not need to visit constantly the site except to check if everything is working well. You can let your computer do all the work. Take away the hassle and enjoy other things that interest you.

Tools for Auto blogging

1. Auto Plug in

Using software, you can leave your site and it will still produce innumerable articles and update your site

2. RSS feed aggregator

Article posting and data feed posting need the RSS feed aggregator to work.

3. Social Bookmarking Sites

Using famous social bookmarking sites, your blogs get better ranks in the search engine results.

4. Virtual Private Seller

A Virtual Private Server handles your domains and individual accounts for each of your blogs.

I hope you have enjoyed this introduction to auto blogging

Look out for part 2 of auto blogging in the next few days.

As always please leave your thoughts and comments below.