There is a surprising response to the following free advertising tactics that could almost be relied on for all the traffic to your site. You will be amazed at the traffic response of highly qualified prospects you will receive to your site once you implement the free tactics below.

#1 Promote Your Site Through Email Signature

Many people overlook this great opportunity to promote their site. Most people have multiple email accounts. Of course one email account is devoted to the website you wish to promote, but what are the other email accounts devoted to? Is there an opportunity to promote your site to a new audience?

For example, having run a high volume eBay store with hundreds of emails per week from customers and prospects, I found this the perfect opportunity to add a brief plug for my website to my signature to help drive traffic to my site for free.

#2 Commenting On Forums

There is a grey area on what is allowed and what is not allowed on forum sites. As a rule, people do not like spammers, but if you can offer an answer to someone’s question then sign your name with your website, there is no rule against that. Just having your website on the forum makes people curious especially since you already gained credibility by answering their question.

#3 SEO Strategies

There is a whole lot more to SEO strategies than I can get into in this article, but learning about how to get your site ranked at the top of a search engine is incredibly powerful. Ranking high is free and you end up with more hits than Google Adwords! It can take some time to get your website ranked high in the search engines under keywords relating to your site so this would be a process to start now and it will pay off in a few months, it is well worth the effort though for the free advertising.

#4 Publishing Articles In Ezines

Another powerful way to drive traffic to your site is through articles that are related to your website, that are informational, and that plug your website or product. Many of these articles can be published for free if they are approved by the editors of the ezine. It is well worth putting the word out there about your site through articles.

#5 MySpace

Again, this is another one of those grey areas. You can easily be shut down off myspace if people complain that you are a spammer. What you need to do is build a list of friends and gain credibility by sending out messages that are funny or interesting. Then throw in a few promoting your site. If people start complaining, reevaluate how you are wording your messages. Another note is that people on myspace get easily annoyed by people who are posting all the time so be sure to only post a few times per month at the maximum.

#6 Opt-In Email List

This is by far the best form of free advertising out there. These people have chosen to hear from you, but you need to make sure you do not take advantage of their time. Do not email them everyday! Do not email them every week unless you are extremely interesting and not trying to sell them with every line in the message. Every other week to once a month is a good rule to follow.

Give out some good valuable information without constantly plugging your product. If people feel they are not benefiting from your emails, the will discontinue their membership or simple start deleting them without even opening the emails. If you gain credibility with your email list, then you will get to the point that when you do plug a product they will know it is worthwhile and you will see the sales pour in.

Good luck promoting your site for FREE!

Ben Stevens

Online Business Expert

OnlineInstantProfits.com

© Online Instant Profits

About the author:
Ben Stevens is a successful online entrepreneur who started out making a living on eBay and has expanded into other markets including investing, internet marketing, and product sales online making him a fortune. Ben enjoys sharing how he got to where he is today with other visionaries like himself so they can attain the same level of income. OnlineInstantProfits.com

From the Cafepress Message Boards:

By: DonnaCP

The October 15 maintenance was the last (and largest) leg of the site infrastructure upgrade designed to maximize our site stability and strength for the holiday season.

We are done with all the major hardware/software upgrades but we are still ironing out a few nagging bugs which cause slowness at peak hours of the day. A vendor supported portion of the project had bugs and the vendor has now sent representatives to CafePress to resolve the issue. They are on site now.

We are on track to manage the system upgrade project and resolve all associated issues by November 1st as we had originally announced.

We will continue to keep you posted on our progress, and thank you again, for all of your patience.”

Some sites are by their nature broad in scope. But even the most broad shops will run into situations where a design just does not “fit”. If this happens don’t be affraid to start a second site dedicated to your new designs.

For example, designs meant for skateborders would not make a good addition to your existing site with designs for expecant mothers.

J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

“Cardinal T-shirt – Now Available!
The Cardinal T-shirt is online! Cardinal is a new color addition under the product “Dark T-shirt”, so no need to add it to your shop. You can also deselect this color or separate the Cardinal T-shirt and Black T-shirt into two products.”

- Cafepress

Color additions to existing products:
- White Hoodie
- White Sweatshirt
- Pink, Baby Blue Infant T-shirt
- Pink, Baby Blue Infant Creeper
All new products:
- Oversized Wall Calendar
· Each page Measure 17” x 11”, Measures 17” x 22” when hung on wall
· Full bleed dynamic color
· 100 lb cover weight high gloss paper, wire-o bound
· January 2007 – December 2007, 2008 preview, US holidays marked

- Vertical Wall Calendar
· Each page Measure 11” x 17”, calendar image measures 11” x 11”, cover image measures 11” x 17”
· Full bleed dynamic color
· 10pt heavyweight high gloss paper, wire-o bound
· January 2007 – December 2007, US holidays marked
===========================================

J.J. Jackson is President of Land of the Free Studios, Inc. and Cafepress “Top Shopkeeper”. He has been selling t-shirts on-line since 2004 and is the owner of the T-Shirt Entrepreneur, a site dedicated to helping people get involved in the T-shirt Economy. He is also the owner of Funny When Wet T-shirts, American Infidel Tshirts as well as many other online t-shirt and gift stores.

1) Keyword tag – A keyword tag is for keywords, but not for any keywords. You can’t just stuff this tag with keywords that your entire site is related to. The tags should reflect keywords only on that particular page; not the entire site and not every keyword you think your site might be searched on. Also, you should have no more then 20 words in the tag. You should not repeat any word more than 3 times. If you sell tickets, for example, don’t write: Broadway tickets, circus tickets, hockey tickets, boxing tickets and so on. Do use Broadway, circus, hockey, boxing, tickets and so on.

2) Abstract tag – It is sometimes used as a replacement for or combined with a description tag. However, more and more people are using these to stuff keywords. Search engines like Google are interested in what is on the page. More specifically, what visitors can view. In my opinion, the abstract tag has no place on a site.

3) Description Tag – The whole point behind this tag is to describe what the “page” is about. Keywords related to the page should be implemented as well. The limit on words should be 20 – 25. I see many website owners stuffing this tag with keywords, or having a description that is entirely too lengthy. Stay within these guidelines and you will be fine.

4) Title tag – This, to me, is the most important tag. This is the first tag the search engine reads. It tells the search engine what the” page” is about. Don’t put your web address here. Do not add your company name in the beginning of this tag either. It should not exceed 60 characters.

5) Content- If you notice, I have been commenting on relevancy to the “page”, not your overall site. Each page has it’s own keywords. Tag the title tag, description and keyword tags. All of these keywords should be the same. Add them to your content as well. Now your page should be fairly well optimized.

Why do sites fall short? Simple, content is not optimized. Search engines are, for the most part, pretty basic. You type in a search term and it retrieves sites containing those terms while also taking a few other factors into account. So, if your site doesn’t have these terms, how will you be found? You won’t. Over do it with keywords and you will experience the same result, but for different reasons. Sometimes reading everything about SEO can be bad. Trying too many tricks, tips or methods is like too many cooks spoiling the soup. In the end they can do more bad than good. These are very basic rules that should be followed by all. In, doubt? Always consult or hire an SEO professional.

Author:
For Affordable SEO, SEM, website design and more visit Joe’s site. To read the latest SEO News visit his blog.Or, read articles on SEO.

Terms: Articles may be reprinted provided content is not edited and links are kept live
Source: www.articledepot.co.uk

Part of any successful business is building a relationship with your network and any prospective clients. A newsletter can be a useful marketing tool for keeping in touch with them. Reminding them of who you are and what you do and an opportunity to provide added value, let them know about your services and offers.

1. Purpose. Firstly – What’s it’s purpose? Who is your audience? Are you planning to gain clients, grow your reputation or both?

2. Be authentic, be yourself – this will distinguish you from all the other 1000s of newsletters out there.

3. Jotting down ideas for potential topics. Start a notebook, open up a file for ideas as you come up with them or come across something you think might be useful.

4. Sign up to other people’s newsletters. Subscribe to people or businesses newsletters that you know or respect and see how they do it. They vary a great deal in content, quality, format and frequency. See what you like and dislike, what would work for you?

5. Think of a key topic and start writing. Start with whatever comes to mind. Maybe leave it a day or so then do some more. Work on it until you’re reasonably happy but don’t expect perfection. It’s going to evolve and change over time as your business grows so the important thing is to get it out there!

6. Set yourself a deadline. Stick to it and then get it posted. Decide on a frequency and plan time to write it on a weekly/monthly basis or whatever frequency you feel comfortable with. Twice a month seems to be the recommended frequency for keeping you fresh in people’s minds but might seem too much. A longer newsletter once a month or quarterly may be better for your type of business and your potential audience.

7. Format and layout. Although I cut and paste mine from Word some email browsers convert it to text, which can mess up the formatting so keep it simple. Avoid tables, columns and large images. Formatting and automation becomes more important as your distribution list grows. Once you’re happy with the layout create a template that you can re-use each time.

8. Avoiding the spam filters. Filters look for certain words within the email title and content and filter out suspect emails as spam. Some subscribers may not even realise that your email isn’t reaching them. Lots of images and different fonts styles and sizes will also affect filters. Keep it simple. Use a utility like Spam Assassin to check the header and text of your newsletter to avoid it being filtered out by some ISPs spam filters.

9. Contact Information. Always include your contact information and your brief business message or tagline – what’s your niche, who are your clients? Provide a link to your website.

10. Subscribe/unsubscribe options. I’ve had people forward my newsletters so give new subscribers a way to contact you and get added for the next one. Confirm with new subscribers that you have added them. Known as double opt-in and available through some auto responders. Always give people the option to unsubscribe from your newsletter. This is a legal requirement in some countries and is good practice.

11. Your distribution. Now you’ve written it, who are you going to send it to? Use your current address book – friends, family, colleagues, people you’ve met networking. It’s grown as my contact database has grown. Capture people’s email addresses when they visit your website. If you make a new contact – send them your newsletter as an example of who you are and what you do and invite them to subscribe.

Important: Don’t include the address list in the To: field. Use the Bcc list instead. This stops your readers seeing everyone else’s email address and possibly getting into the hands of spammers!

12. Test. Send it to a couple of friends to test it out – they can give you feedback on it. Also send it to yourself if you
have various email accounts with different providers to see that they get through the filters OK and any formatting comes across OK.

You can add auto responder services as you go and increase the frequency – apparently monthly is too little, some people recommend twice a month or even weekly. I receive some that are 2-3 times a week (too much in my opinion).

Additional tips:

Best day to send.

Business: Tuesday to Thursday. Monday people tend to be dealing with emails after the weekend. On Friday most people want to leave early and clear their desks at the end of the week so will tend to ignore less important emails.

Personal: People are more likely to read their emails on Friday to Sunday. However, people may also check personal emails when at home so it can be harder to target them specifically.

Best time to send.

Around lunchtime’s are best avoiding the morning rush of emails and the end of the day when people are less likely to read them before they leave the office.

The most important thing is to get started.

Copyright 2006: Clare Evans

About the author:
Clare writes on several topics to help busy, stressed individuals and small business owners organize their lives
more effectively.

Get her free monthly newsletter at www.clareevans.co.uk and
receive free Weekly Time Tips on managing your time.

First of all, getting started on a concrete objective tends to diminish some of the excitement. When we sit and daydream about what we hope to achieve with a given venture, we are able to tap into a wonderfully abstract sense of unlimited potential. But a goal that has been put to paper, or a project that has been started represents a more grounded, and often not-so-sexy reality that somehow has less appeal than the fantasy version. Such is life.

I usually have a great time in the first concept stages of a new e-book, for example. I often find myself in the car with the radio on, thinking about how great it’s going to be to help thousands of struggling net marketers get a grip on their direction. It’s always a nice feeling to just imagine the kind of success I will achieve with a new project. How many copies might I sell, and how many emails will I get from people who just loved the book and really benefited from reading it?

Then suddenly, the time comes to sit down at my desk and draw up an outline for the actual structure of the project. (Awwww shoot.)

It’s almost always more fun to think about all the “what-ifs” than it is to actually roll up our sleeves and get to work. But the choice is simple:

We can drift through la-la land with no tangible direction and lose money until we go broke. Or we can buckle down, make some plans, then take action on those plans and realize a profit.

Another reason many people avoid the process of taking direct action is the simple fact that it can be scary business. It takes a lot of nerve to commit to a course of action and keep working toward your objective come hell or high water.

But the thing to remember is your plans can always be changed down the road. A goal simply represents the focusing of your intention on a specific objective, and is not some rigid, unforgiving contract that is chiseled in stone.

Mike Filsaime once told me that successful people are able to follow their intuition and make decisions quickly. The direction of these decisions can then be changed appropriately as the need arises.

Unsuccessful people, on the other had, have the habit of taking forever to commit to decisive action, but are then likely to change their direction very quickly. In essence, these folks are afraid to act, and then when they finally work up the nerve to make a decision, they bail out if things don’t work out for them in the first ten minutes.

Decide right now to trust your intuition and plot a course for your future without fear or hesitation. Have confidence in your ability to choose your own destiny, and great things will be in store for you.
Author:

Tim Whiston: Tim Whiston is a full-time entrepreneur and Internet marketer. He provides design and marketing services, and has published a number of popular e-books. Check out his Internet Marketing Course to learn more. http://www.timwhiston.com/course.php

Terms: Articles may be reprinted provided content is not edited and links are kept live

Source: www.articledepot.co.uk