Marketing your Business through Blogs and Articles

Marketing your Business through Blogs and Articles

Guest Blogger, Corrie Petersen

Finding ways to put your business in front of your target market can be a challenge at times. One thing to remember is that you need to be consistent in what you do. Studies show you need to put yourself in front of your target market five to seven times before they will consider looking at what you offer.

There are several ways to keep your business in front of your target market on a regular basis. One way to do this is through blog posting. Running a blog is a great way to help your target market through tips, suggestions, and anything else that they may benefit from them.

One thing you need to do is add a subscription box to your blog and add an RSS feed to it. The subscription box will give your readers the ability to receive updates via their email. The RSS feed will help with blog submissions and you can use it with your social networking sites. Both of which are valuable tools for your business.

Another way you can keep your business in front of your target market regularly is to use article marketing. Article marketing is where you write articles and you submit them to article directories. Your articles need to be full of great content and you want them to be helpful to your readers.

You can use the articles as content on your blog or you can rewrite your blog posts and turn them into articles. Either way will work and will help you increase the content on the other.

Blog posting and Article marketing are two of the many ways that you can keep your business in front of your target market and increase your traffic. You should try to post on your blog three to four times a week and you should write and submit one to two articles a week. This will help you keep your target market aware of what you are doing and you will constantly be in front of them.

Corrie Petersen runs a successful Virtual Assistant business. She enjoys helping others
reach their goals and dreams. Check out her website at www.virtualfreedom4you.com

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20 Ideas for Budget Marketing

20 Ideas for Budget Marketing

Here are 20 ideas for marketing on a budget.  These ideas won’t cost you much, but will definitely yield some positive results if you stick with it.  Test and see which ones bring your the best results.

1.  Starting Your Own Blog

Blogs can give you instant credibility and allow readers to get a lot of information about your product or opportunity by reading your blog posts. The more popular and established your blog gets, the better. You can start with a free blog hosted by Wordpress and Blogger, but you will have much more control if you host your own blog on your own domain name.  Personally, I suggest using Wordpress software provided by most hosting companies.

TIP: You can get FREE Blog Installation Here

2.  Commenting on Blogs

Take time to comment on blogs related to your own niche to draw relevant traffic to your own site.  Check out these two directories: dofollowdirectory.com and dofollowblogs.com for some blogs that can help you create some quality backlinks to your site.

3.  Becoming a Guest Blogger

Blogging on another blog related to your niche can draw in more targeted traffic to your site.  Look for opportunities within your own social networks.  You can even offer to do an exchange with another blogger by allowing them to be a guest on your blog.

Tip: Blog Energizer is a great source for finding opportunities to become a guest blogger.

4.  Sharing Your Articles and Content

You can allow your visitors to use some of your blog posts for free content if they provide a link back to your blog.

Tip: You can get free backlinks to your site by submitting your articles (with your own links) to blog owners who are seeking free content. Click here to sign up for Free Traffic System.

5. Participating in Valuable Link Exchanges

Link exchanges are not as popular as they used to be but can still be worth your time if you find some quality websites which would be willing to exchange a link with you.

Tip: My best tip here is not to give your traffic away on your homepage.  Create a “resource page” or “partner page” to add your exchanged links.

6.  Marketing with Articles

Does article marketing really work? Well you’re reading this one aren’t you. Free online article directories allow you to post your articles easily and this type of marketing makes you an instant expert. You can write your own articles like many do or buy some private label rights articles.

Tip: Here’s 50 Article Submission Sites to get you started! (pdf)

7.  Marketing with Videos
Video marketing is one of the most popular ways to market online and for good reason, it’s extremely effective. There are countless free video uploading sites online.   The most popular is Youtube but there are numerous others that are definitely worth your time and energy.

Tip: Read one of MommyRevenue’s latest blog post on “How to Create Viral Videos on YouTube”

8. Participating in Forums Related to Your Niche

Want to talk to other people who are interested in making money from home? If so forum marketing is for you. Along with talking to potential prospects, you can also get a wealth of information and learn from other successful online marketers. The best part of forum marketing is it’s free and there are a ton of them out there so you won’t be limited.

Tip: The best tip I can suggest here is to choose forums related to your niche and be sure to utilize your signature profile to add your link if allowed. Don’t just post ads.  Get involved and be helpful. Here’s a free directory of forums to help you find forums in your own niche

9. Tweeting on Twitter

Twitter allows you to keep up with your fans and followers by posting different status updates whenever you want and once again it’s free!  I just recently joined Twitter myself and have found it a great marketing tool…and as a bonus it’s super fun once you get started!  In fact, it can become quite addictive.

Tip: Grab your free report from MommyRevenue, “Truth About Twitter Traffic” (pdf)

10. Taking Advantage of Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking allows you to “bookmark” your favorite pages for others to see and take notice. By bookmarking your websites, articles, blog, videos and more you’ll get a lot more attention for your business and can get indexed in search engines much faster.

Tip: Here’s a list of the 20 Largest Social Bookmarking Sites

11. Taking Advantage of Facebook

Facebook is one of the most popular websites online so it only makes sense this could be a useful tool for marketing on budget. There are many groups on Facebook devoted to making money online.  Join some and start chatting!

12. Taking Advantage of Myspace

Home based business owners have another marketing opportunity at Myspace, the highly-trafficked social network.

13. Creating Free Web Pages at Squidoo & Hubpages

By creating squidoo lenses or hubpages you can instantly get the word out about your website to these thriving communities and the rest of the web. Want to make the most of your Squidoo lens? Choose some keywords based on small niches as possible and it will get you noticed more and indexed in Google faster!  For instance, if you sell makeup, create some lenses on specific items.  Perhaps create one on helpful tips for applying eyeshadow, etc.

Tip: Use this method to gain some backlinks to your site, but don’t depend on Squidoo and Hubpages alone for marketing.  It’s wise to have your own main website to market your products and services.  Click here to start your first Squidoo Lens!

14. Answering Questions at Yahoo Answers

You can’t abuse it, but Yahoo answers can be a great place to find people who are frustrated with their job and ready to start working from home. There is a limit to how many times you can post per day and if you come off as a spammer you’ll get blocked but when used in moderation it’s awesome!

15. Submitting your Site to Directories

This is really worth your time! It will help you increase the pagerank of your site and allow you to have permanent backlinks to your site. There are many directories that allow free submission. Check out Directory Critic to start submitting to directories yourself.

Tip: If you hate the tedious task of filling in submission forms, use the service that I’ve used many times at Directory Maximizer, which will allow you to submit your website to numerous directories at very little cost.

16.  Building Your Own List (Email Marketing)

Most knowledgeable marketers realize that you may not get the sale right away. This is why list building can be very important.

You can offer your visitors a free report, ebook or a free discount code on available products if they sign up for your email list. Email your list once a week or at least once a month with some valuable tips and helpful information and they will become your loyal fans. You will then be able to sell future products to your list as long as you treat them with respect. In other words, don’t bombard them with sales pitches all the time. People very rarely tolerate this and consider it spam!

A free useful tool to start building your list is Feedblitz.com. You can also include your rss feed from your blog which will send automatic news updates from your blog to your subscribers.

Tip: Right now Rapid Response Bot is offering a discount on their upgraded version, but you can scroll down to the bottom and sign up for a FREE Account to manage your first 500 subscribers!  *Autoresponders make it easy to deliver your download links or ecourse automatically to your subscribers.

17.   Starting Your Own Affiliate Program.

An affiliate program is simply a method of sharing the revenue with your affiliates.  You give them a commission for sales from visitors that they send your way. With this setup, you don’t have to pay for incoming traffic.

Sharing commission is a wise option because it’s like having your own marketing team.  Paydotcom.com allows you to sell your first product free and you can easily set up your first affiliate program.  There are also some great software programs out there that will allow you to set up an affiliate program on your own domain name.

Tip: The best tip I have here is that you need to learn a little bit about affiliate marketing and offer your affiliates some training via articles or a report.   You also need to provide them with some marketing graphics and articles.  *SimpleAffiliateTraining has done the work in helping to train your affiliates if you want to take a peek.

18.  Upselling on your Thank You Pages and your 404 Pages

Don’t waste any space or opportunities.  Take advantage of every page on your site!

Tip: Sign up for this free Bonus and Upsell Management System at My Bonus Products.

19.  Utilizing Viral Marketing Tactics

Giving away free stuff is a great way to get people talking about your site.  I suggest you don’t go overboard with this.  Use a “good balance” of giving away some freebies to build interest.

Some freebie possibilities are:

Ebooks, Ecourses, Videos, Templates, Graphics, Software, Reports, Teleseminars, Web Conferences, Blog Giveaways for one of your products or services, etc.

Tip: Use this resource to give away useful software that has your own links to your site to build your list and bring in extra traffic. IMBuzzSoftware.

20.  Using Free Ad Sites to Gain Leads
Craigslist and Backpage are two popular ones.  You have to post in the right areas otherwise your ads will get deleted especially on Craigslist. That means posting in the small business section and not under “jobs”.

Free classified sites can help you get word out about your business, but don’t expect immediate sales from these ads. Instead, try offering some free information such as a free report to gather some leads.

Tip: The best tip I can offer you here is not to waste a lot of extra time on free ads.  There are much better methods to gain more traffic to your site.  Click Here to Get a Free Basic Listing at Mommy Revenue Classifieds.

To summarize my blog post here, I want to add that budget marketing is very worthwhile.  Just because it’s free or low cost doesn’t mean that it can’t produce great results.  This list is by no means the only marketing methods worth considering.  Please share below any marketing tips that you have utilized and reaped some worthwhile benefits.

Use this content on your blog or newsletter by including my bio info below:

Rhonda White helps Work at Home Moms Learn to Market their Home Business.
Grab your FREE issue of “Mom’s Internet Marketing Advisor” at  MommyRevenue.com

Ever Wonder What’s Wrong with Your Adsense Income?

Ever Wonder What’s Wrong with Your Adsense Income?

I know you’ve heard a lot of hype among internet marketers about the income potential of Google’s Adsense program.  While Adsense will not likely make anyone a millionaire overnight, the program does bring the potential for a healthy passive income. 

Here’s What’s Wrong with the Average Adsense User…

>> Simply putting Adsense on a website will not likely generate much income at all, but… 

Here’s Two Main Factors to Increase Your Google Adsense Income:

• Increase the number of visitors to your website.  Sales has been called a numbers game, because the larger the pool of potential prospects, the greater the chance that a sale will be made.  So it is with internet marketing.  Adsense won’t work as a income generator unless there is significant traffic to the website.

Tip: Webmasters can make Adsense income more successful by focusing on attracting more visitors to their sites.  There are several ways to accomplish this:

1. Improving website content is critical, as visitors are more likely to view the site (and return for future visits) when it holds quality material. 

2. Market to the right people, and take every opportunity to give more exposure to your website URL, such as adding it to your signature line in your email, profiles, forum signatures, etc. 

3.  Develop a mailing list, create a newsletter, offer a free item to encourage sign-ups, and publish a form on the website that allows visitors to request more information.  This is all free advertising, which keeps viewers aware of your website and encourages them to repeat their visits to your site.  The more you optimize this method, the faster traffic will increase.

• Appeal of Adsense ads.  Just as some print ads are more effective than others, so it is with website ads.  Visitors won’t bother clicking if the ad holds no appeal due to its appearance or location.

Tip: Adsense allows webmasters to change the size, shape, and color of ads to easily blend in with their sites. 

1.  Make ads blend with the style and appearance of the website, so that ads and content flow together smoothly.  Then, track the click thru rate on each new layout to determine which ones work best. 

2.  Pay attention to position of the ads.  Most clicks are received by ads near the top of the website and near the left edge of the page.  Ads that are surrounded by white space also receive more clicks than those that are crowded together.

To sum it all up:  Google’s Adsense on a site with fair traffic is usually sufficient income to cover hosting costs and other expenses associated with websites.  Making your adsense income grow will require knowledge, effort, and patience.  Webmasters who earn the most income from adsense are those who take the time to study trends and developments, test different approaches, track their results, and continue to develop their websites and the way they use Adsense.  The potential rewards make the effort worthwhile.

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