No Nonsense Marketing From Doug Prentice

Among the many ways to get free web traffic one of the easiest and most straightforward must be using Blog Carnivals. A Blog Carnival is where someone decides to compile a selection of blog postings all related to one topic that he/she has chosen. It’s a bit like a magazine where you have an editor (the organiser), contributors (you plus other bloggers) and an audience (readers). The beauty of a good Blog Carnival is that it will give the readers a selection of articles that they will find interesting and stimulating.

The benefit for you as a blogger is that readers will see at least a straight link to your blog posting or at best a synopsis of your posting plus your links. Readers who click on your link will be taken directly to the blog entry you have submitted. While they’re on your blog you hope that they either sign up for your blog or click on an affiliate link or product you have for sale.

So, how do you go about it? There are a variety of blog carnival sites but I’d suggest the best place to start is at blogcarnival.com. On this site you’ll find an enormous range of different blog carnival topics and there are sure to be some that match in with your own niche.
Once you land on the Blog Carnival home page start off by having a look at both About Blog Carnival and Frequently Asked Questions. These will supply with info that can save you a lot of time. This is what you see.

1) Click on the Submit button on the right hand side near the top of the page. You will then be taken to the Submit an Article Page.
2) Click on Carnival and an alphabetical drop down list of carnivals will appear.

List of Blog Carnivals

3) Make a note of any carnival that applies to your niche
4) Find a good blog posting of yours that will be applicable to some or all of the carnivals you’ve noted. By a good posting, I mean one that is a self contained item. Not a response to another topic and certainly not one that’s full of selling content. It’s got to be interesting and stimulating and be able to be read as a stand alone piece.
5) Select the blog carnival your posting is good for, and complete the other boxes. In the Permalink URL box submit the URL that goes straight to this specific posting. Enter your name, your email address, choose the category most appropriate to your posting and add any comments you may have.

Then just fill in the CAPTCHA code and submit.

Blog Carnival Submission Page

6) Repeat this process for as many postings or blog carnivals you have that are appropriate.

You’ll be notified if your submission has been successful. The success rate you get will depend entirely on the quality and suitability of your submission.

So keep records on what works and what doesn’t work to improve your success rate.

Now it’s down to you to do the work – it’s not rocket science – unless that’s your niche.

If you’re a beginner you’re probably wondering just how you get visitors to your website.  By this time you’ve probably spent a good bit of cash and don’t want to spend a whole lot more to use adwords or similar. But help is not far away – what you need to know is how to get free web traffic

There are a variety of methods to get free web traffic to your site but all will require some effort on the your part. One such method is the use of article marketing where you write stimulating pieces full of  information useful to others. You then have these articles published via a directory such as Ezine Articles and hope that people click through to your site and that the article is picked up by other publishers/webmasters and more people discover you and your site.

As in all things in life it’s never as simple as it appears although if you follow some simple rules you can make this strategy pretty effective. For proof of this have a look at the experts listed by location in ezinearticles.com for your country and ask yourself  why do so many of these authors write hundreds of articles. The answer in short is because it works!

1) Use search engine tools such as those provided by tools.seobook.com to identify the keywords you want to use – don’t use phrases that are too popular or you’ll end up on page 5, 000,000 in Google. Go for one of the lower but not obscure phrases so that you’re in a high search low competition area.  What you’re trying to achieve is to get your article in page 1 or page 2 of Google rankings for your chosen keywords.

2) Write an article that is “keyword rich” of about 400-500 words. make sure your keyword phrase is included in your article 3 to 4 times and above all make sure it’s included in your title. Make your article interesting and informative remembering the maxim ” the more you give the more you get back”. Don’t be afraid to give away lots of your most valuable information so that readers will want to click through to find out more . Obviously you don’t want to give away the whole shop or you’ll have nothing left to sell.

3) Make sure you have a powerful resource box. This is the box at the end of the article where you can place some details about yourself and what you do. Ideally you should include to links here. One that is the anchor text link (your keyword phrase) transformed into a link and the other a raw link to your website. Plus include a few words about yourself and what you can offer.

Most importantly you’ll need a snappy headline – look at other related most read articles for ideas.  But above all your article should solve a problem. The impression you want to create with your readers is that you have helped them and you can help them more.

Submit your article and sit back. I should think not! This is where the hard work really begins. If you want success enough you’ll have to do this over and over again with lots of articles to create momentum for your website. Imagine each article is a pair of hands pushing your website up the Google rankings.

Now it’s up to you to go out and get that free traffic.

How can I  make money in internet marketing? I’m sure this is a question all newbies ask all the time.

Having been thrashing around aimlessly for a couple or so years and getting nowhere I decided it was about time that I got serious about trying to make money via internet marketing. Up to this point I had spent quite a bit of money chasing the elusive “Silver Bullet” that was going to give me entry to the high life seemingly enjoyed so effortlessly by many of the internet gurus.

After doing some research, the process of building an internet business began to reveal itself. I don’t think I’d have been able to do this nearly so easily with out the help of John Thornhill and Lee McIntyre who have different approaches but are in ways similar. The most obvious similarity is that they subscribe to “no easy button” philosophy. An internet business is like any other business in many respects. What you get back from it is directly related to what you put into it.

The process at its most basic is:

Get a website

Drive traffic toward it

Make money

Now obviously this is a gross oversimplification of the process – e.g. lousy website, disinterested traffic = no money. But assuming that you have a good product for sale – be it your own or someone else’s (affiliate marketing) there are customers out there prepared to buy. You don’t have to spend a fortune to get a decent product – just a bit of research and some imagination – or find a good affiliate product to promote.

Now comes the tricky bit. How do you get these all to elusive potential customers to visit your website? There are a myriad of so called “Silver Bullet” solutions out there but from what I’ve seen they all cost money and don’t always teach you the basic methods of how to get free web traffic.

Now let’s assume that you’ve started off with a blog. A blog is one of the easiest places to start: it doesn’t cost much (just hosting costs really) and it can be a great place to have links to affiliate products. So how to get free web traffic to your blog. There are 2 very basic simple methods I’ll deal with in this piece:

Blog Carnivals and  Article Marketing. These two can actually work hand in hand to get your first free traffic.  

A Blog Carnival is a bit like a magazine dedicated to a particular topic. It has editors and contributors and a readership. I think the best place to start is at http://blogcarnival.com where you can find a list of Blog Carnivals by topic and when the next issue of a particular carnival is due to be published. You’ll also find the deadline for submissions.  The principle is that you submit a blog article to a relevant carnival and if it’s accepted and published in the carnival, readers will click on the link that takes them to you blog – free traffic. Obviously this a grossly simplified explanation and I plan to expand on this in some depth in a subsequent blog entry.

Article Marketing is where you submit articles to a article directory (EzineArticles.com seems to be the most popular) and hope to have the article published. At the end of your article you can append a resource box which allows you to include your details and a couple of links back to your blog/website. Other publishers and webmasters can reprint your article on their websites as long as they retain the resource box with your links.  The more exposure your article(s) get hopefully the more people will click on your links – free traffic.  Again there’s much more to it than that but this is another topic I’ll expand on in a subsequent blog but staying on the theme of how to get free web traffic.

Now the secret is that as you submit your blog article to a blog carnival submit related articles to ezine directories. This will magnify the effect and hopefully get more links pointing back to your blog/website. Now it’s down to hard work and repeating the process over and over and over again to build momentum.

Just remember to keep your eye on the target, learn the basics and don’t be diverted by bright shiny things. Ignore the continuous stream of “Silver Bullet” offers flooding into your inbox. Once you’ve got the basics right you can then look at alternatives with a more practised eye.

Now, I’m not normally one given to the allure of “bright shiny things” and had for quite a few days resisted the temptation even to to dip into any of John Thornhill’s emails about Butterfly Marketing.  I approached this as I do with all the the other offers from internet marketers, which is – I’ve got at least 4 projects on the go just now – concentrate on these and don’t get distracted by “bright shiny things”.

However I do have a lot of respect for John and when I received an email form him yesterday which had RANT in its subject line I just couldn’t resist. John had gone to the trouble to make a video to tell me that he just couldn’t understand why I hadn’t taken up the chance of getting a copy of Butterfly marketing at a knockdown price ($29.99 + shipping). He was even offering a series of videos as a bonus that would explain to to put the Buterfly Marketing into practice. To sum up, although John put it much more eloquently, I’d be a bloody idiot to pass up this chance.

Now, I don’t know much about John but I do know 3 things about him: 1) he makes a lot of money 2) he likes helping other people make a lot of money 3) If he says you can do it you most probably can. So knowing absolutely nothing about Butterfly Marketing I lauched off through John’s link and bought myself a copy of Butterfly Marketing.

I emailed John telling him what I’d one and why and received a delightful reply from him assuring me that he can help me to make it work.

If you don’t know of John already have a look at John Thornhill – he’s the real deal.