Another 5 Ways to Get Traffic to Come to Your Website or Blog

In my last post I gave you 5 dirt-cheap ways to get traffic to come to your site.  If you’re interested, the link to that article is here: Cheap Marketing Methods 

Now, I have another 5 ways you can promote your website that are very cheap.  However, I’d once again like to point out that these methods do require labor or, at the very least outsourcing. 

5 More Ways To Promote Your Website for Free

Reciprocal Links and Banners - It never hurts to send your readers and visitors to high quality websites.  The emphasis needs to be stressed on quality because you want to become a known and respected source of information.  If people come to your site expecting excellence and you refer them to a shabby website that has poorly written information, their stink will probably rub off on you.

Another thing that’s important to consider is that you don’t want to trade links very much.

The other day, I got a request from someone that wanted to trade links with me.  His site was an insurance review site which was totally outside my niche.  Also, I noticed that his site was an Adsense site wherein his site was merely written to generate clicks for Adsense revenue. 

Upon further inspection, I noticed that he had loads of what appeared to be outsourced articles. 

So, I declined his offer to exchange links. 

If you want to read a very well written article on link exchanging, read this article by Michael Bluejay:  Why Your Link Exchange Request Failed 

Donating Your Services to Charity – If you know of a business or charity that can use your products or services, you can donate your help to them.  Not only will you help others in need but they may also point your business out to others. 

My personal take is to help others in need without expecting anything in return.  That’s just the way I am.  I once got an email from a band director that had a trombone playing student that had cancer.  I was operating a music apparel business online and I wound up making a beautiful embroidered jacket for the kid.  I didn't make a dime or any notoriety for doing it, but it sure did feel good to make that student happy.

Put Your Web Address Everywhere – You can place your website’s URL on your car, shirts, business cards, letterhead, as well as any promotional items that you give out for your business.  Also, make sure that you use it in your email signature, eBooks that you’ve written and any communications you use. If you have a bricks and mortar business, make sure that you put your URL on the door of your business, on your menus, receipts, and any other item you use that has your branding on it.

Use Free Classified Ads – There are literally hundreds of free classified ad sites on the Internet.  Many of them service specific countries, so you’ll have to take a close look at them to see what country or area they service.  The downside of using free online ads is there are time limits on how long your ad will run.  You’ll have to go back and check to see if your ad is still running. 

Not only that, but there are a lot of people “phishing” on them.  Phishing is an online searching activity where nefarious people look around on sites where you would place your contact information, and then call you and try to sell you something.  They will also collect your email address and spam you like crazy. 

Here is a brief list of the best free classified sites to use:

Craigslist 

eBay Classifieds 

USFREEADS 

Back Page

Recycler 

Offer a Free Course on Your Website – This requires some effort and time, but if your visitors can get some excellent training, whether it’s audio, video or even a series of lessons, then you can post them for free on your website. 

Years ago, I created an extensive Photoshop course that you can still access today as well as a series on how to make your own blog using Blogger.   It was well received by people that used it.  So put your thinking cap on and think about a video course that you can come up with that is related to your business.  Not only will people come to your site looking for free information, but you can also embed your URL into your videos on YouTube to get even more traffic to your site.

Mark Ellis’s Photoshop Training Videos:

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

5 Dirt Cheap Marketing Ideas to Generate Traffic to Your Site

If you’re like me, you’re constantly trying to learn how to do your marketing dirt cheap.  One of the most beautiful things about the Internet is that you can do things so much cheaper than ever before. 

Take a look at publishing.  In the good ol’ days, you had to find a publisher to sell any book that you wrote.  Now, you can publish and sell eBooks online without a publisher and there are no setup publishing costs.

You can even have a regular book published and some businesses will print them on demand based on the number you need.  So, the Internet has made almost all forms of traditional marketing easier and more affordable than ever.

Here are 10 dirt cheap marketing methods that you can use to promote your business.  However, it should be noted that there is always a downside to marketing so cheaply. 

For one thing, cheap usually means more labor.  If you buy a house that’s a cheap fix-me-upper, you’ll have to put sweat equity into the house to raise its value.  Cheap marketing methods also require sweat equity, so you are going to have to roll up your sleeves to get things done. (Or find a good way to outsource your work.)  You will have to consider the time and work you do in using these methods.

5 Dirt Cheap Marketing Methods

Use Old Data to Create New Content – If you need data that is relevant to your niche or area of expertise, you can gather data from the Internet and present it in a pleasing format to potential clients and customers.  Many freelance writers use data of this nature to write white papers for clients. 

If you are in a technical field, such as engineering, medical, chemical production, or any other type of information drive field, white papers usually are great for this.  You can also use the data on your blog, in an eBook or website. 

There are loads of websites that carry all sorts of data on just about every industry and subject.  You just have to take the time to find it.

TIP:  If you can collect data that is important to your niche, you can rewrite it, create charts and graphs that helpful to your prospects and hand it out for free.  However, before you give that information away, make sure you brand your eBook with your name, website, email, or whatever else you want your target audience to know about you.  You should include a blurb in the document about yourself and your services.

The great thing about this strategy, is that you won’t have to do a ton of writing for it.  You can just use the data, charts, and graphs with a brief write up about how it relates to your target market and industry.

Reuse Your Older Content – If you’ve been writing for a while, you can take that old content and reanimate it into another format.  For example, you can take an old blog post and use it as a script for a video. If you’ve written an eBook, you can take sections of that material and recycle it into blog posts.  Even if you take older blog posts or website pages and promote them on Facebook or Google +, chances are the people now frequenting those places 

have never seen them.

Apply for Online Awards   ̶ There are many businesses and popular websites that give out awards for a variety of reasons.  Once awarded, you will have the prestigious distinction of placing their seal of approval or badge of honor on your site.  The time consumed filling out whatever forms they require you to fill out may be worth the attention you’ll get.

Tip:  Create your own award!  It’s amazing how a trick like this will not only get attention from other businesses in your niche, but also legitimize and create a sense of authority for your business and website.

Online Contests  ̶  This is a marketing idea I used years ago when I ran a music themed apparel business.  I would periodically run a contest where I would have a comic artist create a one panel music themed comic and visitors to my website would submit their dialog for the characters.  The funniest dialog or caption won. 

You can make up all sorts of ideas for online contests which will usually get visitors to your site involved in your business.  Depending on the complexity of the contest, you can run it as long as you like, building up the suspense.  However, you’ll have to figure how to reward your contest’s winner and how valuable or costly the prize will be.

Answer Questions on Popular Forums or Sites  ̶   If you regularly visit a blog or a forum, you can offer excellent advice to people that are looking for answers to questions that are related to your niche or business.  Many forums or blogs will let you place your website address in a signature file at the end of a post. 

This not only gets people interested in your business, but also helps to establish yourself as an authority in your field.  However, if you don’t really know what you are talking about it will be obvious to people fairly quickly that you don’t know what you are talking about.  So make sure you have a well written piece of advice to offer before you post. 

TIP:  If you regularly visit and contribute advice on a blog, ask the owner if you could actually write a blog post.  If the owner wants to see what your writing is like, you can point to posts on HIS blog that you’ve already written and tell him that you are a regular contributor.  This will at least help you to get your foot in the door.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

(859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com

Use eBooks to Cheaply Drive Free Traffic to Your Website or Blog

I have written eBooks, and as a marketing tool, they work pretty well.  There are two schools of thought on how to create them.  One is to sit your butt down and knock it off and the other is to hire a ghost writer to make one for you. 

Since most of you are like me (lazy), in this post I’ll tell you how to hire a ghost writer to create an eBook. In the next post, we’ll explore how to write your own and some of the pitfalls to avoid, but for this episode we’ll go the ghost writer route.

What Are eBooks and Why Does Everyone like Them So Much?

Just in case you’re brand new to Internet marketing, here’s a brief description of electronic books or eBooks. You can easily become a publisher without having to print up books the traditional way.

These are electronic books that you can get online and read on your computer.  These are sometimes called .PDF files. (PDF is the file extension that means that the file is basically text and graphics in book format.) You can have great pictures, and text laid out in such a way that makes the book look great, and the book can be as big or small as you want it.

One of the best thing about eBooks is that you could really load one up with pictures and graphics and you’d save a lot of money over traditional publishing because using traditional methods, you’d have to spend butt – loads on money getting full color pictures into a book.

Not only that, but distribution costs are super cheap.  They can be downloaded as file from one place on the Internet to the other, and they can also be sent as an email attachment from one place to another.  You can also sell them from a variety of places online such as Clickbank, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.   

Another super-plus benefit to eBooks is that they can also be Interactive.  Just like the Internet, you can place links to websites and products you’re trying to sell, and you can even embed video into them.  However, the computer that you are reading them on needs to be connected to the Internet for the links and video to work. 

The main benefit of creating an eBook is that no longer will you need to go through a publisher and all of the traditional routes to become an established author.  You can call yourself an author without needing anyone’s backing or permission and you can do all of this for next to nothing.  Amazing!

The Downside of eBooks and How to Overcome It

As I see it, there are two main setbacks to using an eBook.  First, everyone is making them and giving them away.  Some of the best eBooks I have read were eBooks I’ve gotten online for free.  (I’ll leave links to these at the end of this post.) 

However, a lot of the eBooks that are given away SUCK.  Plain and simple. We’re not going to go that route.

The other drawback is taking the time to sit down and write them.  The two disadvantages go hand in hand when overcoming them, as you’ll see in a moment.

 So, let’s tackle both problems at the same time in steps.

Step 1: Identify the Niche You’re Operating In.  If you don’t know what your business is all about, you are in an extreme disadvantage.  You’ll need to figure out where you are and how you’re going to get there.  If you haven’t taken the time to read the post I’ve already written on exploring niches, check it out here: Ways to Find Niches

  

Another method of finding out what your niche is, as well as your unique selling proposition (USP) is to actually sit down and write out a business plan.  The way I wrote mine was I got a copy of Conrad Levinson’s Guerilla Marketing Workbook.  This book is not only a great marketing book, but it will help you write out a fairly decent marketing and business plan.

Step 2:  Gather Resources.  Once you’ve identified your niche, go online and

peruse books and courses in your niche from Amazon, eBay and other book – type resources.  Find out what’s really hot in your niche and start buying and gathering information from them.  If you have to buy books from Amazon, you can get them cheap by buying them used.  You are looking for the absolute best information you can find in your niche.  The best way to determine this is by looking at the Amazon ratings as well as the number of comments that are on the site. 

TIP: Another awesome place to get this type of information from is forums.  Start reading and copying and pasting the best posts, questions and answers you can find from them.  Some of the most incredible advice I've gotten is from forums, so copy and paste your favorite readings into a word processor and keep them.

You’re going to need quite a stack of resources on your subject.

Step 3: Start Reading and Highlighting Your Resources.  Now, take the resources that you’ve been gathering and start reading.  Whenever you find something in them that you think is dynamite or useful, highlight it with a highlighter.  Do this to all of your resources. After doing this, you should have quite a pile of information.

Step 4:  Get reasonably priced writer and have theme write your material.  There are many places on the Internet to find writers that will do your ghost writing for you.  Here’s a partial list of places you can go to on the Internet to outsource writing:

Moving AheadCommunications 

Ghosts R Us – Specializes in outsourcing eBooks     

Fiverr - A unique site that vendors can only charge $5.00 a gig.  

oDesk 

eLance 

Freelancer 

99designs 

Hire the World  

There are loads of outsourcing sites and you’ll need to get used to using the one or two that you’ll feel most comfortable with in order to get your eBook or eBook written.

Step 5: Send your highlighted material to your ghostwriter and have them rewrite it.  Once you have your ghostwriter hired, send them your highlighted books and have them rewrite the material for you.  You are not plagiarizing, but rewriting the material into someone else’s words.  Not only that, but you are picking material from a variety of resources.  So, you are not copying, but using the material you highlighted as source material. 

Step 6:  Brand your eBook.  Make sure all of your marketing information is in the eBook before you give it away or sell it.  Make sure that your Web address, email, business number and any other contact information that you have is in the eBook.

Pretty much, that’s all there is to it.  One thing to keep in mind, you’ll need to check and read the material sent back to you by your ghostwriter.  You don’t want to have your name on anything substandard because you’re trying to build an excellent brand and reputation, here.

To Your Success!

Mark "Elmo" Ellis

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

Free eBooks that are just outstanding:

How to Make MoneySitting on Your A** by T.J. Rohleder

Magnetic Marketing by Dan Kennedy 

Blow Away the Competition Using This Traffic Generating Method of Giving Away Free Content

One of the biggest words in marketing besides “New” and “Sale” is the word “Free”.  If you read my last post, you’ll know that I’m an advocate of “Paying it Forward”.  It’s one of the best things you can do for yourself and others, and a super easy way of building a loyal group of followers as cheaply as possible.

However, before I give you some great FREE ideas, let me just mention that just because you’re giving away something as cheap as FREE you don’t have to make it cheap.  You still need to make your gift as high quality as possible.

Recently, I heard a podcast by a young guy that mass produces eBooks on Amazon. His business model was to pick a group of pen names, (a different one for each niche he was targeting) have someone ghostwrite eBooks for himself - dirt cheap, and then sell them for $5.00 each because there wasn't any pain for prospects in parting with such a small amount of money.

He claimed he was raking in the dough.  Maybe he was...don’t know.

The problem with this business model, as I see it, is he will always have to rebuild his customer base.  People that buy cheap items that are just thrown together probably won’t be back, and probably aren't successful enough to buy anything that you’ll want to sell them later at a higher price. 

That’s just my way of thinking.

Why the Big Boys are Big

The reason why marketing experts like Dan Kennedy can command $300 an info product, or charge $3000 a seat at a seminar is because he DELIVERS super-high quality information, products and services and carries that reputation around with him wherever he goes.  And he’s been doing it for over 30 years.

That kind of clout comes with putting YOUR back into it, rather than hiring a ghost writer to dash out some fast junk. The Dollar Store does well at selling super-cheap stuff because that’s exactly what it is--super-cheap stuff.  

You won’t find Dyson vacuum cleaners that will last for 10 years or more there, because that’s not their niche.  (Of course you won’t find me buying a vacuum cleaner there either, no matter how cheap they sell them.)

Now, I know what you’re gonna say.  “Wait a minute Ellis! You’re telling me on one hand to give stuff away for FREE, but then you’re telling me that I don’t want to have a cheap reputation.  What kind of double talk is that?”

They Already Have the Job

People that want to become teachers go through a gauntlet you wouldn't believe.  In order to become a school teacher in the U.S. you have to go through at least 4 years of college, take a whole battery of certification tests, do your student teaching for at least a semester in a regular school, and then make sure you follow the rest of your certification requirements in the state you’re teaching in. 

In the state of Kentucky, for example, you have to go through an extra year of a state run program.  That program requires you to be observed and monitored by other teacher’s at your school as well as administrators and state administrators.  

By the time you’re done with that program, you’ll have a book full of state forms and lesson plans that’s as thick as a New York City telephone directory.  If you pass all of that, you still have to teach in your subject area for 3 years or take some upper level graduate classes.

Full-fledged teachers don’t make that much money for the first 10 years they’re teaching either.

I remember when I was doing my student teaching in college, there was a professor that was prepping us for that experience.  She really hammered out the fact that she didn't care what the rest of the staff at the cooperative school was dressed like, we had to be dressed to the hilt, very professionally.  She went through the whole laundry list of what women and men were to wear while doing their cooperative teaching.

Some of the students asked why we had to get so decked-out if the rest of the school teachers were dressed more casually.

Her response was quite blunt. “They already have the job.”

So, consider what other professions have to go through just to get started before you start whining, please.

The Reasons to Provide Free Content

•        Your customers, prospects and fans want it, plain and simple. 
• 
  
•        You are trying to establish and prove your knowledge and expertise in your niche. Cheapest way to do it.
• 
  
•        If done correctly, it could be used to provide an online watering hole for your fans to congregate, comment and exchange ideas on a regular basis. 
• 
  
•        If you use offline newsletters, online eBooks and other wonderful vehicles, they could be passed around so you’re ideas and reputation could be spread virally.

The Grateful Dead Goes Live

A real good example of this type of FREE activity actually working, is from the famous rock group the Grateful Dead.  From a marketing perspective, they were unique in many ways.  But one thing stands out that they did which nobody else was doing at the time:  they’d let you record their concerts for FREE.

As a matter of fact, there was an area right next to the mixing board, where the best recordings could

be made called “taper sections”.  This is where people recording their live events could make their own recordings of Grateful Dead’s concerts.

Most music moguls would freak out at the revenue lost, but not the Dead.  They went viral before the Internet. People were exchanging recorded tapes, talking about them, and spreading their fame very quickly, and it paid off handsomely.  Hardly anyone hasn't heard of the Grateful Dead.

Google Gets a Jump on Free

Still don’t think high-quality FREE works? Take a good look at Google.  They have great free services that would take pages to list here.  It’s even been rumored that one of their latest ventures is to provide free Internet services to anyone that wants them, but that’s a future goal I’m not sure will happen.   

Google, like the Medici banking family of the Renaissance is collecting geniuses; there’s a whole battery of tests you’d have to take to get in their doors.  These people work in an environment that does nothing but give them freedom.  

Freedom to think, play around with ideas, and learn more.  People that work for this company don’t want to go home, so they stay and put in many hours. 

They are keen on FREE.  If they’re that smart, perhaps we should follow their lead.

To Your Success!

Mark “Elmo” Ellis

"When it Comes to High-Response Copy - I've Got Your Back!"

www.MarkEllisCopy.com

 (859) 797-9560

elmo033057@gmail.com