No one can logically argue against the fact that content is king. Web sites that are nothing more than glorified link farms or ad spiels must work harder and invest more money to gain visitors—almost none of them return. To keep users returning, there must be a reason. Articles can serve two major roles in maintaining a successful website—content and promotion. Just minutes from now you could be on your way to building a more successful business. Article creation and submission is one of the greatest promotional tools ever.

CONTENT

Every web site that wants to succeed at competing for eyeballs must have solid content to offer. Otherwise, the visitor is off in mere seconds—never to return. Make the visitor glad they visited and you have potentially created a loyal user.

Think about some of the more popular web sites on the Internet. Why would you visit them? Why would you return? Let’s look at a popular news site, FoxNews.com. I visit Fox News to read the latest news stories. I go back because I know there will be fresh articles waiting for me. I visit my favorite writing web site because I know there are great articles there and new ones appear often.

Do you see a theme? I am not going to a web site that is about other web sites or is a link farm—I am going to the source of what I desire. These sources not only receive my attention but have a good chance at selling me something. Over time, my trust in these web sites increases and I am more open to what they have to offer. It is important to offer quality content to hook the visitors in and update often to give them reasons to return. Your web site is an extension of you and your company. How visitors perceive your web site is how they will perceive you. This is why it is important that articles be well written. Anything less will compromise your perceived image.

PROMOTION

There is no easier way to establish links and incoming traffic to your web site than writing articles—or having someone write them for you. It could take months or longer for a web site owner to gain a significant amount of relevant links on other web sites. However, it can take days, with no effort, to accomplish the same feat with one well crafted article. The process is extremely simple.

1. Write the article or have it written for you.
2. Submit the article to article distribution services.
3. Start working on the next article or have a writer do it for you.

Once your article is out there it will work itself onto web sites across the Internet, which will end up generating incoming links for your web site. Moreover, this will increase your link popularity, which is very important for great search engine rankings. It would be wise to write articles that pertain in some way to your own web site. The odds of people, who are reading an article on engine rebuilding, being interested in your web site about quilting is rather slim. There are many article submission web sites and groups on the Internet. Some good article submission web sites are: ContentTycoon.com, articlefactory.com, ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and ideamarketers.com. Don’t forget to use the article on your own web site.

The promotion world is waking up to this article creation technique and in time the competition will be fierce. The time to get started is right now. One well crafted article can easily be worth thousands of dollars in promotional efforts. Don’t let not being able to write great articles keep you from getting ahead—visit PromotionalArticles.com to have articles written for you. You simply can not put a price on the possible results from article distribution. Just wait until you experience it for yourself.

The lifeblood of any Internet marketer is their list. If you have an opt in email list then you are sitting on piles of cash, if you properly use your list then your earning potential is very high.

As many people ask “How do I build a list?” the following points describes some of the best ways for building your email list.

1) Newsletter / E-zine

We are in the Information Age and so people are desperate for information. Everyone is so busy with their lives they don’t have time to find the information for themselves. Publish a newsletter in your niche that is full of valuable content and you will get people flocking to you to sign up.

2) E-Courses

People are hungry for information, so a free e-course will persuade people to part with their email address. Create at least a seven part course that is delivered every few days into their inbox. Of course, the e-course also subtly sells your product!

3) Articles

Write articles and distribute them to article directories. Include your newsletter sign up in the resource box and if you have provided good quality content, you will get the visitors who will sign up to learn more.

4) Free Books

A free e-book is an excellent way to build your list. It doesn’t have to be an epic tome, just valuable information that people will exchange their email address for. You can write one yourself or get one ghostwritten for you. Make sure though that it is information that your visitors will want to have, and make sure you have included links to your products and sites in the book. You can also include affiliate links to further maximise your earnings.

5) Free Membership Site

Creating a free membership site is an excellent way to get people’s email addresses. Offer valuable content for free but only to signed up members. You can then upsell them other products or other levels of membership with more products and more resources available to them.

6) Squeeze Page

A squeeze page is a pre-sales letter page where you capture a person’s email address before they move on to view your sales letter. This is reportedly very effective and you can also personalise the sales letter with their name or other details from the squeeze page.

7) Pop Up

Pop up windows, particularly unique and different windows, can be very effective at persuading people to sign up for your newsletter. These can either pop up as the visitor enters your site, or when they leave, reminding them to sign up for more information.

Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is where you give away something of value that people want to pass to all their friends. It may be a video, a book, a game or anything similar. However, whatever it is, it has your web address in it so people can come and sign up to your newsletter and get more info.

9) Free Giveaways

A very popular new method of list building are the big Internet giveaways where lots of people submit products that are available for free in exchange for a newsletter sign up. These are excellent ways to rapidly build your list – though be aware that freebie seekers may not make for the most responsive of lists.

10) Sign up bonuses

Offer your visitors a bonus if they sign up for your newsletter, e.g. “20% off XYZ for readers” or a number of e-books or reports that will be of interest to them.

Using these 10 simple strategies you can build your list and then leverage their earning power.

I’ve noticed that most SEO articles focus on what to do after you launch your site. Those that do deal with preparing your site for launch usually discuss on-site SEO like keyword research and meta tags. What tends to be neglected is the advantage that you can gain by getting your site indexed before you launch. With a little planning and a few hours of work it’s easy to be indexed by Google, Yahoo, and MSN before your site goes live.

The key to getting your site indexed in the big three is getting links pointing to it from sites that are already indexed. When the search bots crawl those sites they will inevitably find the link to your site and your site will be added to their index. Follow these five steps a month before you launch and you’ll be a step ahead of the game.

1. Register your domain name. You’d be surprised how many people wait until the last minute to do this. The sooner you register your domain, the sooner you can get some quality links pointing to it and get it indexed.

2. Put up a home page. Make a “coming soon” page with your logo, information about your site, and expected launch date. You can also add a form for people to sign up for email updates about your site. This starts building your email marketing list before you even launch.

3. Start a blog and sign up for Feedburner. Put up a blog at www.yoursite.com/blog. It doesn’t matter if you use WordPress, Blogger, or whatever blog platform you prefer, just make sure you host it on your site. Make a few posts about your site, what people can expect when it launches, and why your site will be unique. After your first post, sign up for a Feedburner account at http://www.feedburner.com/. Under ‘Publicize’ in your account make sure to sign up for ‘Ping Shot’. This will notify blogging directories of your posts which hopefully will result in a few links to your site.

4. Write a few articles and submit to directories. Regardless of what your site is about, there is certainly a topic relating to your site that you could write an article about. For example, if your site is going to sell fitness equipment, you could write an article about how to build a home-gym. Or if you are going to rate and review new cars, you could write an article about how to shop for a new car. After you’ve written and proofread your articles, submit them to article directories like Ezine Articles (http://www.ezinearticles.com/) and iSnare (http://www.isnare.com/). Be sure to include a description of your new site and a link back to it in the resource box. Again, this should result in a few links to your site.

5. Get a link from an indexed site. Steps 3 and 4 should result in some links from indexed sites which should then ensure your site to be indexed. But it can’t hurt to get a few more on your own to be certain. When I launched my last site, I linked to it from my personal blog, which I knew was indexed. If you don’t have that option, you can ask someone with a blog or site related to yours to mention it. If you can’t find anyone willing to do it for free, you could offer them some free advertising on your site when you launch in exchange for the link.

Getting yourself indexed before you launch gives you a head start on your SEO and will allow your site to have a more immediate impact. Why wait until you launch? Get started a month early and you’ll reap the benefits when launch day rolls around.

Blogs and websites that have rich content are always going to do better than those that don’t. I am sure you wondered where these blogs get their ideas, views and opinions. It is easy to write about something you are passionate about- but to do that most days of the week is extremely hard, since you would probably run out of things to talk about or you simply don’t have the time. So how do they do it? Where do they get their ideas? Do they get help from tools and other sources available on the Internet?

The best way would be to provide the content yourself, and this is of utmost importance if your goal is to try to create traffic to an affiliated link. You’ll definitely want to sell the idea about the services and products beforehand. What that will do is set the stage or the “mood” and give your recommendations authenticity.

Expounding on the uses of a particular service or product, with your own likes and dislikes, achieves this naturally. With an affiliate program, it is a good idea to have a personal anecdote that goes hand in hand with the product or service.

Using private label articles is a viable alternative. PL articles abound in the Internet and you can always buy some that are connected to your central topic and then place them in your blog. One way of maximizing a purchased PLA is to cut it down into several pieces, thereby maximizing its content.

Utilizing RSS feeds to post on blogs is becoming very popular, although not everyone is familiar or willing to learn about RSS feeds. The advantage to an RSS feed is that your blog is automatically updated with fresh news and content. The disadvantage is that it is not unique content and that anybody interested in the feed will likely click out on a story that appeals to them.

Putting in your very own content is the best way to go. One way to find fresh ideas is to look for an appealing news article and then do a summary write-up based on it. It’s not as easy as it sounds, but you and your readers will find it the most rewarding way. If you feel that you just don’t cut it as a writer or you genuinely don’t have the time, then hire someone else to do it for you. There are many services out there who provide a “blog service” which includes daily posts of unique, engaging content and you can instruct these content writers as to where you want the links in your blog pointing to- so that any burden of cost in terms of hiring them should be offset by the gains in your increased visitor base, the marketing of your other websites and earnings from your affiliate programs.

These are the best ways to generate content for your blog. It is advisable not to be going with the automated path. If you do decide to do that, you will probably have plenty of content- but the substance of the text is unlikely to increase traffic for you. Putting in some good, old-fashioned content work will yield better results for you. As the expression goes- “you get out what you put in….”!!

Keywords and Ad Words aren’t the only way that search engines score relevancy; links to other similar sites are another important factor. Keywords have been so abused by some webmasters that links are winning much more relevancy points. Google is said to love them. It might sound strange to suggest that your users should check out your competitors, but they probably know about them anyway.

If your competitors have a higher ranking than you, linking to them can often give you a higher relevancy score with the search engines and the subsequent increase in traffic will make it worth your while.

Alternatively, you can link to your own site by creating a subdirectory. This is like building another web page, but the URL will include your keyword. So if you were selling stuffed toys, the new URL would be YourDomain.com/stuffed-toys/stuffed-toys.html.

You could then write a short paragraph on the home page, describing the new page and including a link. You’ll get big relevancy points for this!

Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal linking means forming partnerships with other sites who place a link from their web pages to yours. You give them a similar link in return.

When you look for people to swap links with, make sure that you don’t reduce the quality or content of your own site. You don’t want users to click straight through without reading your content; you want them to buy first. One way to stop them from running away too quickly is to create a “Resources Page” and link to that page from your homepage. This doesn’t take away from the content on your homepage and the links are just one click away rather than being buried deep within the site, giving value to your partners.

In any case, you want to be sure that your site is more than just a page full of links. If your site contains more links than content, it will not be attractive to webmasters, search engines or users.

Picking Your Partner

Your link partners should be sites your target market will visit. Think about your product and its subject area and brainstorm to determine where people interested in your product might be looking online. For example, if you’re trying to sell a book about blackjack strategy, it makes sense that the people visiting online casinos would make great customers. Online casinos then could be good partners.

Identify top-ranked, high quality casino sites and find the email address of their webmasters. You can also identify your competitors, see where they trade links and then follow suit.

Tips for Talking to Webmasters

Before you contact webmasters, place a link to their site on your home page or resource page to assure them that you will actually provide a high quality link. Create a subject line that will encourage them to read your message rather than deleting it. You don’t want them to think you’re message is Spam. (Something about their site or product is sure to capture their attention; they will probably open and read it, thinking that you’re a potential customer.)

Begin your message by talking about your visit to their site and what you found interesting about it. Detail your product or service in one line and ask them to exchange links with you.

Tell them in detail where you have placed their link and emphasize that it is only one click away from your homepage. Tell them that if you don’t hear back from them within 2 weeks, you will consider that to be a negative response and that you will remove their link from your site.

Internet marketing is one of the fastest-growing and profitable businesses today. It is an excellent way for anyone to start a small business with little investment, no overhead, and high profit margins. Anyone can get up and running with an online
business in hours. Sounds like an easy way to make money, doesn’t it? Compared to other offline small business ventures, it is.

Yet internet marketing failures still vastly outnumber those who have succeeded in internet marketing. For every story you hear of someone making $10,000 a month at internet marketing there are hundreds of untold stories of those who failed to
make a profit or only made a few dollars and then quit. Why do so many fail when the potential to succeed is high?

1. Failure to plan – No matter what type of business you are running you need a business plan with well-defined goals. What are your short-term and long-term goals? What steps do you need to take to meet those goals? Write out your plan and review it frequently. You are running a small business. Treat it as one.

2. Failure to work the plan – So you already have a business plan? Are the following it? A plan means nothing if you don’t follow it. Work the plan every single day. Revise it if necessary but don’t detract from it.

3. Making goals too big early on – Many internet marketing failures try to do too much too fast. You are not going to create the ultimate web site for dog lovers overnight. Start small with dog training tips and add content daily. Those 1,000+ page web sites took months or years to build, so will yours.

4. Lack of knowledge – Would you be a successful plumber without knowing anything about plumbing? No. Then to be a successful internet marketer you need to learn internet marketing. Find a successful mentor willing to help you and you will be way ahead of the crowd.

5. Not investing in your business – You won’t get any support or very much web traffic on with a free web host. Many times, the best ebooks, scripts, and tools are the ones that cost money. You can run an online business for next to nothing but
you’ll achieve faster and more profitable results by investing in the right tools.

6. “If I build it, they will come” – You can have the most comprehensive and informative website on natural healing in the world but if you don’t promote your site and work to drive traffic to it no one will know about it. There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You should be using several of them.

7. Lack of patience – You will not be making $10,000 a month when you start. Internet marketing is not a get rich quick scheme. It takes time and testing to build your web traffic and increase your conversion rate. In the beginning you might actually lose money and this is when too many people give up without giving their business time to grow.

8. Wrong niche – So you wrote that ebook on underwater basket weaving and you’re wondering why nobody is buying it? Find a niche but make sure it’s profitable first. Too many times people create the product first then try to figure out how to sell it. Find out what the people want then give or sell it to them.

9. No Uniqueness – There are a million low carb diet books out there, what makes yours so unique? Why should I buy your widget when Bob’s widgets are just as good and he’s been selling widgets a lot longer than you? Stand out from the crowd and get noticed. Know your competition and do what they do better or do something totally different.

10. Lack of commitment – To be successful, you must be committed to success. Behind every success story there are many hours of work and dedication. You’ll need drive and determination if you want to be the next internet success story everyone is talking about.

Print out these ten reasons for failure and post it next to your computer monitor or tape them to your bathroom mirror.

Everyday review your online business and make sure you are not making any of these mistakes. Do this and you are well on your way to being an internet marketing success.

Blogging is becoming increasingly popular and social networks are also becoming more and more popular as well. Social networks include popular websites such as MySpace.com where users can create personal websites and interact with other users. These websites may include a wide range of components including text, images, audio, video and blogs. Here system users can voice their opinions, provided updates on their life, offer insight into current events or accomplish a number of other goals. However, bloggers who utilize a social network to maintain their blog should consider a few different factors. This article will discuss some of these factors including whether to make the blogs available to the public or keep the private, considering the audience of the blog and dealing with harassment through the blog.

Making Blogs Private Or Public

Most social networks enable users to make their website either private or public. Private websites are only available to the user and other users he specifically approves to view his website while public websites are available to all users of the system. These same capabilities also apply to the blogs which are maintained on a social network. For this reason bloggers must determine whether or not they wish to make their blog posts available to the entire social network or to only a fraction of this network.

This decision will be largely based on a matter of personal preference. Social networks can be quite extensive and some bloggers may be apprehensive about their blog being available to such a large audience while other bloggers may have no apprehensions about the size of the potential audience. Bloggers should carefully consider this option before staring a blog but always have the option to change these settings after the blog has been established if they change their mind about the choice they originally made.

Considering The Blog Audience

Bloggers who utilize a social network to maintain a blog should also carefully consider the potential audience for the blog. Most social networks include a broad cross section of the general public. Therefore bloggers should be aware of this audience when posting a blog and should consider how the blog entries will be interpreted by blog audience members. While it will never be possible to avoid offending all potential audience members some bloggers may wish to consider at least attempting to ensure the blog entries they post are appropriate for all members of the social network. If this is not possible the blogger may consider making the blog private.

Dealing With Harassment Through The Blog

Another aspect bloggers who use a social network to publish their blog should be aware of includes the potential for harassment from other members through the blog. This can be in the form of offensive comments posted in response to blog entries. Depending on the degree of the harassment the blogger may choose to ignore these comments or take stronger actions. Bloggers should review the policies of the social network and solicit their assistance in dealing with harassment from other users. In most cases dealing with the problem may be as simple as blocking the user from making comments on the blog but in some cases it may be necessary to contact the social network administrators in an attempt to get the user banned from the system. In this situation the administrators will review the situation and make a judgment regarding whether or not the user has violated the terms of service.

I monitor a lot of blogs, forums and news sites with my trusty RSS reader. One of my favorite sites is SitePoint, which is a terrific discussion forum for webmasters, programmers and domain name investors. I’ve had some great conversations on the forums and via IM that have been very enlightening. In a recent post, one of the SitePoint forum guys was lamenting the fact that he was having trouble getting to 100 unique visitors per day.

There was some good, solid advice that I would like to share and build upon:

1. Make sure your posts are optimized with popular keywords. I would be careful with this one because you don’t want to lose your blogging voice or make your pages read awkwardly by jamming in as many keywords as you can. Do check for the most popular keywords in your universe, though, using a tool like WordTracker. As a poster on SitePoint said, using the competition values in WordTracker allows you to pick keywords that haven’t soaked the web yet.

2. Use a service like PinGoat to ping blogger indexing sites every time you change your site. Pinging is basically extending an invitation to indexing services like Technorati, IceRocket and Feedster to come to your site and index it. The more indexing you get, the more exposure you get. PinGoat is a terrific service that pings them all at the same time.

3. Update your Google Sitemap every few posts and resubmit it. A Google Sitemap is an interesting and amazing phenomenon. Here is how Google explains it:

The Google Sitemaps program is two-way communication between webmasters and Google. You can give us information about your site so we can index it more effectively, and we can show you how we see your site and tell you about any trouble we’ve had crawling it.

Basically you create a special xml file and tell Google to go look at it. It uses the file to better index the site. And it definitely works. There’s even a Plugin for WordPress that will build the perfect sitemap for Google. You can read more about sitemaps by visiting the Google Sitemapspage.

4. Post relevant comments on blogs related to your content area. Look around, find people blogging about the same stuff as you. Monitor their blog sites and participate in the discussion. Be sure to include a link to your site in all of your comments. It’s a great way to correspond with like-minded people and get your name and site name out there.

5. Search for link partners and link exchanges at least once a week. If you find a site you like, include it on your link page and drop the site owner an email. He or she will most likely list your site as well. Join a couple of free or cheap link exchange sites and stick to your subject area when exchanging links. Always visit the prospective link exchange site and ask yourself if you would be doing your readers a service by sending them to that site. If not, don’t link to the site.

6. Write great content, and don’t plug stuff unless you are familiar with it and approve of it. If you write interesting content about subjects that interest people they will always find you. Don’t hustle your readers — if you are going to plug something for money, make sure the product or service is something you would use and recommend. If people sense a hustle they will not convert and they will not come back.

7. Watch your keywords and make sure they are performing. DigitalPoint has a terrific tool that will help you track your keyword placement over time so you can see how your efforts are doing.

8. Perform some basic Search Engine Optimization. Learn how to not only optimize your posts, but optimize your entire site. You can get some great tips and tools at SeoChat.com

9. Shake loose a couple of bucks and buy some ad space. Once you’re certain your blog looks and operates perfectly, spend $100 on Adsense ads and see how that helps.

10. Be patient. It isn’t going to happen overnight. It will take weeks or months to get things rolling.