Business Articles For Online Businesses

So, you want to make money online, but you’re having trouble getting visitors to your website? If so, you’re not alone. Many people think that running an online busy is easy – just build a website, and in no time you’ll be making money.

Well, running an online business is no different than running any business – you need to find ways to reach people who want and need (and are willing to pay for) your product or service.

Affiliate marketing (selling other people’s products) is a great way to make money online.

Yet, it is still a business, and the same rules apply to affiliate marketing – you need to find people who need what you are selling.

The best way to be a successful affiliate is to create your own website, provide information to get people ready to buy, and then encourage them visit the programs you are representing.

How do you do this, without spending a fortune on advertising?

1) Learn how to get free traffic from search engines

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) means getting the search engines (like Google and Yahoo) to place your website at the top of the rankings. Getting “free advertising” from the search engines is great. However, it is not easy, and it does take some time. The key is make your site the best possible site for your theme – tricks and scams may provide you with an instant “boost” but this rarely lasts (and sometimes even gets you banned permanently!) Over the past few years, I’ve made lots of money by having high rankings – and I’ve lost money when my rankings have fallen. It’s part of the process, so you shouldn’t count only on free traffic from the search engines.

2) Create your own newsletter

By creating your own newsletter, you can contact each person who signs up more than once, increasing your chance for a sale. Don’t have any ideas for a newsletter? How about a free course. Or monthly tips about the topic of your website. Sign up for a few newsletters in your industry to get an idea of how other websites maintain this important relationship with their current – and future – customers!

3) Write articles

Writing articles provides you with several benefits at the same time – by writing an article you are positioning yourself as an expert; when your article is published, you get a link back to your site (which helps SEO; you can promote your newsletter so you can contact readers more than once. You don’t need to have your article published in USA Today to get these benefits. In fact, getting your articles listed in an article directory (such as EzineArticles.com), can help you get listed in more specialized websites, newsletters, and magazines, helping you reach the right people!

4) Place newsletter, magazine, & newspaper ads

When spending money on ads, especially for the first time, start out small. It’s very easy to spend a ton of money, without getting any responses (a tough lesson many advertisers learn the hard way!) Email newsletters or ezines are a great way to start (start with the ones in your industry that you subscribed to in order to get ideas for your newsletter above). Make sure you offer something valuable – like your newsletter – to get as many people to respond as possible.

5) Watch out for scams!

Buying 10,000 visitors for only $29.95. Submitting your website to 150 search engines for $19.99. Getting your site listed #1 on all the search engines for just $50. Most of these sound very tempting, especially when you are just starting out. Unfortunately, most of these are great ways to drain your bank account very quickly – and make other people rich.

So learn from the real experts how to build your online business: sign up for newsletters (HighRankings.com is a great resource), read the forums (IHelpYouServices.com and WebmasterWorld.com), read articles (EzineArticles.com).

Yes, you can make money online. So, get started, keep learning and trying, and don’t ever give up!

Kris Bickell is the owner of Hi-Speed-Internet.com, a helpful affiliate site for consumers comparing high speed internet services. For information on high speed DSL, Cable, and Wireless Internet, visit: Hi-Speed-Internet.com Hi-Speed-Internet.com, and sign up for the free email course “5 Simple Ways To Improve Your Computer Speed”. © 2005 Hi-Speed-Internet.com

// Add Comment »

Blogging has become an incredibly easy way to drive traffic, recently. There are a number of e-books how that will tell you step-by-step how to drive traffic to your website using blogging. Of course, any time that you buy any book that is sold 10,000 times, giving exactly the same information on how to do something, it is almost a certainty that because 10,000 other people might be trying to do exactly the same thing, then the technique becomes overworked.

The bottom line, in my opinion, is that you simply have to create content. The search engines simply love content, whether that content is on a blog, it’s on a social network like myspace, or it’s on an article directory.

So the bottom line with creating long-term blogging traffic is to create good content and upload it to your blog. Upload something to your blog every single day. Simply write 500 words per day and upload it to your blog every single day. If your blog has the ability to let you make separate pages and put content on separate pages every single day, then be sure to keyword optimize every single thing that you do on your blog.

Even consider creating yourself multiple blogs, if it’s not easy to get individual pages in your blog to show for search results.

Who says it’s against the rules have 100 blogs, or even a thousand blogs. Who knows maybe you read that in a $50 book. I just made it up. I say give it a try. It might work.

Who knows maybe the blogs won’t let you do it, but it’s worth a try, isn’t it?

You just simply have to be creative; the bottom line is to put content on the blogs.

Do you want to learn more about how I do it? I have just completed my brand new guide to article marketing success, ‘Your Article Writing and Promotion Guide‘

Download it free here:

// Add Comment »