I Could Spoil You

Having an attractive and great looking web site is only half the battle. You need people to visit your site to make it valuable.

If you are business owner, you have probably been confronted with the problem of having to choose which marketing strategy to use. You have perhaps continuously leaped from one marketing idea to the next in the hope of making greater sales and greater site visits. But the measure of real success depends really on the how you have created your marketing tool not merely on your choice of strategy. Surely, using posters can be better than flyers depending on your type of business. But your choices of words and content will still be the determining factor whether your target customers will patronize your products or services.

Increasing revenue for online businesses is quite easy. There are a few things you need to consider when driving traffic to your site as you probably know by now that the more traffic you have to your site the more money you will have. Hence, to increase traffic to your site, take note of the following considerations: utilize data feeds, blogs and e-books. Data feeds are used for creating a specific content page listing of each product and their descriptions and prices. They are specifically good for getting search engine traffic as they list detailed information about the product that people are looking for.

Blogs, on the other hand, have been used by many businesses for quite a while. It has been one of the most loved marketing strategies of people and search engines because they offer readers new information in an easy-to-read layout and in an entertaining manner. Equally, e-books can be used to dramatically increase website traffic. E-books are usually messages in PDF format that contains a business promotional message. You have to keep in mind though that before you create your own e-book you have to create an effective reason why recipients would like to pass it along to their friends and colleagues. If you can effectively create this reason, then it will be easier for you to campaign your products or services.

Nevertheless, having the right website design and the getting graphic designer is crucial in boosting the success of a business. There are many tips that different graphic designers offer to businesses. As far as your web site is concerned, it is up to you to choose which you think will work for you and which will not. Hence, the bottom line for success will still depend on good content and hard work.

For comments and suggestions kindly visit Graphic Design Company Services

New year brings new beginning and new expectation. This is the time where people get things straight and set new goals for the coming months. For most, their goal for the year is to set their finance in order. Once they have done that, they will normally try to invest their money to increase their life savings. That is good. When you have more savings, it acts as a cushion when you incur unexpected expense such as medical bills or tax increase.

For webmasters, your goal is probably to achieve certain page rank or link popularity for your site. That is good. It is even better if someone else can help you do that. To increase your link popularity there are two types of sites that can help you achieve that; web directories submission and niche article directories.

Web directories let you submit your website profile and descriptions mostly for free. They act as internet yellow pages where each website is categorized according to your website content. You can gain one link per one listing at most web directories.

Niche article directories let you submit your content. Their services are also free. At the end of the submission form, there is a resource box that lets you describe your website and businesses with a link to it. To me, this is one of the most wonderful ways of gaining back links. For one, you can get more than one links if you write more than one article. Having 100 articles to submit? Then, you can gain a 100 back links from just one site. If you submit to ten different article directories, then you can get at least 1000 back links. With web directories, you need to submit to 1000 web directories to get that much back links.

Having said that, which one is a more effective back link? One link from a web directory or one link from an article directory? The more effective back link is of course the link that comes from an article directory. This is because you submit your content to article directories, which might help viewers finding information they need. Once they read and like your article, they are most likely to click on the link and visit your website. Meanwhile, web directories merely publish information about your site which might or might not help the viewers.

Do you have to pay to publish your content at another site? Not at all. Most article directories do not charge submission fee. But as they gain in popularity, they might charge a submission fee in the future, just like web directories. Here is your chance to get 1000 back links or more if you have 100 articles to distribute.

To help you reach your goal, Novice Investing now allows you to distribute your finance/investing content for free at our article submission service. Meanwhile you can still list your site for free at our web directory service.

I`ve had people come to me and say “Traffic Exchanges are useless, and I don`t have time to click anyway”, or they`ll say “There are too many of them, and I find it all overwhelming”

Here`s what I say: Ok, the traffic may not be 100% targeted visitors, but somebody, somewhere just MIGHT like your product, affiliate program, salespage etc.

The more traffic you get, the more likely you are to actually find those people. First of all, whatever you do, don`t just jump onto any old traffic exchange, read it thoroughly, make sure you get at LEAST a 2:1 credit ratio, which basically means: you visit 2 websites, in exchange for one visitor to YOUR chosen website.

Next, join 4 or 5 good traffic exchanges,. Read everything you can about using the program, so you know you won`t be breaking the rules.

Now on to the hard work bit: Lets call the chosen exchanges A, B, C, D and E. Pull up notepad, copy/paste your referral links to the 5 programs into it (ctrl+c to copy, ctrl+v to paste). Do the same with your surfing links, (sometimes known as startpage links), and make sure you DON`T confuse the two.

You need to plug each Traffic Exchange into the other to create a circle. (example: where it asks for website put program A into program B, B into C, C into D, D into E, and finally E into A)

So now, each traffic exchange is promoting one of the others. The reason for this is to build your downlines in the various exchanges. Why work hard for traffic if you can get others to work for you?

Ok, next step can be tedious, but if you`ve chosen the right traffic exchanges, it can be kinda fun too. Open the 5 programs, using your Surf/Startpage link.

Click away at all 5 of them vigorously, say at least 30 minutes per day, for maybe 3 weeks. This SHOULD start building your downlines in the various exchanges. If it doesn`t work at first, keep trying until it does. The key here is to never give up.

Once you have a good enough downline (in YOUR opinion), and your downlines are creating traffic for you, log back into the programs, change the website link to whichever program it is you REALLY want to promote.

Don`t expect your downline to build ALL of your traffic, you may still have to “click” yourself for a while, but with time, that will change. In my favourite programs, my downlines are getting me 1000 pageviews per day.

That`s 5000 pageviews, on average, per day for free, and I rarely click at all any more. Maybe every once in a while just to keep my accounts active, depending on the programs rules.

Give it a try, and as I said before: Don`t give up! Have Fun!

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What Types of traffic are there?

So you have the best website money can buy you are immensely proud of your finished product but still no-one is buying. Why?

Your final profit is simple to calculate it is a factor of number of visitors * conversion rate * profit per visitor. The third factor, profit per visitor is usually where people focus their resources. It is a known quantity and easy to manipulate by simply charging the right price.

But the killer question is always how much traffic am I getting? And further are they the sort of visitors who will buy my wares?

With that simple statement in mind let’s have a look at the main sources of traffic on the internet today.

Search Engine Traffic

The best because it’s free. The worst because it is easily taken away. SE traffic is risky. It is easily acquired for relatively low competitive keywords with a simple knowledge of search engine optimization best practice.

Each search engine orders websites for any given term according to it’s own proprietary algorithm. This algorithm usually is based upon the various factors detailed in the SEO checklist, however the weighting applied will differ for each.

There are currently 3 major search engines being:- Google, Yahoo and MSN. Google is by far the most popularly used search tool.
For more competitive terms the SEO checklist is still applicable however will require additional effort in the key areas of the same key factors. You can investigate competition via these useful tools.

Directory Listings

These are not the massive source of traffic they once were. Submission to a directory is now more use to substantiate your link popularity, a key factor in search engine positioning. The most popular free and paid directories are included within our directory listings.

Paid Advertising

Once banner advertising reigned supreme, however today it is generally recognised that most website visitors suffer heavily from “banner blindness”. Visitors have seen so many banners over the years that they are now subconsciously tuned out when looking at the website.

Much more effective in today’s market place is the basic text link. Not surprisingly a link which is text only! These form the basis of advertising in many a Pay-Per-Click advertising campaign. Pay Per Click is the notion of paying only for visitors to a website that click on your link. Hence you will only pay for visitors to you website and not each time your banner or text link is displayed.

The two largest PPC engines are Google’s Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture services. PPC allows you to instantly drive traffic to your site without having to weight for your search engine optimization skills to be appreciated by the search engines.

Guaranteed traffic is a term used for relatively cheap traffic, usually purchased in bulk. The traffic is usually generated by a popup or popunder on another site, and in my experience has not proven very effective.

Traffic Exchanges

These tend to fall into 2 general styles. The first, ad exchanges are a reciprocal agreement, usually via a co-operative site to add a piece of code to your page(s) which displays adverts on your site. In return your site will be displayed on other members websites according to the individual co-operatives weighting factors.

The second, traffic exchanges, require you to browse websites presented on a central site. You are awarded points according to how many sites you have browsed and in turn these credits may be spent by promoting your site in the same way to other browsers.
Repeat Vistors

So often overlooked. You have done the hard work in getting a first time visitor to you site now get him to stay and later to return for more. There are various methods for making your site “sticky” these include:- including a newsletter and appropriate sign up form, supplying good content, either written by yourself or sourced from the abundance of free information on the net.

Such simple things as including contact details and appropriate use of autoresponders can make all the difference.

Viral Marketing

A rather flash title for a collection of techniques which are common sense but often forgotten. Such examples include:- writing your own articles, building communities via forums, offering free items/bonuses/competitions, producing your own e-book and issuing press releases.

If you are marketing your own product one of the most successful methods will undoubtedly be starting your own affiliate program and getting others to sell for you.

Competition

Not really a traffic category as such however careful analysis of your competition’s website, traffic, links and ad placement can all be obtained if you are diligent. This market intelligence will in turn lead to further opportunities to drive visitors to your site.

After a while it all becomes just good fun!

Paul is the resident expert at Affiliate Marketing City, at Affiliate Marketing City , a site dedicated to the automation of website optimisation and marketing.

More useful articles, tips and tools are available at www.affiliate-marketing-city.com/

How to increase your website traffic with zero cost’. It’s a bold statement don’t you think. But, believe me it’s true. You can increase your traffic by 1000% with no cost involved if you do it the right way. Continue reading if you want to know how.

I’ve outlined 5 ways to reach your target. But, please keep in mind that these are not the only ways that you can do to increase your traffic. There are hundreds of techniques to increase traffic. But these one are the proven one. I’ve used it personally. More importantly, these techniques can get you FREE traffic. You’re money is saved in your pocket. Let’s go to the
first one.

Technique #1: Linking strategy

Linking strategy is the easiest way to get free traffic. When I say “the easiest way” it does not mean that you can ask everybody to link to your site and do nothing after that. Compared to other techniques that you’ll discover, this one will take less time to do.

Here’s how to do it. First select the site in your niche market. Be selective. Choose one that has a high traffic. Usually a high traffic site is pretty stingy to put link to your site. So, the key here is to be persistent. Ask them how many visitors do they received per month and if they could link to your site. If they don’t answer your request, email them the second time.

Be persistent. If they don’t want to link to your site, ask them to trade link instead (reciprocal link). This is the last resort you want to have.

Word of warning: Don’t crowd your site with too many links. Only accept link trading if it’s really worth it.

Technique #2: Offer Free eBooks or articles

You’ll fall in love with this technique if you see what it can do to your site. This technique can create an excellent’Viral marketing’ effect. It can multiply the no of visitors to your site in a matter of days.
This most important thing about this technique is that to offer something that is really useful to your visitor. So useful that they can only get that information from you!

You need to the ‘wants’ in your need market. What problems do they encounter? Solve these problems and you have a killer articles or e-book that you can give away for free. Remember, don’t sell it. Give it away for free. If you feel really reluctant to give your article or e-book for free, you can give your visitors a partial of it. But, make sure it’s really useful. Don’t forget to put your name and your contact information in this article or e-book. Usually, if you write an article, you need to include your resource box at the very bottom of your article.

The most important task in this technique is to offer a reprint right to your visitors. What this mean is that your visitors can publish your articles or e-book to anyone in any medium; email, Ezine, website or anything. But please state your condition: Include your contact information or resource box. This will create viral effect to your visitors.

Before I forgot, there is one particular e-book compiler that is good in doing this kind of task. The name of this e-book compiler is ‘E-book Edit Pro’. With this compiler, you can offer your visitors a customizable e-book. This is a great incentive for them to distribute your article or e-book since they can put their name and information in it. If you like to know more about the excellent compiler, please visit:
http://www.ebookedit.com/

Technique #3: Classified Ad

This is the most time consuming technique compared to all 5. While it is time consuming, it is really worth it.

Tips - This technique should be used together with the above technique. Let me explain:

First, you need to write an e-book or article that you can give it away for free. Then, you need have an autoresponder. If you don’t have an autoresponder (your hosting company should provide this service for free), you can get one for free. Just type ‘free autoresponder’ in your search engine and you’ll get hundred of sites that provided free autoresponder. If you’re searching for excellent autoresponder, I’d like to suggest these autoresponder:

1. http://www.getresponse.com - Most online marketers used this service. You pay monthly to them for providing service. The most important feature is that you can personalize your autoresponder with your visitor’s name. They also provide a free service. The only catch is that there will be an ad in your email.

2. http://www.aweber.com - One of the first companies to provide autoresponder service. Try to visit their site if you want to learn more. Basically, it offers the same kind of service as getresponse.com.

3. http://www.autoresponseplus.com - You only need to pay one-time fees for this service since the software will be installed on your server. It’s great in you don’t want to pay high monthly fees. The only drawback for Autoresponseplus is that you need to have a little bit skill on how to install cgi (Common Gateway Interface) on your server.

Enough talking. Let’s continue.

After you have your own autoresponder, place your free article in this autoresponder. Now, you need to advertise your autoresponder address in the classified ad website. Don’t put your email address but your autoresponder address. The best part with this technique is that you can capture you visitor’s email. You can contact them again and again if you have any offer in the future.

Technique #4: Deliver informational pack Ezine/newsletter

People surf the net to look for information. Out of 100, only 3 people surf the net to buy something. But others are doing some research or try to find something informational.

With this keep in mind, you can attract people to come to your site if you can deliver them timely information. By producing timely information, you glued these visitors to your site preventing them from going elsewhere. This can be done by giving them free newsletter or Ezine.

This is not an easy task because there is abundance of free information on the net. You need to give them something different from these ‘free’ stuff. Try to provide something unique in your Ezine. For example, if you’re publishing music Ezine, try to make a deal with music label so that you can give special price to your subscriber. Make sure your subscriber cannot get this of kind if deal in other place. If you can create this unique proposition, you’re already on top of the world. Your Ezine will spread like fire. More people will come to your site to subscribe your unique newsletter.

Technique #5: Offer affiliate program

This is the greatest FREE traffic generator technique out there. With this technique both parties win; you and your affiliate program participant. You get more traffic and sales, they get more money from referral commission.

This topic is really a large topic. I can write a whole e-book about how to create a successful affiliate program. But, I’ll discuss the basic thing about affiliate program in here.

Basically, to create an effective affiliate program, you need to create an interest for your visitor’s to join your affiliate program. You can do this by giving them high referral fees and marketing tools for them to use. Above all, you need to make them easy to promote your product or service. Don’t make them do all the hard work. It is your job.

The next thing you need to do is to motivate them to spread the word about you. Contact them in a timely manner. Don’t forget them after they’ve joined your program. Make them feel special. In fact, they are special since they are the one who will do the promotion and advertising.
A well designed affiliate program can increase your website traffic and sales by unimaginable amount. But again, you need to devote all you effort in this technique if you want to have a successful affiliate program. Don’t do it half way. Even if you’ve to work 18 hours a day to create your own affiliate program, it’s really worth it in the future. The payoff is going to be thousand times your initial effort.

All of these techniques are free. You don’t have to spend a dime on them. Try it on your site. I’ve tried all these techniques. And they work!

Nas Romli runs a site that help people to start their own home based business within 24 hours.Many have benefited from this service.Drop by at his site for more information about this amazing service:http://www.cashflowsecret.net

There are lots of ways to get traffic to your
website however most people are interested in getting
the most traffic for the least amount of money,
preferably for free.

While it’s difficult to get anything for free nowadays
there are still a few good ways to help build your web
traffic and still pay nothing.

1. Build a second content-rich website.

Because content is king on the internet many have
adopted the idea of building a content-rich site in
addition to their original sales site.

If you set up your title, description and keyword
tags carefully and find a good balance for your keyword
saturation, you may be better able to achieve high search
engine rankings with a site that contains only good content
and information.

Once you have built your content-rich site you can then use
the content to point your viewers to your sales site.

2. Add an article page to your existing site.

By adding article pages to your web site you can
once again point your readers to your sales page.

For example, let’s say you have a website that sells
vitamins. Set up a few article pages that reference
vitamins such as a page on the benefits of vitamins,
how to take vitamins, the effects of vitamins, etc.
Allow each of the articles to reference links to your
sales page.

This can be a very effective sales tactic because you’ve
attracted the attention of someone interested in your
topic. If they read your article and like what they’ve
read they’re more apt to check out your links and you’ve
increased your chances of making a sale.

Also, with proper meta tags and keyword usage, an article
page is much more likely to make it to the top of a search
engine listing than a sales page.

3. Submit your articles

Any articles that you write should be submitted to as
many sites that accept articles as possible. This is
important because sites that accept and include your
articles in their article banks establish links for
you and you are not obligated to reciprocate.

4. Build your links through reciprocal linking

By establishing reciprocal links you are verifying to the
search engines that you have credibility. If high ranking
sites link to your site then the search engines
will find you worthy of high ranking as well.

Find sites that rank well and request a link exchange.
This can be done manually or you can purchase linking
programs that will automate this for you. Either way
spend a few weeks focusing on creating quality links
and you will soon see your link ratings go up as well.

5. Join and participate in online forums.

The internet is full of discussion forums that cover
hundreds of business and non-business topics.

Find a forum in your topic and look over the discussions.
Ask questions, contribute your expertise and get to
know some of the forum members. This is an excellent
opportunity for you to meet others and introduct your
website. It also helps build trust while helping you
learn how others have found success.

Elizabeth McGee has spent 20 years in the service and
support industry. She has moved her expertise to the
world wide web specializing in affiliate sales.
Elizabeth remains dedicated to helping businesses
find trusted tools, enhance customer service, build
confidence and increase sales. You can visit
Elizabeth’s sites at:
http://www.pro-marketing-online.com
http://www.homenotion.com

Many webmasters, including myself have a dislike for popups, popunders, exit consoles, and the like. In the early days of the Internet they were the tactics used by unscrupulous and unethical webmasters, some of which created popup/under after popup/under in an endless stream that at times ended up crashing a user’s browser.

This gave all popups and popunders a bad reputation. So bad in fact, that a whole industry cropped up to create software that blocks both popups and popunders. Microsoft has even installed a popup blocker right into its latest version of Internet Explorer.

A ton of articles have been written about the evil of using popups and popunders and enough people have downloaded and installed some form of popup blocker that most of the unscrupulous webmasters have moved onto other methods. (Such as installing spyware on user’s computers as they enter a website, but we will leave that subject for a future article.)

There are of course still webmasters out there who misuse every tool that comes along. They will not put the same effort into making money legitimately on the web as they will to create ways to trick people into clicking something. These people will always find a way to cheat with any new or old technology that comes along.

However, there are many legitimate companies and honest webmasters that use the same technology to serve their customers in a good way.

I still have to be convinced that popups will ever be a good idea. I don’t like popups of any variety. The normal popups that jump up in front of the page I am trying to view irritate me. The ones that slide in from the side or the top or the bottom of the page annoy me as do the webmasters that claim those aren’t really popups. They don’t deserve a new name.

The newest version I really hate is the glossy ad that covers half the page over the website I want to see and you are forced to click or view the ad for the time they have allotted to it before you are allowed to see the website. I know, when you watch TV you cannot just click off the commercials and these are not different, but this isn’t TV. On TV I have a limited number of channels top switch to. Even if you have satellite TV you are still much more limited compared to the number of websites I can go to instead of waiting for your ad to finish loading.

Another “creative” type of popup is the “offcenter” popup. The one where you have to drag the window over before you can close it. Or the ones with no “x” to click to shut it down. The gurus that created these codes probably think they are really really smart and creative. Some people have way too much time on their hands and need to get a life. What do they think? “Wow, I don’t see a way to close this window. How creative! Now I must buy what they are selling!” Right.

What I have seen though is legitimate companies and webmasters that are using popunders to drive traffic in a good way. They only use one popunder per visitor. They don’t create an endless stream of them. They don’t place them offcenter or create them so they cannot be closed.

These popunders do not cover the page I am trying to view. I can close them if I do not want to visit the page being advertised. They are asking users to click something related to where the visitor just came from, so they might actually be interested in the website advertised in the popunder.

As a user, I am not bothered by these and sometimes I click through to the website being advertised if I have an interest in it. Why webmasters would want to fool me into going to a website I have no interest in is beyond me. If I am not coming there to buy something I am just using their bandwidth.

I applaud the companies that have taken the advertising by popunder to a legitimate level and will pay attention to these ads in the future. I have changed my mind about at least the use of popunders.

D. David Dugan personally helps to maintain the DD&C Spyware Information site http://spyware.dugancom.com and often uses traffic from http://www.acceleratedtraffic.com

There are a lot of negative comments made about
traffic exchanges, but is it all justified?

Probably the most common negative people give
about using click exchange, or traffic exchange
programs is that the traffic from them is useless.
In many cases this is due to the way people try
to make use of the traffic from these exchange
programs.

Most of the webmasters who sign up for traffic
exchanges are trying to use a direct sales page
and consequently make no sales from the traffic
they get. When you look at how these exchanges
work it’s not hard to see why.

After you have surfed to earn your credits, or
paid for your page views with cash, your page
will be shown to other people in the program.
When your page is shown though, you will only
get a short time to make an impact on your
prospect, and many of them are going to be
only scanning for something of immediate use
as they will be trying to get as many views
as possible to get their site seen.
Many of them won’t even be looking for the
information your site offers either although
some of the better traffic exchanges like
Traffic Swarm
( http://www.cashinonline.info/recommends/ts.php )
will have categories so you can target the
audience who will be most interested in your
site, so these are the best ones to make use of.

So how can you make better use of the traffic
from traffic exchanges?

As we already stated, the use of more targeted
exchanges is a good start, so that the people
seeing the pages you put up are actually
interested in them to start with. That will
improve the chances of action being taken in
the first instance.

The second thing you can do to make people
notice your site, among the hundreds they
will surf during a traffic exchange session,
is to be different. Many of the users of the
traffic exchanges will be in the same programs
and using the same pages to display. You can
get more even from these same sites by making
your own leads page for it.

Your pages in traffic exchanges will also need
to be fast loading, as if it isn’t loaded in
time, it can’t be seen before the prospect
moves on.

So you need a fast loading, unique page with
a short reading time, but what to do with the
prospect on the page is the main issue.

Get them to sign up for an email list, be it
a course, newsletter, announcement or whatever
just capture their email address while they are
there. This way instead of getting one shot at
the prospect you will get as many as you can
email them. Instead of just the time they
pass through your page while they surf a traffic
exchange, you can send them to your page several
times, and also to other pages later. As always
a fr.ee offer will make the deal more tempting
to sign up for too, so offer a bribe to get the
email address.

Summing it all up, there are negative points
to traffic exchanges, but by using them in a
different way to most other users, they can
be made to work in your favour.

You can get useful traffic from traffic exchanges.

Douglas Titchmarsh is the owner of several websites
including http://www.cashinonline.info and
http://www.thediscountebookstore.com
He also publishes the CashInOnline Chronicle
e-zine which you can subscribe to by sending an
email to douglastitchmarsh@getresponse.com

Webmasters look for ways to get a higher ranking with search engines and increasing traffic to their website everyday. One of the ways they accomplish this is through exchanging links with other websites. In order for a link exchange program to be beneficial, one needs to focus on building a solid exchange program correctly.

With some search engines, like Google for instance, can base your rankings by how many inbound links you have. So one would think…well this can be a simple task, I’ll just work on exchanging links with any website who is willing to participate.

It’s not as simple as just sending out an email to every Webmaster that’s out there. The biggest mistake you can make is linking to sites that are not relevant to the theme of your website. Search engines frown upon sites that link to one another with no relevance. You can risk the chance of being penalized and banned from their search results. So obviously, this is not a good approach.

The best way to build a solid program is to exchange links with only targeted websites and whose customers would have an interest in your products or service. If you are just starting out, a good rule of thumb is to try and devote a few hours one to two days a week just focusing on link building. This will require effort on your part, but the time you spend will show results rather quickly.

You can start by performing a search using keywords that would pertain to your website. Take the time to view each of the sites of interest. As you visit each website, try to view as many pages as you can. As this may seem to be time consuming, never judge a website just from their home page. You want to be sure that their site is one that you would recommend to your viewers.

As your viewing these websites, another factor to consider is how their website is set up for a link exchange program.

Do they have a link to their main links page (resources, link partners, reciprocal links page, etc.) plainly visible on their home page? You don’t want to exchange links with sites that hide or bury the link to their exchange partners.

Are they listing their link partners into appropriate categories on their main links page? As your link program builds, it’s important to put your exchanges into appropriate categories. You will find that your exchange partners may fall into different categories, such as web design, home business opportunities, software, etc. Listing them in appropriate categories allows viewers quick access to the link of interest.

On each of the category pages, do they list more than 25 listings per page? It is best to keep each category page limited to 25 listings per page. If website has a links page where it requires a lot of scrolling, the changes that your link will be clicked on are slim. A solution to this is when each category begins to grow, list them in alphabetical order, than break the category into separate pages. As an example, lets say you were using web design as your category; you can use Web Design (A through M) than Web Design (N through Z) as your second category.

Does their website provide useful content, or do they have a lot of misleading information? If the website you are exchanging links with has a lot of misleading information, the viewer in most cases will not be on the site long enough to even see your link. Also keep in mind; the links you recommend plays a role on your business reputation.

Other Link Exchanges To Avoid:

There are many ways one can exchange links with other websites, but the following are ones that are not recommended.

Automated Link Software: These software programs automatically search and send email requests for a link exchange with other websites. The biggest problem with most linking software is that some of the links they search for may not be targeted to your website.

You can end up getting a lot of replies from websites you have no interest in. Which would be a waste of time on your part just by viewing these sites alone.

Link Farms: This is a definite NO! These websites are strictly set up to gain link popularity. Anyone can submit their site to their list once you have registered with them. Some link farms can have thousands of websites who have agreed to do a link exchange. Everyone who participates, must agree to link to all websites on the list.

The problems are:

• No organization or categorizing with these links.
• Most of the sites will not be relevant to yours.
• Your link can be located on a page that it is hard to find.
• Search engines will penalize sites that use link farms to gain link popularity.

It would be far more beneficial to stay away from using Link Farms. It is looked at as an artificial way to inflate link popularity having more negatives than positives.

FFA Sites: Search engines also view this as a means of artificially inflating your link popularity. FFA (free for all) sites are looked at as the same as Link Farms. You will take the risk of your site being banned from their search results.

Link Exchange Proposal:

Once you have found a website that would be appropriate for a link exchange, look for the contact information to the Webmaster and send them an email. If the contact information includes the webmasters name, make sure you personalize your email by using their first name in the subject box as well as in the heading.

You will want to include your name, your URL, a short description of your site and contact information. In the body of the email, mention what you liked about their site as well as the benefits both of you can receive by exchanging links.

There are some marketers that feel that before you send a potential link partner an email, you should add their link to your website first. Then include in your email that you have added their site and letting them know the location of their link. This option is used to help encourage a “yes” from the Webmaster.

Our advice on this option is to be selective if you’re going to use this method. Remember, not all websites will agree to do a link exchange with you. The ones that offer a solid resource to your website, will be an improvement. The ones that fit the theme of your site, but are not necessarily a solid resource, will cost you time by going back in and deleting their link.

The idea is whatever email approach you use, be brief and to the point, you do not need to send a book. If the person is interested in exchanging links with you, they will reply to your email to go over the details.

Copyright 2003-2005

John Kovacs is the CEO and founder of “A Home Business Opportunity”. His website mainly focuses on supplying free marketing tips, resources and support for home startup businesses and Internet marketing.

To get a step-by-step guide in building an online business, visit http://www.ahomebusinessopportunity.net

I see many new webmasters throw up websites with a few words about what they are offering and call it a day. Months later, these new webmasters find that they haven’t seen more than a few visitors and they are wondering what went wrong. The fact is, they could have helped themselves a lot more had they been using dynamic content on their websites.

You Are Competing For Eyeballs

The sorry state of the matter is that nowadays, you’ve got billions of other websites competing for a limited number of eyeballs. You’ve not only got to stand out from all of those static webpages, but you’ve got to find a way to get your visitors to return again and again.

It’s Not 1996 Anymore

Many new webmasters think that if they build it, the traffic will come. But, although it may have been that way in 1996, it’s not anymore. (1996 was the year I put up my first niche website, way before they were called niche websites. I went out one evening after posting it, and three hours later I came home to find it had been visited more than 101,000 times.) Those were the days!

Perl CGI Scripts To Your Rescue

If you want to make your site really pull massive amounts of visitors and have them return again and again, you need to make your website “sticky”. What this means is that you’ve got to make a website that your visitors will want to return to again and again-like flies to a streetlight. (Just don’t zap your visitors because you want them to return!) To do this, you need to stand out from the rest of the pack. There are several steps you are going to want to take. I’ll explain each one and how static pages compare to dynamic pages in each area.

Get your traffic by getting listed in search engines based on good content.
Perl CGI scripts can help you do this.
Static pages can do this well.

This is an area where static content actually performs well. Search engines love wordy websites that make sense. If you’ve got access to a lot of original information on a particular topic, you’ve got the beginnings of a good static content site. A good dynamic method of getting free content on your website is to allow your visitors to leave a message on a guestbook. Even if they are simply advertising their own sites, they are still adding content to your website that the search engines will love. There are many perl guestbooks available.

Keep your traffic by making a part of your website something that is so useful that it is addictive or “sticky”.
Perl CGI Scripts can help you do this.
This would be difficult to do with a static website.

The ultimate sticky website is the search engine. To deny this is to lie about the fact that you use one just about every time you are online. Most people think that it’s impossible to get started in this area now that Google seems to have firmly implanted itself as number one. This is simple not true since there are many niche areas that could still be dominated. There are many perl search engine scripts available.

Multiply your traffic by encouraging word of mouth advertising.
Perl CGI scripts can help you do this.
This would be difficult to do with a static website.

Another good method of promotion is to have your visitors (who keep coming back because of your search engine or other dynamic content) refer their friends so that they can visit your site over and over. It is said that birds of a feather flock together so if your visitor liked your website, it’s a good bet they know other people who would like it too. There are many perl refer-a-friend scripts available.

Pull your traffic back again by reminding your visitors (and their friends) about your website, and subsequently any products that you are selling.
Perl CGI scripts can help you do this.
Static pages can’t do this at all.

Once you’ve got your content, visitors, and their friends, it’s time to get them to subscribe to your mailing list. Once they are reading your mailing list (make it something they’ll be interested in or they’ll unsubscribe just as fast) you can squeeze in an ad or two for products that you are either selling or are an affiliate for. This is where the traffic can really start to snowball! There are many perl mailing list scripts available.

Protect your e-mail address from spam robots.
Perl CGI scripts can help you do this.
Static pages can’t do this at all.

Make sure that you are not leaving bait for spam robots. If you’ve got your e-mail address displayed on your website in plain view, you’re probably getting a great deal of spam from sites you’ve never even visited. Don’t think that putting the word ‘at’ instead of an ‘@’ symbol is going to stop them…any programmer worth their salt could write a robot that could beat that “security”. The only secure way to allow your visitors to e-mail you without making it easy for spammers to harvest your e-mail address is to use a website contact form. There are many perl contact form scripts available.

Static Pages Will Be Outperformed By Your Dynamic Website

Out of our five methods for driving massive traffic to your website, we’ve just seen that only one of them is easily achievable with static webpages. Which brings us back to our original topic. Why are so many new webmasters still putting together static webpages and wondering why they aren’t getting any visitors? Dynamic content is definitely the way to get lots of traffic to your website.

Yes, every website needs it’s fair share of static content because as we’ve seen, this is how the search engines find and list your website. But that’s only effective for attracting and keeping the search engines’ attention. To attract and keep your visitors’ attention, and to truly drive massive traffic to your website over and over again, you’re going to need some dynamic content to keep them coming back. And that’s exactly the type of work that perl cgi scripts are really good at.

Thomas J. Delorme has been designing websites and perl cgi scripts since 1996.

He runs many successful websites, including his custom website design site, and his affiliate link protection service.