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Yesterday I wrote about how the Alexa traffic ranking is not very reliable. If you missed yesterdays post you can read it here.

Two advantages of a high Alexa traffic ranking is that you can make more money if you sell your site and you can charge more for advertising.

Install the Alexa toolbar

Make sure to install the Alexa toolbar yourself. If you use several computers install it on all of them. You might think of yourself as just one visitor and that you don’t make much difference. You should think of yourself as one of the statistical daily visitors to your site.
Say that you have 100 unique visitors to your site per day. In that case you really represent 1% of your visitors. Say that 10 percent of all normal visitors have the toolbar installed, then you represent 10% of the visitors that counts on Alexa. So by simply installing the toolbar on one computer and visit your site daily you will raise your site ranking with 10%.

Offer your visitors to download the Alexa toolbar

Add a link to the Alexa toolbar and ask people to install it. You can create a custom version for free with your own logo. Raise the number of repeat visitors who have the Alexa toolbar installed and you will raise your ranking. Here is really the same example as above put in another way. If 10% your visitors have the toolbar and you have 100 visitors a day. Get one more visitors with the toolbar per day and you will again raise your ranking with 10%.

Use the amazon.com affiliate program

Alexa is owned by amazon.com and they most likely will use referrals in their statistics. How this counts is a bit shady since they don’t spell it straight out. Get more people to visit amazon.com and your Alexa ranking will most likely go up.

Link your domains

If you spread your site over more than one domain each time a visitor goes from one domain to another they will be counted as a new visitor. For example if you have a forum for your site you can put that on another domain. If you have a signup form put that on another domain and redirect visitors back to your domain after they signup.

And the best way to raise your Alexa traffic ranking

The best way to raise your ranking is obviously to get more real visitors. Signup to my free web traffic newsletter and get short practical tips to take action now.

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You have a web site that is getting a decent amount of visitors. Now it is your turn to cash in.

If you do not have enough web site visitors I urge you to sign up to my totally free web traffic newsletter.

Here are 5 ways you can start making real money from your sites starting today.

Use Google Adsense

Sign up for a free Adsense account at Google and add the tracking to your site. You will get a commission for each visitor who clicks an Adsense link on your site. How much you get paid depends on the quality of the site and the keywords for the adverts on your pages. Make sure to have more than one Adsense unit on each page and add a Google search option to your site as well.

Signup for an Amazon affiliate account

Sign up for a free affiliate account from Amazon. Amazon started out selling books but now you can buy just about anything from there You will earn a rather small percentage of all sales made to a redirected customer. But, you will earn it for all products the customer buys during that buying session. Even redirecting a customer for a small priced item can give you commission for other high ticked items.

Sell products through an affiliate network

Create a free account at Clickbank, commission junction or the likes and sell affiliate products. Make sure the products you sell are a close match to your content. It’s a good idea to use different products for different pages. If you have an email list you can sell products through it as well.

Sell adult entertainment

If your site has content that is adult in nature you can make a lot of money selling subscriptions to adult membership sites. You normally get paid each month as long as a member stays with the program. There are a lot of programs, signup to this one that is one of the better converting. You don’t have to use adult content on your site. If you do make sure the hosting company allows it and that your visitors are not minors.

Sell software through regnow

Regnow has an affiliate program where you can sell software as an affiliate. You typically get at least 30% of each sale. Signup for a free account and promote software that solves problems for your target visitors.

I want to share with you a simple way to make plans that works especially good for small projects.

If you fail to plan you plan to fail

The backward planning process is a really simple planning method. Combined with persistence and a clear focus you can achieve almost anything using this method.

The backward planning process starts with you identifying a desired end state.

To make this more concrete I will use my upcoming product as an example. I plan for the end state of having 100 paying customers.

Next I need to figure out what would be the last step that brings me to my goal. I will need to sell 100 copies and I plan to do it with affiliate. I need to make my goal concrete or I have no way of knowing when I have achieved it. Let for example say I need 40 active affiliates to sell 100 products.

Before I can sell it through affiliates I need to register the product on an affiliate system like say ClickBank. Before I register it I will need a sales letter and the product will have to be completed. So the task list so far looks like this:

• 100 copies sold

• 40 affiliates as resellers

• Written sales letter

• Completed product

If this was for real I would surely break down the product part in smaller parts as well.

Now there seems to be some gaps in the planning,

I want to attract specific good affiliates. To sign them up I first need a list with their email or phone number. I also need to prepare a letter to sell them the idea. They probably want to know conversion rate of the product, to get that I will need to test my sales letter.

The plan is now

• 100 copies sold

• 40 affiliates as resellers

• Emailed affiliates

• Written email to selected affiliates

• List of affiliates in my niche with contact info

• Tested sales letter using pay per click

• Written sales letter

• Completed product

Continue like this until you have a list of achievable sub goals leading to your ultimate goal.

Now simply start working on the sub goals in reverse order.

As you make progress toward your ultimate goal you need to update the list as you inevitably discover more things that need to be done.

When you reach your ultimate goal set a new goal and do a new backward planning.

One of my sub goals is to build my email list. I want to be able to do a pre-launch to the new marketing product before it is actually released. If you are interested do signup to my free traffic tips newsletter. You will also get a new idea each day on how to build traffic to your web site and you can unsubscribe at any time.

A short recap of the ladder of influence.

The first step was normal everyday guys, the next step someone you know and the third step was an expert.

The next step in the ladder is the celebrity. A celebrity is a person everyone knows. If a celebrity says he prefers widget a instead of widget b he has even more influence than an expert. This is probably the main reason you see so many celebrities used in promotions. It is tempting to dismiss this but it has been proven in many a/b tests both in direct marketing and internet marketing. You do not appoint yourself a celebrity but generally appointed by media. Note that you can be a celebrity in one niche but a total nobody in another.

The final level and the person with the most influence is a celebrity expert. This would be for example Tiger Woods promoting a golf club. He is a golf expert and he is a celebrity.

So what are the practical implications on internet marketing?

The number one point to note is that you can quite easily climb from the first to the third step on the ladder. Instead of trying to get people to sell people right away, try to be their friend and get to know them. Once you know them you will have a much easier task selling. You should also appoint yourself an expert in your subject matter. Write about the subject, give value, be an expert. Write reports, write a book.

It is easy to get locked into the thinking that you are not an expert because there are people better than you. There are always going to be someone better than you. The only thing that really matters is how much you know in relation to someone else. If the gap is large enough you are an expert to them.

When you are a buyer it is also good to know about the ladder of influence. Are you spending too much money buying internet marketing reports?

Finally here is a quote from Dan Kennedy “Be the Wizard; Beware of the wizard”.

If you want practical tips on getting traffic to your site feel free to subscribe to my web traffic newsletter. It’s free and you will get a new idea everyday to get more visitors to your site, the rest is up to you.

Dan is one of the top copywriters in the world and a genius at direct marketing.

One of the interesting things Dan teaches is how people are influenced.

Direct marketing is all about influence. What applies in direct marketing often transfers to internet marketing. For example You can have targeted visitors in internet marketing just as with direct marketing and you can measure your success with relative ease.

When you are trying to influence someone your relation to the person makes all the difference. Your relation to the person you are trying to influencing determines your credibility.

Here are the five main categories of credibility.

When you meet a person who doesn’t know you, you will by default have low credibility. The person has no reason to trust you. If you are trying to sell a widget to this person you will have a hard time.

If you are friend with the person you are trying to influence you will have a little more influence. For example; imagine that you tell a friend to buy the widget because you like it. In this case you leave a much greater impact than if a random person did the same. The chance your friend will buy the widget is much greater.

If you are considered an expert you will have even greater influence. Say you bough a book about widgets and the author of the book told you to buy widget a. Note that you often can and should appoint yourself an expert. There is no authority appointing experts, you have to appoint yourself and provide proof that you are an expert.

Read tomorrows post to learn about the next two steps in the ladder of influence. I will also tell you why this is important for you and how you can use this knowledge.

This is not my first web site and it always takes a few weeks or months to do all that is important. And even if you do everything right it will take time for the site to draw visitors and build organic search engine traffic.

I personally try to focus on getting content up on the site first. If it turns out I really don’t like the subject I have to write about it is much easier to close down a site with few visitors. Not that it is hard to take down a site with many visitors, but, once you have it rolling it feels like a waste.

Today I will try to point out a few things I have not had the time to fix yet on this site. I hope to get around to it soon. If you read this entry much later than when it was published I hope all of it is fixed.

I hope you can go through the list and hopefully find some things you have missed as well and if you find more things I should do please comment.

All these small things work to improve the credibility of your site, important if you want people to buy from your site or give you their email.

A personal about page

Write in a personal voice in the about page. Explain what the site is about, what people will get out of it.

Add contact information to the site

Contact information is important for credibility, especially if you are selling from your site. In this blog I am not really selling things just hoping to get peoples email and give them my free daily traffic tips.

Add photo on the about page

A photo makes a site more personal. I have avoided to put any photos on my sites since I have not thought it relevant before. But it adds credibility and It should be there.

Write and publish a privacy policy

A privacy policy should tell people what they can expect from your site. There are many examples on the net and I should have one as well. I have no intention of selling contact information and I should make that clear.

Write and publish a security policy

This one is important when you are selling things from your site. Again, I don’t sell from this site but wanted to mention it here anyway.