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5 easy ways to turn your web traffic into money

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.

What is a Blogroll?

What is a Blogroll and what is the advantage to having one public? I just got asked this question after helping a friend setting up a new Wordpress blog.

A blogroll is simply a list to other related blogs often with a short snippet of the latest post.

For SEO its good to be featured on other peoples blogrolls. One way incoming links to your site from related content is one of the most if not the very most important component in Search Engine Optimization. Also, if your blog gets featured on a high traffic site you will get visitors.

The best way to get your blog featured in other peoples blogrolls is to create good content and to do it consistently. If you happen to know the person who writes the blog it does not hurt to ask.

For visitors to your site a blogroll can be good. Make sure you direct them to quality blogs related to your content.

Some webmasters are worried that adding outgoing links from their site will lower their ranking. Google recently wrote in their official blog that outgoing links to relevant sites will in fact NOT harm your ranking but rather improve it. You can read the official statement here. There are also several well known internet marketers that have come to the same conclusion even before the official statement.

Being featured in other people’s blogrolls helps you getting web traffic. The only problem is that it will usually take time for people to notice you and start linking to you. To get several other ideas on how to build your web traffic you can subscribe to me free web traffic newsletter.

A dead easy way to get free matching photos for your Blog

You might have noticed that my last few Blog entries have a small icon at the bottom of each post. The icon is from a service called Zemanta. Zemanta is a really nice new service that will assists you in your blogging.

The program is available as a free Firefox addon, and that is the version I am using. You can also get it as a plug-in for Wordpress. There is no real difference in using the addon version or the plug-in, you have access to the same functions. If you are writing alone on your Blog the add-in works fine and it’s also best if you only want to try it out. Then if you like it you can install the plug-in and the functionality will be there for everyone writing on your Blog.

When you write a Blog post with Zemanta installed you will see a few extra windows. The image window matches your text with images from free photo sites on the internet. All photos are cleared for copyright. To add an image you like into your Blog simply click on the image and you have it there with credits and everything.

Another fine feature is the suggestion window. Here you see a list of other Blog entries with related information to your post. This is really great for research and when you want to add references to your text.

If you are interested in getting more web traffic, and I think you are. You should make sure your blog rss feed is added to the sources Zemanta uses for its suggestions. Then you have a chance of getting your Blog entries suggested to all users of Zemanta. Zemanta today gets its suggestions from Facebook, MyBlogLog and Twitter (and as usual get my traffic tips from yourtraffictips.com ).

I like Zemanta and will likely continue to use it. Sometimes the suggested images are a bit off but, before I mostly did not even bother with images. Now adding a matching image to a post takes about 3 seconds.

Take a visit to http://www.zemanta.com and give it a test. It will save you time and improve your posts.

Don’t plan to fail

Yesterday I wrote about how important it is to focus on your current goal. I guess its even more important to have goals and a plan to reach the goal.

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.

How to focus on one best web traffic tactic

You want to get something done. Then the most important thing is to focus your attention.

If you divide your attention you will get stressed up but usually not much more will happen.

That is why I gave the advice in another post about creating a list with your daily targets.

In software development there is a very popular new development methodology called Scrum. One of the main components in Scrum is to divide the work up in sprints. In scrum you focus your attention on the work closest in time.

A project is divided into a number of sprints and each sprint start with the team deciding on what to focus on during the sprint.

Each day in Scrum is started with a team gathering where every one says what they will focus on during the day.

Focus is important since you make progress on what you focus on. If you don’t focus your attention you are probably not spending your time where it makes the most difference.

I start my day by writing down my goals for the day. Actually I write my goals two times, one for my daytime job and one for my other projects. In this way I can focus on work during work time and my new projects during my free time.

I have all my meetings scheduled in Outlook. I also schedule meetings each day with myself having reminders saying things like “Are you doing the right thing right now”. It is easy to get sidetracked and I like getting reminded like that.

If you are getting my newsletter with web traffic tips, focus on one tip at a time. Store all the tips in a folder and select one that you will use to get results. If you try to use them all you will spread your attention.

Focus on one marketing tactic at a time and see if it works for you.

Make sure search engines updates your updates

Do you have a blog like this one? Then you have probably noticed the word ping. What is a ping?

A ping is simply a signal send out from your blog to let everyone know it has been updated. Search engines and a lot of other web services are listening to pings to know when to send their bots to crawl your site.

If you use Wordpress for your blog it will send out a ping every time your post a new comment or edit a post. I use a plugin called smart update pinger that only pings when I do a new post. You can download it for free from; http://daven.se/usefulstuff/wordpress-plugins.html

The default Wordpress installation uses a service called pingomatic for its pings. Pingomatic gets the ping from the blog when it is updated and relays the ping to other ping servers.

One problem with pingomatic is that if it for some reason decides your sites is spamming, ie send too many pings it will just stop relaying your pings to the services. Another problem is that if the pingomatic service is down no ping server will be notified of your update.

You will no longer notify the search engines of new content and you will get fewer visitors.

Don’t put all your eggs in the same basket. It is much better to use a direct list of ping servers and not rely on one single service.

Do a search on google to find a list, they are everywhere. Also get rid of pingomatic from your list or you will send duplicate pings to some services and that will be considered spam.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 20+ Online Multiple-Services Blog Pingers
• Does pinging increase traffic?

Are people talking behind your back?

Do you want to know what people are saying about you, your site or your products?

Google alerts let you subscribe to a search phrase. If you signup to the free service you get a new mail each day on new discoveries by the google bots for your phrases.

Subscribe to keywords related to your product or site and you will discover new forums and blogs. Some I guarantee you did not know existed.

Subscribe to you’re your name as a keyphrase and you will now right away when something is written about you on the internet.

If you have a product, subscribe to all news related to your product. I have several software products and I get alerts as soon as the software is discussed somewhere. If someone is asking a question I can jump in and answer it. If someone is complaining about the program I can go in and explain.

I have also found completely new uses for my software. People have used the software to solve issues with it I did not even know existed. Things I would not know today if I did not have my alerts setup.

Say you write a blog about “personal development”, just enter “personal development” in google alert. Each day you will get a new mail listing new discussions, blogs and news related to “personal development”. This reminds me, I have a few more terms I should subscribe to.

Another thing you should subscribe to is my free web traffic mailing list at www.YourTrafficTips.com. You will get a new web traffic tip in your inbox each day. Each tip is written as short as possible with a step by step list, it will take you no more than 1 minute to read if you don’t take action, which you should though.

My social bookmarking sites of choice

A very small part of developing my marketing software is to decide among all the hundreds of social bookmarking services to support. I just went through my list of sites. What a perfect time to share the ones I use regularly with you all.

If you think there are others that should be in the list please feel free to comment on this post. You should have an account on these bookmarking sites. They are really the top ones. As usual don’t spam the sites, only post good content that makes sense to others.

Delcious
Digg
Facebook
Faves
FriendFeed
Furl
Magnolia
Propeller
Reddit
Stumble Upon
Technorati
Twitter
Yahoo Buzz

Depending on your niche there might be specialized sites as well. You need to search out these as well, for you they might be where the real gold is. A quick way to submit your sites to a lot of these is to use the free social marker service. You simply fill in the information about your page and check the ones you want to use. The service then takes you through them one after another. It will save you time.

If you liked this and want more tips on how to attract traffic to your web site do sign up to my free web traffic newsletter. You will also be among the first to know when my new program will be released. In the beginning there will be a very limited number of spaces in the program.

The first test of my new marketing software

Today I am feeling a lot better after the cold and I feel ready to share, information that is, not the cold.

First I will ramble a bit but please stay with me. I will provide some information that is hopefully useful.

Yesterday I did a first small test of my new social promotion software with anyone besides myself.

I started easy and used my brother, always a good idea to start torturing someone you know. I originally planned on doing this a week ago but I first ran a real test myself using the program from start as I intended it to be used. And, I ended up with a long list of work that just had to be done before I could show it to anyone.

Yesterday my brother had a go with the program and now I have an even longer list of things that I have to fix, good changes though.

It always amazes me that the final stretch in product development takes so long.

I should not be surprised though.

I have after all been involved with software development for 20 years and I should know the process by now. If you are new to product development or outsource your development you can count on it going to take longer than you expect, much longer. Even the simplest things can end up having small problems you did not think about when you wrote the task.

In the gaming industry where I have spent most of my career this happens all the time.

We develop a feature and think every thing is done and fine. The publisher, ie the customer, sees a build and wants changes made. There are competing products released that have features we just have to have as well.

Then there is the final problem that somehow always surface. Somewhere we have exceeded memory and performance budgets and need a phase with optimization to get the game up to release quality. And the story goes on with other features breaking this features, TCRs and submissions.

When I am working on high profile games where there is a $10 million budgets it always amazes me that there comes out a game in the end at all.

By the way, the game I work on now is coming along just fine and it really looks like its going to end up as a great game after all. I am really happy to be working with so many talented people. But that is a totally different topic.

Compared to the problem with developing games my problems are really nothing and I am very glad to have the feedback to make my new software as good as possible.

I have now set an internal goal to have the program released in January. If you want to be in the loop subscribe to my traffic tip newsletter. I will probably write more about it here as well as this project it my current main focus.

It is that time of the year, again

I just caught a cold. Something all Swedish people know will happen just about every autumn. One thing that really amazes me is the lack of good medicines for the common cold available here in Sweden.

I supposed it is not that bad and you are supposed to take it.

In the US on the other hand, there are shelves after shelves with good medicine. I am so glad I filled my stock if NyQuil on my last visit.

Anyway, I don’t have the energy to write much today. I expect to do better tomorrow though, stay tuned.

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