A good point that was brought up in a recent comment that was posted was ‘How Do You Get Targeted Traffic To Your Website?’ I have been thinking about this one and there are quite a few methods of choosing your traffic. Firstly make sure you know what your targeted traffic is.

Find People that are Interested in what You are
Just say for example your website niche is sports, you really do not want to go posting around a website that is related to web designing, you will not find your audience there and they just will not want to even visit your website. You will be wasting your advertising time by attracting non-targeted traffic.

Once you find a place where you can start discussing your website niche, you will need to make sure you seize the opportunity to promote your website. If there is a section that allows you to post your website, do it! This is the perfect place to get people reading. If the forum allows it you can also have a signature and make sure it stands out in the forum post. If it stands out to you, then it most likely will for others.

Finding a very popular website that is the same niche as yours is good, but do not forget that other websites are growing and they would like some love from you aswell It will be good to make conversation with other websites, and ask for a few links back and forth, there is no harm in asking. You can also ask whether you can write an article on their website, this will help gain you targeted traffic.

Make sure you are Search Engine Optimized
It is important that your website is ready for the search engines to absorb your website information. So when people search for keywords websites like yours, you in amongst the results!

This could include the following;
- Use keywords related to your website and that you think other people would search for.
- Make sure your Meta tags in your code are included.
- Submit your website to the search engines if you do not want to wait. There is a lot of things you can do to optimize your website.

I am no SEO expert yet, but there are many websites out there that will help optimize your website.

Build Your Community
You might want to think about offering something to your readers that will allow them to discuss your niche. Discussions about your niche keep targeted visitors entertained as they will want to talk with others about your posts and share their information. You can do this by offering specialized forums, chat services, a shout box for example.

If you build a community it will allow for future visitors to search for information. Data that is stored on your website will be useful for the future. If someone wants to know something related to your niche they will know that they can most likely visit your website and know they can find what they are looking for. This will help make your visitors return over and over, when information is continuously building on your website.

If you have some Money to Spend
If you have some spare money lying around and you want to invest it in your website, you may want to start a Pay-Per-Click campaign. Google Adwords is a perfect example of this service. You only pay when your advert is clicked and you choose the keywords that your site appears to. You have the management to help improve your position in search engine rankings and your position is affected by how much you are willing to pay per click.

Make Sure You Keep Track
Keeping track of where your traffic is coming from with analytics is a great way to see if your traffic is targeted. If your receiving traffic from websites you want it from and websites similar to your niche, then you are getting that targeted traffic you strive for.

I hope this helps!

I’m guilty of this one, but I thought I’d put out the post anyway.  One key ingredient to success is a great monetization strategy.  Adsense doesn’t cut it on most blogs, MMO bloggers are too advanced for most affiliate programs… what’s that leave?  Your own products.

It takes all of 2-3 hours to create a short ebook, or report that you can sell on your website.  It can be on any topic, but it should be on one that you know quite a bit about.  For example, on a blog like this, an ebook showing how to rake in traffic from social media sites would be a great product.  A quick 10 page report that shows how to build traffic from stumbleupon, digg, reddit, and more is something that would interest your target audience, bloggers.

The first step is obviously creating the ebook.  This won’t take nearly as long as you imagine.  What you’ll need to do is open up Word, or whatever word processing software you use, and write an outline.  Develop bullet points from your outline, and then start writing.  You’d be amazed at how easy it is to put out 10 pages of information.

Next, we’ll need to compile the ebook, and make it look attractive.  Here is where I usually leave it to the people who excel in this area, and contact a freelancer.   Guru.Com, Elance.com, and Scriptlance.com are all good places to start.  You can also post your ad looking for a freelancer, free, at Digitalpoint.

Let them compile the book for you and then begin working on a landing page.  There are landing page templates all over the web that you can use for the code, and you’ll simply write your own sales copy and provide a “buy now” button from paypal.  It’s that simple.  You can automate the process so that paypal automatically sends them to the download page upon purchase, and it gets even simpler.

So really… why aren’t you selling your own products?

Article submission isn’t what it used to be.  It’s still effetive, but only if you work out a complete strategy to accompany your submitted articles.  Article Submission jumped into the limelight when claims of “bum marketers” making millions submitting articles started to hit the main stream internet press (blogs).  And it can still be effective, let me show you how.

Bum Marketing

Bum Marketing was a term that referred to the lazy, and easy manner in which results were obtained just by submitting an article, sitting back and collecting cash.  What marketers used to do, and still do to an extent, was submit articles to high pagerank article directories, which gave them instant authority in their niche.  They’d laser target their keywords, and this would give them quick results in non-competitive niches.  More often than not, these articles would sit in the top 5 results in Google, just based on the trust factor of the article directories the articles had been submitted to.  All that was left to do after submitting these articles, was to add a link within them, to your landing page, blog or website.

How it Works

First you’ll need to do some keyword research.  You’ll be much better served by using long-tail’s rather than competitive keywords.  The smaller the competition for a keyword, the less traffic it’ll bring you, BUT it will also be much easier to rank for.  It’s pretty simple to rank for uncompetitive keywords, so you’ll want to target them, and just want to do more work within the smaller niches.  Your only other option is slow results within a competitive niche.  So trust me, take the long tail’s.

After submitting your keyword rich article (3-5% keyword density), you need to build some links.  One of the best ways to accomplish this is by using Web 2.0 sites such as Twitter, and Squidoo.  Make a Squidoo lense, and link it to your article… link your article to your landing page, blog, or website.  You can also build links by commenting on Do Follow blogs, or by buying text links that pass juice.  Make sure to target your anchor text so that it includes your keywords.

The key is to link it to as many sources as you can find (the article) and then link the article to your blog, landing page, or website.  You can also link to your blog, landing page, or website from within the sources that you are bulding links for the articles… i.e. the Squidoo lense.

The objective is to obtain top rankings for non-competitive niches for your articles.  These articles will then pass juice on to your landing page, blog, or website.  Just remember, you have to get the links to make this work now!

I visit a lot of blogs daily and I’m starting to see some of these die off. A few haven’t been updated in over a month, and some just keep posting links to other sites. What happened? Sadly, these bloggers probably gave up on their blog due to lack of results. Why don’t these bloggers make any money?

1. They aren’t passionate about blogging. Blogging isn’t something that allows you to throw up some meaningless content and then sit back while your Paypal account grows larger. It doesn’t work that way. I think most people that start blogging to make money forget that it takes work to succeed. Or maybe they are just mesmerized by the numbers.
2. Lack of commitment. Bloggers are a different breed. It takes a lot of commitment to be able to manage a blog on a day in and day out basis. The truth is that most bloggers are in it for a quick buck… if that doesn’t happen, they won’t stick around long. Few realize the skills and dedication it takes to successfully run a blog.
3. Lack of knowledge. When I started blogging, I jumped in head first. I hardly did anything the first month that didn’t include information gathering. I visited lots of other blogs, and I learned everything I could. I became an expert in the blogging field in a very short amount of time. But this wasn’t an accident. It took a lot to get me to this point.
4. Disinterest in their topic. Another blog pitfall. You have to write about something you are passionate about. If you love sports, but your blog is about celebrity gossip. It won’t be long before you were wishing that you had written about something you cared about.
5. Can’t manage time. There are so many things to do when it comes to running a blog. These people just can’t prioritize so that they can get things done the right way.
6. Getting discouraged too easily. Don’t ever fall into this category. You are going to take criticism… it happens. You should never allow the cheap shots your readers take at you, to affect your attitude. People live to see others fail. Prove them wrong!
7. Taking on too many projects at once. You can’t walk before you can crawl. Why try to start on ten new projects before you’ve completed one successfully?
8. Dishonest or has a bad attitude. You’ve seen them. These are the bloggers that are quickly squeezed out by the blog community. There isn’t a place in our world for them, so we send them packing in a hurry.
9. Improper monetization strategies. This could fall into the “lack of knowledge” category, but I think it deserves it’s own. You’ve seen these people. These are the ones with off-colored Adsense ads, too many affiliate links, and a general passion to make money while providing no service to their readers.
10. Bad money management. I’m a firm believer that the money your blog makes the first few months should be reinvested. Whether it be in advertising, education, or a new design… invested money is money well spent.
11. Failure to communicate ideas. You can’t make a decent amount of money in the blog world without being able to communicate effectively. If you are a terrible writer… you generally aren’t going to be very successful in this community. You don’t have to be a great writer, just an effective one.
12. Lack of social skills. Social skills? Online? Yes! It takes a great deal of support for your blog to ever get anywhere. If you can’t build relationships with other bloggers, you are better off trying something else.

Backlinks make the blogosphere go ’round.  We can’t lie to ourselves and assume that we can survive long term without sites like Google, Technorati, Yahoo, and others that rely heavily on linkage data.  So the only way to survive in an ever-changing world is to adapt.  And the only way to adapt to the Web 2.0 shift, is by building backlinks at a rapid rate.  The higher the authority, the better!

1. Comment on Do Follow Blogs - Do Follow blogs are basically the rebels of the blogosphere.  Wordpress adds an attribute (rel=”nofollow”) to all outgoing links originating from the comment field of your blog.  They do this to fight spam, but it also hurts legitimate bloggers looking to make friends, comment, and obtain a few links at the same time.  If you comment on Do follow blogs, you’ll get a link for every comment you post.  You can check out a great Do-Follow blog list in just about every corner of the web.  Just do a Google search and you’ll be met with many of these lists.
2. Article Submission - Once called “bum marketing”, the changes in Google’s algorithm have all but removed the “bum” from the title.  It’s not as easy as submitting an article, cross-linking to it and your blog, and sitting back as the money comes in any more.  But, it’s still an effective way to generate high-profile backlinks.
3. Forums - Most of you don’t have your link in the footer of your forum profile?  Why?  This is another super easy way to build links.
4. Blog Carnivals - Blog Carnivals used to be pretty popular, but they are a dying breed.  However, if you can find them, they can still get you quite a few links.  Blog Carnivals are basically a group of blogs that get together and write about the same topic.  One blogger decides to link to all of the articles (that’s one link!), and the bloggers that take part usually decide to link to the posts as well (several links!).
5. Social Bookmarking - Every time you submit a post to sites like Digg, or REddit, you get a backlink to accompany that.  It’s one more easy way to generate a link or two for EVERY post that you create.
6. Link to others - Generally if you link to other blogs, they will be more inclined to return the favor at some point.  Try it!
7. Write Good Content - This should go without saying, but if your content is good, it’s going to get linked to no matter what you do.  People are always linking to good content they find in the blogosphere.