In his post he stated the need and importance for gathering alexa users from around the world. It is very important to get visitors from other countries to increase our Alexa ranking. So how do you get visitors from around the world? Easy, you join social blog networks and directories like BlogCatalog or Social Spark.

BlogCatalog

One great resource for finding Alexa users from around the world is Blog Catalog. Locating bloggers from other countries is easy. First, Sign up for an account on blog catalog. Once logged in, visit the directory and start browsing blogs by country. Try to request as many blogroll/ link exchanged with various bloggers from other countries. Another way to drive traffic from these blogs is to ask them if you could do a guest post on their blog. This will most likely result in a increase in foreign traffic to your blog, thus increasing your alexa rank. Make sure that your post is relevant content to their blog and not just yours.

I used this technique and it did increase my blog’s Alexa rank significantly. My blog has been active for about 3 months when this post was written and now has an Alexa rank under 89K. That shows the power of this technique.

I’m sure there are plenty more social blog networks out there to help you find more foreign Alexa users. Just wash, rinse, and repeat the process.

What other methods are you aware of to help increase your alexa ranking?

Using Google Insights:

The first thing to do is to visit http://www.google.com/insights/search/ and sign in to your google account at the top right.

The home page will look something like this:

Google also provides data for categories, seasonal, and geographic keyword data. Make sure you take the time to look over each section.

Finding a niche market:

To find a niche market all you have to do is type a keyword you want to research. Google insights will then dig through it’s data providing you with a goldmine of top searched keywords and keyword phrases.

So for this example I will research rifle scopes. I’ll type rifle scopes in the search bar, choose U.S.A., and gather the data all the way back from 2007 for the top keywords and phrases.

Google will then generate a graph like this:

Click to enlarge

Don’t mind the data on the graph it’s self. You just want to pay attention to the relative volume to see if the term is rising. You can even compare this term with a second one. Just hit the plus sign to add a phrase and google will generate a chart to compare the data.

Click on the add search term

Now I’m able to compare two different keyword terms to see which is better. For this example I’ll use the term spotting scopes.

spotting scopes

This is the data google provided. You can compare the relative volume of both.

Click to enlarge

Google Insights also provides related terms on the rise in google. This enables you to dig deeper to reveal potential niche markets and sub-niche markets. After I scroll down I clicked on the “leupold rifle scopes” term to dig a little deeper.

I clicked leupold rifle scopes to dig deeper

Then google provided me with the common search terms and keyword terms on the rise.

Now I know the search volume and keywords on the rise to profit from. Google Insights will help you dig through all the junk and help you find those true niche markets, making all you niche marketing efforts worth wild.

Go and check out his tool and let me know what you think. Was it easy to use and find your niche market?

Doing something innovative and creative online, as well as using the latest technology, will always getattention.  For example, adding animation, flash, or a photo can create a buzz about the product or service that you’re selling.  Just as e-mail, which contains jokes and strange pictures, gets forwarded all around the planet so too can your marketing message make the rounds.  Come up with a marketing message and then forward it to family, friends, and anyone else you know.

Any time that you can get someone else to forward your e-mail to others you get the information out there about your website and the product or service you’re selling.  One key to great internet marketing is remembering that quality, not quantity, counts.  Avoid buying e-mail lists and focus instead on building your own with people who are actually interested in what you’re selling.  Today internet marketing isn’t about how many people you get to your website or how many people are on your e-mail list.  Today internet marketing is all about how people react to your website and what it is that you’re selling.

Personalizing Your Website

Even if you’re not selling a product or service that is for a specific target audience you need to have a website that is personalized.  For example, even though Amazon sells products that appeal to all target audiences they have still managed to create a personalized website that fits every customer.  This is the goal of personalization technology.

Try to limit the number of products or services that you’re offering to your customers.  “Information overload” is one of the biggest problems on the Internet.  If you give your customers too many choices they’ll have a hard time making a decision.  The key to avoiding information overload is organization as well as making sure that products and services are directed towards your customers.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that internet marketing stop when you generate a sale. Your current customers are the ideal way for you to reach new customers.  You want to get leads from your customers by using marketing concepts such as “tell a friend” e-mails.

One mistake that many small online businesses make is to focus only on self-promotion.  The bottom line is that customers don’t care about you.  They only care about what it is that you’re selling and what you can do for them.  When someone visits your website you have about ten seconds to get their attention before they move on to the next website.  That means that you have ten seconds to tell this person why it is that they need you.  The home page of your website should tell people why your service or product is just right for them.  Your home page should include information about your company and/or have a personal bio about who you are.

If you’re not sure about whether your website is reaching the right people, ask them.  If you provide something of value to people who visit your website they’ll give you information.  Things of value include contests, coupons, and free products.  Make sure that you let them know they can trust you by including a privacy policy on your website that states you won’t share any personal information they provide with anyone else.  Stick to your policy and never sell the information your customers provide you with.  Otherwise you’ll lose and abuse their trust.

Once you know the demographics of your customers you’ll know how to spend your marketing budget.  You can focus your online promotions using targeted marketing strategy.  Even though you may end up with fewer people visiting your website, targeted internet marketing is the way to go.

Come back for part 3 of the 10 part series on target traffic generation.

• What age group are you trying to sell to?
• Are you selling to a specific ethnic group or gender?
• Will most of your customers be married or single?
• How fast will most Internet connections be?
• Will you target customers who have children?
• What level of education will most of your customers have?
• Where will most of your customers live?
• Will your customers have any specific hobbies?

The more you know about your customers the easier it will be to come up with a marketing plan.  You’ll also be able to design a website that is the most appealing to these customers.  The biggest advantage of marketing on the Internet is that it allows you to become very targeted towards your desired customers.
Targeting Different Types of Customers

Marketing online is the same as marketing anywhere else.  There are certain products, colors, themes, and lingo that will appeal more to some customers than to others. When you know what type of customers you’re targeting you can meet their needs so that you grab their attention.  When you use certain features that pull customers to your website you have the ability to gain their attention, loyalty, and trust.  For example, studies show that most female shoppers like to save money and time.  Over 80% of purchases in the home are influenced in some way by women.  As well, these same studies show that women like to able to compare costs fast and easily without getting any kind of sales pressure.  If you’re trying to target women customers some things that you should keep in mind include (1) giving them a feeling of comfort and community, (2) let your website deal with everyday problems, and (3) focus on education, health, and family.
What People Are Buying

The most common (and best) advice I’ve ever heard given for ANYONE wanting to sell online is this: Sell what people are buying.

One of the most unbeaten ways that you can find out what customers want to buy, and find out more information about, is to do market studies.  When you watch and listen to what it is that customers are interested in, you raise your chances of getting their attention and giving them the information that they are searching for.

Take some time to carefully check the products and the services that you’re offering on your website or through your website.  You should be asking yourself include (1) what are the rewards and disadvantages to your business of selling or advertising online, (2) will you take payment online, (3) what details will you have to consider about shipping your product to customers, and (4) are you willing to constantly update and keep up your website.

When you have an obvious business idea in mind, and know exactly what it is that you’re selling, you’ll want to find out what other businesses out there offer the same product or service.  You might want to talk to potential customers to see how they react to your product.

Find other websites that are related to your business and take some time checking them out.  Look at how they endorse and market similar products or services as well as how each website is laid out and navigated. If a similar website uses a shopping cart for online purchases check it out.  See how smoothly the process works and what can be done to perk up the process.  Don’t just look at e-commerce sites that are within your own country since customers won’t limit their shopping to those countries where they live.  Look at the way other countries handle e-commerce websites so that you have a broad spectrum of websites to compare yours with.

Here are some things that you should be asking yourself when you’re doing market research for your online business:

• Who are your probable customers?
• What other businesses sell the same products or services?
• Who is going to be your objective market and how are you going to reach them?
• How much will it cost you to market, manufacture, and deliver your product or service?
• Who is your competition?
• How much can you fairly charge for your product or service?

What Are Customers Buying: There are many ways that you can find out what customers are buying both from online businesses and from brick and mortar businesses.  Once you find out what customers are buying you can concentrate your website content and articles on what your mainstream customers are looking for.  Some of the ways that you can find out what people are buying include:

• Check out the malls.  Go to a shopping mall and sit for awhile.  Make note of the shopping behaviours of those people who are around you.

• Establish what stores have all the action.  Watch to see which stores have the most consumer traffic.  Take a look inside to see what is being sold, how it is being sold, how much it is selling for, and how the product is being marketed.

• Take a look at advertising and marketing.  Although you may not be selling the same items as those stores in the mall you should still a look at what makes these stores stand out among the rest.  How are the products grouped together in the store?  How is the product being advertised.

• Get on mailing lists and see what kind of offers you get consistently.

• Search for related keywords and see what pay per click ads are running consistently (week after week, month after month).

What you find out from brick and mortar stores can be applied to your online business.  Learn what works when it comes to advertising online.  Find out what is visually appealing for consumers that makes them want to buy that particular product.

Got questions? Drop me a comment!

Creating Content if You Don’t Write

If you don’t write, or know how to take photographs, there are still some things that you can do to generate content for your website:

Buy content

You can buy images and photographs that are of high quality without spending a lot of money. Spending a few hundred dollars on some great images will go a long way in giving your website a professional look. There are many websites on the Internet where you can find images and photographs that relate to your business. It’s not recommended that you buy written content for the simple reason that it’s not cost effective. Many of the services on the Internet that supply written content are geared towards large online companies that have a big marketing budget. The goal of content on your website is to make your company and product appear credible. You can accomplish this by having a few well placed articles on your web pages.

Let customers create content

You can have your customers generate content for your website. One way to do this is by creating a section entitled “Frequently Asked Questions”. Here your customers can ask you questions about your product or service and you can list your answers. You can rotate this type of information and feature a different question every week. Another way to create content is by holding a contest by asking customers to send you stories about how they enjoy your product or how it has helped them in some way. You can offer a special prize such as a coupon for free product. You can take the best written stories and post them on your web pages. Not only is this type of material great content for your website, it also acts as a testimonial.

Links to other content

Another way that you can get updated content for your website without having to write it yourself is by posting headlines of related news items to your website. Then simply provide a link from the headline to the original article. Content for small businesses on the Internet doesn’t have to be original. It should, however, be useful to the people who are reading your website. The content you choose for your website will show your customers that you care enough about the information that you’re providing them with to post links to original articles. This information can include anything from health issues to new items to information about family. Make sure that you accurately quote your sources and never copy articles without first getting permission.

The Importance of Communication

One thing that you need to remember as you make the decisions about what you want to say on your website is the importance of communication in anything that you write. These days competition for communication on the Internet is difficult. The sheer volume of information being routed on the Internet is a huge communications barrier. Every day people on the web are bombarded with websites and businesses lobbying for their attention.

People are busy and time is short. So it’s all the more important to know how to get your marketing message across. The key aspects of good customer communication inclue:

• the ability to read customers

• the ability to understand which communication style your customers are most likely to pay attention to, and

• the ability to adapt your website content for your customers.

When you communicate with your customers through the Internet you have only one shot at communicating your marketing message. You need to keep in mind that those customers, and potential customers, reading your marketing message don’t have a long time to read what you have to say….so you better say it fast, accurately, and in words that they want to hear. Learn how to keep it simple and direct.

There are some basic ideas that you should keep in mind when you’re writing website content that customers want to read:

Identify and clarify the marketing message that you want to get across to your customers. When you pinpoint your focus you have the ability to zoom in and give your customers content that they can rely on and trust.

Gather information. Don’t just write website content for the sake of filling up your web space. Find out what customers want to read and then write for them

Evaluate the information that you’re writing about. Make sure that the information that you’re basing your website content on is precise and reliable. Does the information represent the points of view about your online business that you want to get across? Is the information fact or opinion? Many times a combination of (1) fact, and (2) customer opinion, go hand in hand for writing web content that people want to read.

Consider the alternatives and implications of what you write. Make sure that you draw the appropriate conclusions from what you write and that your readers will draw the same conclusions about your web content. What are the costs, benefits, and consequences of the content that you have on your website? Take the time to weigh the advantages and disadvantages of moving away from Search Engine Optimization techniques and instead focusing on writing what people want to read.

If you’re like me and have been using BANS (Build A Niche Store) for a while, then you know that finding resources is vital to your affiliate success.  Many of you BANS users may already know about The Niche Store Builder The The Niche Store Builder is run and owned by Mark Hansen.

Mark Hansen has been around website development since 1994.  His skills revolve around web application development and search engine positioning strategies, specifically focused on e-commerce in ASP/VBscript.

Mark created The Niche Store Builder to help individuals learn and apply the necessary skills needed to run a successful eBay affiliate website. Though this community is built around the BANS script/software.  There are plenty of tips and resources any affiliate marketer can use and benefit from.

Mark provides a ton of quality content.  From the basics of uploading files to step-by-step tutorials showing you how to run a successful affiliate website in 12 weeks. Mark’s content is truly valuable.  Not only will Mark show you how to fix bugs and errors,   He will also show you how to succeed with BANS.

Mark also provides solutions to some of the most popular questions with integrating WordPress and BANS.  He provides step-by-step videos showing you exactly how to implement BANS with WordPress. Mark provides these detailed step-by-step videos on his blog free of charge.

That’s the one thing that blows me away about Mark.  Most other webmasters/Internet marketers would charge an arm and a leg to access these videos.  Mark provides all this plus outstanding interaction and support for free.

Make sure you check out www.thenichestorebuilder.com

Great job Mark and keep up the good work.

Let me know what you think.

Today’s video will be about importing the images you created for your squeeze page and structuring them in Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver is an awesome software that makes it super easy to create and design websites and squeeze pages. Well, I hope you enjoy this step by step video on coding your squeeze page.

Let me know what you think.

Let me know what you think.