Do you want to build a successful website and drive a lot of traffic to it? Then don’t try to fool mother Google.

It really does work like that, as most of us have learned from previous experience. However, building a successful website is possible. And we have a few easy steps which will help you achieve just that.

Here are some simple tips to drive traffic and what I found to work the best for me. I think it will work for you too.

Make content the king of your success and make the search engines “drool” over your content! If you actually publish something of value rather than trying to game the search engines you will be miles ahead of many….many marketers.

Don’t sit back and wait for traffic, go get it!

A lot of marketers build their website and wait for traffic to come to them. Do you know how many websites are out there? Millions, all competing for the same traffic. Who do you think will get the lions share of the traffic, those who sit back and wait for it to come to them or those that go out and get it?

Exactly, go out and get your traffic. Write a few articles and distribute them to the article directories. This will help you get one-way incoming links which the search engines love. Participate in related forums and provide valuable content and input in exchange for a link back to your website.

Forums have been a huge benefit for me. I started posting in several niche forums just to get a feel for what type of product they might want and before you know it I was getting traffic left and right. When I did some investigating I found it was coming from the forums that I had posted in. I mean BIG traffic and TARGETED traffic!

You can also advertise on select and related sites. Just make sure that the website you’re advertising on is actually a high ranking site with a steady stream of related visitors. The trick to getting traffic is to be consistent and to try a variety of different methods to help build incoming links.

Of course, you’ll also want to make sure that all of your website pages are search engine friendly, that your website has a user-friendly and search-engine friendly navigation structure.

Include plenty of links to outside resources and also link to other articles inside your website. This will get the reader to stay on your site longer, lower your bounce rate, and increase the value of your site in Google and other search engines.

Be a Real Person. Many websites are cold and unfriendly. This won’t help your sales. People are sceptical and when doing business on the web, they’re going to opt for websites which appear professional and also reassure them that there is indeed a real person behind the website.

Be sure to include an “about us” section on your website as well as a contact and privacy page. If you are having trouble creating a privacy policy page there is a WordPress plugin called Easy Privacy Policy that will create on for you in a snap.

A picture of you and your team (if you have one) is a nice touch as well. Share a little about your business and let them know you are there to help them. People like to know you are human. As quirky as it may sound…. the more human and less polished the website sometime the more traffic you get because it looks authentic.

Building a website requires a lot of hard work and a lot of common sense. Dont over think it adn put yourself in the shoes of your target market. What would they want to see when they come to your website…. and give it to them.

And finally, being personable and letting your customers know that you are there to help them should the decide to purchase anything from you. The more they trust you the more they will come back and the easier you might make a sale.

Did you ever want to just call it a day and forget about internet marketing? Well… me too…. thank God my senses took over and I am back at it but it was a close call.

The reason I am sharing this with you is because I figured you might have had the same problem as me and maybe this could help.

You see…. I was all over the place with my marketing… trying to develop products in five different niches at once and having just limited success with each niche. I just wasn’t committed or patient enough to get it going. They all looked like a green markets (and probably still are) but I just couldn’t kick the door down so I move on to another niche the same way….half assed.

Don’t get me wrong, I have a couple niches doing well but I wanted to expand and duplicated the success so I got away from what made me successful in the first place. Just finding a niche with a problem and solving it. Strip it down, keep it simple, and keep delivering the goods…. keep solving the problems….. AND BE PATIENT!

That is so difficult to do after you have tasted a bit of success. You see the potential and want to go from zero to sixty in no time at all… leaving all the fundamentals in the dust. Well…… I guess that doesn’t work so it’s back to keeping it simple.

I am consolidating all my resources into one site , The Guru Hub Members Area, and that is it. The moving has begun and the site is well on its way. I look for it to be live before Christmas and EVERYTHING I know will be in there including a ton of videos.

Everything I’ve done lately I’ve recorded…. from start to finish…. step by step to try to help newbies get started and save a bunch of money and time…

…to the advanced research and testing techniques that separate profit from loss….

So don’t stray too far off the beaten path, specially if you were spreading yourself too thin like I was….. time to get back to basics and get back to moving the business ahead…. one niche at a time.

What can BP teach us about marketing in the face of the largest environmental disaster in USA history? Some very good points and some points that Frank Kern talks about “avoiding at all costs” in one of his squeeze pages.

I hesitated for a minute before writing this because this is a marketing forum and I wanted to keep it that way, however, it is so disturbing to me that this is being let happen to our country that it just flat out pisses me off!

So, lets start with some of the good that we can take away from this horrendous situation as I try to stifle my cynical tongue for a moment. BP can be compared to a “guru” in the internet marketing industry. Because of this they can move and guide opinion as people already have a positive opinion of them due to their “guru” status.

This means they can influence their customers opinion much easier.

They can recover from mistakes faster.

They can charge a premium for the same product.

They can lead the conversation in their niche and people will listen.

All this adds up to their ability to survive the worst environmental disaster in our history. They will come back as a company and find a away to turn this around because they have influence in the market. Influence that reaches much wider and deeper than people realize. Every dollar they spent to build their brand equity will pay them tenfold when the begin the image recovery process.

So what is the “one thing that we should avoid at all costs” in the words of Frank.

Taking on a major endeavor without a backup plan. Whether that is conducting a product launch with only one merchant account or creating a website in a niche without doing proper research first. If you don’t have a back up plan you are just asking for trouble and BP didn’t have one.

The end result is an unfortunate incident that started off as something that probably had more to do with the inherent risk of doing business, and ended up as the worst environmental disaster of our history. All because BP had no backup plan.

God help us if this is the best we have to offer.

Don’t let this happen to you…. and say a prayer for the workers who passed away.

You’ve labored over your opt-in form, you created an offer that has value, and now you need to drive traffic there to see it. I know this sounds obvious, but the best offer means nothing if no one is stopping by to see it.

Using only one method to drive traffic to your opt-in page probably won’t get the job done. There are many different ways to bring people to your site that you should utilize as many as you possibly can. Using a variety of them will help you achieve the best results. Here are some of the most popular ones to help get you get started.

• Link to Related Posts – Travel the internet and collect links to post related to yours. Gather them all in one post and submit it to article directories. Don’t forget to link to the articles on your site and add commentary. It is always more valuable for your readers when you share comments. Share the link to your post with the people you’ve linked to as a courtesy.

• Guest Posts – Writing a guest post on a complementary blog is a good way to get your name out there. Everyone is always looking for fresh content. Especially, if it’s good quality and they don’t have to write it. These sites are easy to locate by doing a search or you can simply email your competing site owners and make the offer to write a post. The resource box with a link back to your site at the end is your reward for your hard work. Build those backlinks baby!

• Guru Interviews – Guru Interviews are a good way to expose your site to a lot of people who haven’t been there yet. New venues to share your information such as teleseminars, podcasts or email interviews can drive good targeted traffic from many people at one time.

• Contributors – Rather than having someone just write an occasional guest post, have them listed as a contributor. People love fresh content and a new person can give a new perspective on your niche and add substantial value for your readers. Again, the payoff for them is a link to their site in their resource box.

• Brandable Reports – A secret technique used by top internet marketers is to giveaway top quality information with links to their products. Once you develop products (or find affiliate products you can recommend) that have brandable reports as a marketing tool just give them away. Make sure they include your affiliate link (if it is an affiliate product) making the benefits two-fold. You have content for your readers and the possibility of making money through affiliate sales.

Your Goal – Discover what you market is looking for when they type in a word into Google and give it to them for free! This will drive a massive amount of traffic to your website and you will be well on your way to success.

After you have done all you can to drive traffic to your site, the next step is offering a product that converts. It can be very disappointing to know that you’ve completed all your research and followed each and every step only to find that the hungry niche that your research has led you to aren’t buying as much as you expected. It may be time to reevaluate the vendor you’re promoting.

There could be several reasons why the product isn’t converting. The vendor may just not appeal to your audience. This happens, and it could be their voice or marketing strategy that just isn’t hitting the mark. Or sometimes the sales letter is bad, product feedback and reviews are bad, or the reputation is bad, etc.

Don’t take any of these reasons personally, just be wise enough to know if a certain product is not converting then change it out for something new. There are plenty of products out there so don’t fall in love with one product, it is all about the conversions and the money.

Searching out a competing vendor that offers a similar product with a better sales page is simple. There are plenty of products out there to choose from but several things you should review first to ensure you are making a good choice.

Before signing up for the affiliate program, review the sales copy to make sure you’re comfortable with their marketing tactics. Even though you are not writing the copy take the time to review it carefully. By making a small change, you can greatly increase your affiliate checks. It’s all about the details to convert your visitors into buyers. If a certain vendor can’t do it, then it’s time to look elsewhere.

You’ll notice that two of these tips have to do with testing and tweaking. It can be tricky turning browsers into buyers, and it’s a two part job between you and the vendor. Keep testing to figure out the right combination that works best. You will improve your commissions and your customer’s happiness. Be sure to also continue to improve your web traffic. Marketing your website and boosting your rankings by gaining backlinks is definitely the way to go.

With some effort and patience you’re sure to find a winning combination that will help you get the bigger affiliate checks you deserve. The money is out there, your job is to figure out how to get it on a consistent basis.

If you haven’t seen this duo yet, you must check them out! They bring fun back to work. As a matter of fact, besides their enormous success, their humor is one of the things that make them so appealing. They are just down right funny!

Enough of that, now to the update on their membership site Info Marketing Monthly. Anthony DeLoach is a partner in crime and submits a considerable amount of the content on Info Marketing Monthly. According to Anthony, he has made quite the sum of money through the use of email marketing and this is the latest topic for this membership site.

For email marketing to be successful you must track open rate and click through rate to make the most of your marketing efforts. Segmenting your list and sending the right message to the right audience could substantially raise the amount of people who open your emails and the amount who click on your links inside them.

There are three effective ways to segment your list:

1) Best subscribers – frequent purchasers. Make them feel special, special content, deals, etc

2) Click Happy List – consistently open your emails and click on your links.

3) The Covert survey List – find out more about them by giving them a choice of two links to click on. Example, if you are in the dog training niche, on email could reference potty training and the other could reference dog tricks. both refer to training but now you will have better info on what to send them to buy.

Guru tactics to get your emails opened: Use parenthesis (they work), Use the words “video” , “picture” or “pic”, Personalize the email with location specific mentions when appropriate, make a crazy statement with a ? is your dog crazy?, Use Buzz words (see Google), Use curiosity statements (do you know this girl?), Use choice in the title (spanking or no spanking (what works for me)…lol that should get your attention! resend the same unopened email with a different title.

So you got them to open the email, now how to make them click on the link: include a pic or video (make it click-able) with a link just below it. Be cool and be yourself, no corporate speak. Be short and to the point, the idea is to get them to click the link, not read a novel. Set expectations (look for my special email tomorrow as it contains a special ninja tactic.)

And…..the four magic words to increase your open rate……”sent from my iPhone”

How to Pick a Niche

It is important to pick a niche before you pick a product to promote as an affiliate or before you decide to create your own product. In this video we will show you how to research different niches and decide which are potentially profitable and which are not.

The four main resource we use to narrow down our product selections our ClickBank, Amazon, Ebay, and Google.

Recommended Resources: ClickBank, Amazon, eBay, Google

The Simple Basics of Selling

Don’t try to over think the selling process in you sales copy. If you stray too far from these simple rules your copy will lose its focus and you could lose sales. Keep it simple by answering these three basic questions:

What do you have

What will it do for them

What do they need to do next