Month: July 2016

Do You Just Press Publish Then Hope?

Are you the sort of blogger who just presses the publish tab and then hopes for the best?

The publish then hope approach will never get you or your posts noticed, not in a million years.

There are a few things you can do to increase your readability before you press publish then hope for the best.

  1. Don’t be caught out by the grammar police. imgresWhen you have finished your writing always check the spelling and grammar of the post or article, use the spellcheck option or a service like Grammarly. Proofreading is always a good idea, read it out loud, check headings, titles and cross check citations. It is always a good idea to check your work more than once before publishing.
  2. Try to link to old content on your site. Internal linking will improve the structure of your website, increase the overall authority of your sites internal pages thus improving the likelihood of inbound link potential. To do this is quite simple, open an old published post, and find the relevant place in the article to place the link to the new page or post.
  3. Always post to Facebook. When a new post is placed on Facebook add an enticing & interesting sentence that will capture peoples attention, explain briefly the benefits of reading further and how your article will help them.
  4. Post to LinkedIn. This something I do all the time, not just to general LinkedIn followers but to all the groups I am in, there are a lot of good professional marketing groups on this platform. At the time of writing there is not too much spam either which is helpful.
  5. Tweet about it. Write a short, jazzy introduction to your new post to grab the interest of your followers and in turn attract new followers to your brand. Include a hashtag or two but don’t over do that part.
  6. Reddit is a very useful tool. Post here as well. Most Reddit users are addicted to the site, and their readers very often share content, opinions good or bad on articles, posts or images shared.
  7. Create a question at the end of a post. When you do this it will encourage your readers to think deeply about the topic and also you will be able to engage with them more significantly.
  8. Share on news aggregation sites. Platforms like Alltop serve as a great resource where readers can find loads of content on the subjects that interest them. Many bloggers share their content on these type of sites to gain an influx of new quality traffic and leads.
  9. Send your subscribers an email. imagesA lot of internet marketers mail their list on a daily basis, others prefer two or three times a week, but whatever your preference is always send a mail out when you create a new piece of writing. My preference is Getresponse.
  10. Publish to relevant networks. Whether it be Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, Snapchat, Stumbleupon or Google+ just share it, get it out there and become noticed.
  11. Comment on other peoples posts. This strategy is great for building rapport and trust and will gets you good results, keep providing value and the winning formula will prevail.
  12. Always respond to comments on your blog posts and return the favour. It can be time consuming but will be worth it in the end, you will gain a good reputation and in-turn more followers.
  13. Follow these ideas and never worry about the publish then hope conundrum ever again.

Gaining Subscribers With Stumbleupon

Remember on Stumbleupon you are a Stumbler, not a salesman, below are a few ways to gain subscribers with stumbleupon social media platform.

Make sure that your writing is personable and friendly. Do not come across as a salesmen, Stumblers aren’t out looking for things to buy, you need to earn that by first capturing their attention and drawing them in deeper. This is why I suggest writing articles instead of directing them to your front page.  You need to GIVE them something, make them feel that they are benefiting by rating your site and returning to it.

How can I convert a Stumbler into a regular visitor?

One thing you will need to understand right from the start, is that you lose the majority of “Stumbler visitors” once they have reviewed your front page.That being said, StumbleUpon can send you SO much traffic that even if a small percentage are converted into subscribers or regular visitors, it more than makes up for it.
Here is how you can increase your chances of obtaining new regular visitors and opt-in subscribers using Stumble Upon.

Tip 1) Make certain you have an RSS button AND an opt-in email subscription box visible on your landing page.  Don’t clutter it into some side-bar that is difficult to see, make sure it’s upfront and center, surrounded around good, solid content. Also, because a lot of visitors will be scrollers, make sure to have a link to your opt-in box towards the bottom of your landing page as well.

Tip 2) Implore a Call For Action. Either direct them to a product or service using a cloaked affiliate link, send them through a CPA offer, send them to another one of your websites, articles, or blogs – just be sure to prompt them to take action. Don’t leave them wondering what to do next.

Tip 3) If possible, and you have created a customized landing page for your StumbleUpon advertising, personalize it by mentioning StumbleUpon on your page. For example:

“Stumbled Across Any Decent Sites Today?”

They’ll love it, and feel you are part of the community and not just some advertiser. This will increase your conversion rate significantly.

Tip 4) Everyone Loves Contests

Create a contest on your landing page.  Who doesn’t love the chance to win a free digital product, cash, service, etc?  Have them opt-into your subscription box to be entered into your draw. This is an easy way to convert one-time traffic into repeat visitors who want to find out more about the contest or receive updates.

 

Getting Traffic From StumbleUpon At No Cost

SureFire Method 1

Multiple Accounts For Multiple niches

You should always have one account for each niche market that you intend to target (example, one account for fitness, one account for health, etc).  There are also categories that you can pre-select using StumbleUpon and this is critical for the type of niches that you would like to obtain traffic from. You will need a unique username (which is an email address) for each StumbleUpon account that you create.

 

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you are logged into one StumbleUpon account and you attempt to create another, you will receive a warning advising you that you may lose your original account by creating multiple accounts, so be sure to log out of one account before creating a new one.

Sure-Fire Method 2

Copy Already Successful Stumbled Sites

If you look on a person’s favorite website list you can see what people have recommended in the past.  Use that to your advantage!  You won’t see a lot of squeeze pages or one page sales letters.  Check it out for yourself and see the types of landing pages that are popular and are highly recommended by other members.

Then, create your landing page with the same style or layout.

Sure-Fire Method 3
This is a great way to build your list quickly and people are already doing this on places like YouTube with great results.  To start, create a short video teaser clip and call it Part One, with a link that indicates in order to see Part Two, they need to enter their name and email address into your opt-in form.

Try it out and see how fast you build your list =)

Sure-Fire Method 4

StumbleUpon allows you to join groups and choose friends with similar interests. Be certain to only add friends who are interested in your niche market!
For instance, if you are promoting a Health related blog, you should only add friends who have similar interests listed, since you are able to recommend they visit the sites you stumble (and of course, you are going to Stumble your own. Joining a few groups relating to your subject matter is a great way to obtain instant traffic to your blog. Look for the larger, more popular groups.

Remember, the more friends you have, the more traffic your website will receive, since the more people will view your recommendations and visit your listed sites, but if you want TARGETED traffic (and you should) choosing only those within your niche categories is the only thing that makes sense.

Warning: Be Careful With The Friends You Add!

StumbleUpon restricts the number of friends each of your accounts can have, currently it is a 250 maximum limit, therefore be sure to only add friends from categories that serve your niche market.

Make Money With StumbleUpon:

You can make easy money with StumbleUpon and CPA offers. You can also build your list quickly this way.

Locate good solid CPA offers, and then write interesting articles about the product, prompting them to take action by clicking on your CPA link. I have found that building articles that are focused on “How To” guides, or “Lists (example: Five Sure-fire Ways To Get Traffic, Ten Super-Charged Methods Of Building Profitable Blogs, etc) work best.

Also, limit the number of links on your article page so that the only links visible are ones that will lead them to an offer where you get paid.

 What To Expect:

How many visitors you get will depend on the way you have created your landing page, but on average, expect to receive between 100-8000 daily unique visitors.

STUMBLE EXCHANGES

There are StumbleUpon related exchange programs available where you can create a free account and exchange ‘stumbles’ with other members (you stumble their site, they stumble yours).

http://www.stumblexchange.com

http://www.linkyme.com/faststumbles/

http://www.avuw.com/index.asp?page=register

Other free ways to get your site stumbled without having it tied to your account (so people don’t see you are stumbling your own site) is to exchange stumbles with other people. You can find free-stumble offers at:

NamePros: http://www.NamePros.com

Digital Point Forum: http://www.digitalpoint.com

Site Point: http://www.SitePoint.com

Remember, this will not be targeted traffic but it’s a great way to jump-start your stumble campaigns!

I hope you have enjoyed the information contained with the Stumble Upon Traffic Guide.  Being both an advertiser and stumbler of the Stumble Upon community can be an enjoyable and rewarding way to browse interesting websites while promoting your own.

Have Fun Stumbling and Being Stumbled!

Useful Stumbleupon Tips

Ever Wondered How Popular StumbleUpon Is?

stumbleupon logoStumbleUpon is growing at a rapid pace, currently over 5 million members, and considering eBay and Google were in a bidding war to obtain the site, you might say it’s rather popular.

However, the potential for targeted, organic and steady traffic with StumbleUpon is quite under-estimated, especially by newer bloggers who aren’t aware of just how feasible social networks like StumbleUpon really is.

Don’t make the same mistake.  An ad campaign doesn’t have to have loads of activity to become a popular choice by Stumblers.  All you need are a handful of “Thumbs Up” to reach hundreds of visitors.

The key is to focus on designing your website so that it attracts your Stumbler visitors within the first few seconds of their landing on your page. Sometimes, that’s all the time you have to make an impression and encourage them to vote for you, or to return to your site.


ready to stumbleHere are some tips that will help you capture their attention:

 

Tip #1:  Clearly Define Your Blogs Subject Matter

You need to be clear about the subject matter of your blog. If your blog looks cluttered, or has too many categories, it could confuse the visitor and end up costing you a vote. Be exceptionally clear about what your blog is about.  If your visitor can see exactly what your blog is about within the first few minutes of visiting, they are more likely to stay and look around, not to mention return to your site.

Tip #2: Eye Candy

Every aspect of your blog is important, especially the header.  That is one of the first things your visitors see.  Make sure it is crisp and attractive. If you are unable to create a customized header yourself, hire a graphic designer to do it for you – it’s THAT important.

This also goes with your blog’s theme template. You want one that actually represents the subject of your blog but is also attractive and professional.  Don’t use the theme that comes by default with your blog, take the time to scout out an alternative replacement so that your blog appears to be unique.

 

Tip #3: Content Is King

Don’t start advertising your blog until you have enough content to justify a visit. You want your visitor to spend as much time on your site as possible, so be sure to include at least a few categories and at least two weeks worth of content, to start.

Tip #4: Pretend You Have A Captive Audience

Be sure to put your best effort into your blog.  Even while you might feel as though you are talking to yourself when you first create your blog (and most likely you are), remember that every article, every bit of content that you publish must be interesting to those in your niche.

Do not skip this by plugging in saturated PLR articles that you purchased somewhere. Take the time to write your own stuff, people WILL notice the difference.

If you follow these tips you WILL increase your chances of having a successful advertising campaign with StumbleUpon.  Taking the time to create the best blog possible will indicate to your Stumbler-Visitors that your blog is a useful resource that is both informative and unique. If they feel they can get the same information elsewhere, why would they stay at your site?
Tip #5: Copy From Those That “Do”

Check out what types of headlines the most popular sites in your niche market are using and simply design your headline to use a similar style.

Don’t Just Pay For Traffic – Earn It

You don’t want to continuously purchase traffic via StumbleUpon that should never be your ultimate goal. Instead, you should utilize the advertising services there to jumpstart your blog traffic with the goal being to encourage Stumblers to vote for you, which will in turn, push other visitors to your site, for free.

Some bloggers fail to do this and end up paying for traffic longer than they would need to, if they just focused on creating a useful blog.  Even though the advertising costs are lower than typical PPC campaigns, you can save a ton of cash if you make your blog worthy of a stumble.

Set your blog in motion and watch the traffic continue to pour in, day after day!

Catch Them Before The Next Stumble

Since stumblers are similar to television channel surfers, you might not be able to hold their attention for long, no matter how compelling or interesting your content may be.  To get the most out of their visit, offer a subscription form on your site where you offer a free report, eCourse, something – Anything – to encourage them to leave their information.

That way, you can work on growing your list as well as growing your site.

Your subscription box should be placed in a highly visible area of your blog. You should also utilize graphics, or compelling headlines to make sure it’s noticed.

Take Baby Steps

stumble journeyDon’t spend a ton of cash on your first StumbleUpon ad campaign, instead, test your ad copy with just a small spend. Once you see it working, you can increase your daily budget.

Be sure to pay attention to the available stats to determine how many people voted for your site and continuously tweak it for the best performance you can get out of it.  Testing isn’t fun but it’s important because you want to get the most votes you can. Once you are consistently receiving votes, you will start receiving a flood of organic traffic and when that happens, be prepared to pause your campaign before you purchase traffic for nothing.

What To Avoid

Some bloggers believe that sending Stumblers to the very front page of their blog is the best choice, when advertising with StumbleUpon.  I would suggest that instead; create a landing page specifically for each campaign. If Stumblers have to seek out solid content, they’ll be gone before you know it, assuming it’s a paid advertisement or sales pitch.

Solution:
Choose a thread or page that carefully relates to your specific group of visitors (using categories and demographics), and choose a post that you feel is absolutely compelling. Make it spicy, entertaining, controversial, whatever you have to do to make that page stick and become ‘viral’.

Also remember to add your sites to StumbleUpon by creating an ‘alias’ account and Stumbling onto your own pages, after first checking to see if they have already been Stumbled.

You can check by visiting:

http://reviews.stumbleupon.com/

 

Traffic Generation Tips

Below are a few videos from my YouTube channel covering a subject close to all internet marketers hearts, “traffic generation”. Hope you enjoy and get some benefit from them and please leave a comment if you so desire.

1. Introduction Video To Traffic Generation Tips

2. SEO Video

3. Social Media Video

4. Article Marketing Video

5. PPC Video

6. Blogging Video

7. Extra Traffic Generation Tips Video

SEO For Traffic Generation

Search engine optimisation or ‘SEO’ as it is more commonly known, is basically the method of improving your website so that it is optimised to get found on search engines more effectively. By optimising your website for the search engines your website gets a higher ranking and therefore gets placed higher in the listing of search results.

There are many different aspects of SEO that can improve your website, such as keywords, content and layout, some are visible to website visitors and others are only used for search engine ‘spiders’ to help the site get ranked better. A web spider is basically a program which scans the pages of your website by following each link and generating information from your website, a search engine would use this in order to give your website proper rankings.

If you have never attempted SEO or web editing before then I suggest you seek some professional advice or help if you want your website found in ‘organic’ search results, organic results are quite simply results that have not been paid for by advertisers. If you are fairly confident you can do some basic editing then here are a few pointers for you.

Decide on your keywords (very important), I would recommend you try to stick to around three keyword terms for your website. Make sure you keep all your keyword terms related to the content in your website and they must also be targeted on the same niche as search engines will score your website on its relevancy.

When choosing your keyword terms, try not to make them too specific as the competition to get ranked highly with a specific or ‘general’ keyword will be far too great. However, feel free to try if you think you have a unique keyword. The best kind of keyword in my opinion is the ‘long tail’ keywords I spoke about in the article marketing section. Basically, an extended version of your keyword, so if you were using the keyword ‘blogging’ for example, it would become ‘blogging for great reasons’ or ‘blogging for new methods of traffic’ and so on.

keyword tools which will give you better long tail keywords are WordTracker Keywords and also SEOBook keyword tools.

 

The density of your keywords in your website content is also a factor that the search engines take into consideration when they scan your website. The search engines will look at your website to see how many times you use a certain word or phrase, the more times the word or phrase is used throughout a page, the higher the density. The search engines are very clever with their checks however, so do not be tempted to simply cram a load of keywords into a page, because as well as the readers enjoyment spoiled, you will get penalized by the search engine for it. The average that Google recommend for keyword density at this time is around 2%-5%, Yahoo and MSN are slightly higher, around 2%-9% keyword density.

Keeping your website content fresh and unique is also another important factor of SEO, for this reason the search engines love blogs and news related sites, as they are constantly updated with fresh and unique content. One third of your website must be different from any other website in order for it to be considered as unique.

Use variations of your chosen keyword terms throughout the content of your site, mix them up a little, add additional words, add plurals etc. Make sure you have your chosen terms at the top, middle and bottom of your pages.

Enlist a little help from some excellent software like Brad Callen’s SEO Elite, this will save you a load of time and get you much better results, which will in turn earn you a lot more money from your traffic. You could even set up your own SEO business, helping others with software like this.

If you want to improve the SEO of your blog, there is a great plugin called ‘All-In-One SEO Pack’ that will help you out quite a bit.

This next part is one of my pet hates with some websites. Navigation, your website must be user friendly to navigate and all the links must work or you will be penalised again. How many times have you came across a fantastic looking website but you simply cannot navigate your way around it? I know I have loads of times and it’s a crying shame as these sites look so good with great content. A good way to test your site is to give it to a website newbie or a child and ask them to find their way around the site.

Whatever you do, make sure you do not just dismiss SEO as a high ranking in organic (results that have not been paid for) search results will get you some serious traffic, not just temporary, but if you keep on top of it you can have serious traffic for good.