April has written asking how to get visitors to her site. Since I helped create her site this spring I'm aware of it's details, and eager to see it succeed. We've been tossing some ideas back and forth by email, and I'd like to share some of these in case the rest of you have similar needs. (By the way she has taken that site down since then).
When I read Ken Evoy's Master Affiliate's course 5 days by email, (now available as a free e-book: Affiliate Masters) I learned it was very important to plan our purpose and "most wanted response" from our visitors first. That makes a lot of other decisions easier. The more I work with my web sites, the more I see wisdom in this.
April's site, was for wanna-be writers, she was hoping to be like an encouraging Gramma Apple (her grandchildren's name for her) to guests. She also wants editors to find her site, check her portfolio and give her writing assignments.
Evoy advised that we build a site for a particular niche market, and provide the information they want and need. If we have used the right keywords which these people are likely to put into search engines, we will get visitors to our site that WANT what we offer. For some people, like Ken's fourteen year old daughter, that's all the marketing they need to do.
Here the largest work is in planning, working the best keywords into the web pages and their meta tags. Once submitted to the search engines a few times, you can learn to cope with a flood of happy guests.
Another suggestion is to trade links with other sites of similar interests, and then the popular sites' visitors will click a link there and come to see us.
This idea works eventually, but you have to work at it for quite a while, and it has some drawbacks. Some links can go bad, and nothing happens. Or the visitors trickle in, but they don't find anything they can use, so they wander off.
This means adding and moving links, and contacting people and ...well, it's work. Especially if you have to comb 400+ pages on a site to fix bad links as I'm doing now.
A great move is to produce an ezine. This you can list at various ezine directory sites, and advertise in your signature, It is only after your subscribers get to know and trust you, that they are likely to purchase products or whatever is your "most wanted response."
For non-writers, or those too busy for ezine-care, it is still a good idea to craft some excellent ads for both the site, and whatever product you want to promote.
Write several ads, some as 2-liners, some as 4-liners, and some as three short paragraphs. Also do it up as a friendly letter to someone you love to share news with; this will be your solo ad for whenever you can afford the deluxe advertising services of the ezines with the large subscriber base.
Mind you, if you make friends with a number of ezine editors, you may discover after a while that they will be happy to barter ad space in return for some service you can offer. Or a Joint Venture idea; then you both win!
Now if you're a writer, the smartest advertising move you can make is to write helpful articles on the very same topics as your web site is on. Add a resource box or author bio below each article (like you see below this one), and then approach the editors of the ezines dealing in those topics to see if they'd like to use your article. Not all of them are prolific enough to write all their own articles, so they are happy to use others' articles that are appropriate.
It is understood that they can use your article for free, but you are getting a free ad, and the best kind, in that resource box underneath the article. General subscribers do not see that as an ad but as honour due to the author.
What's more, if they like the article, it provides the links to go off instantly to check out your web site and find out more about you. Which is just what you wanted, isn't it? Visitors.
YES, that takes time. Time to write the articles and time to send them around, and time to keep some sort of records at your home base, so you don't foolishly send the same article over and over to the same editors!
Some writers have a problem doing this, as they think they should never donate or give away their writing. True. But here you are buying quality advertising with it. You could, naturally, sell your writing to paying markets, and use the cash you get to pay for ads.
Another excellent idea is to provide inter-active things on your site, so that people can give you feedback or take part in quizzes and surveys. The visitors that take part usually turn into new friends. What a treat!
My form on my "In the Garden" page is most productive. https://Ruthes-SecretRoses.com/rsr/IntheGarden.html My Get Acquainted forms help me to begin friendships; I've an idea for an interactive game on my site that will teach about affiliate programs, and web design, but my inventing stage keeps being interrupted by my regular duties and deadlines.
All these ways can call guests and visitors to our site, and show them hospitality. So we can meet their needs, and they can give us the response we most desire.
If you take part in surfing for traffic too, on top of all these things, as I do, you'll be a web site hostess, and busy 'til you're dizzy just like me! But oh, the joy in making new friends because of your site.
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Ruth Marlene Friesen makes friends wherever she goes!
Her friends become her rare roses at Ruthes-SecretRoses.com
Order the softcover edition at Booklocker.com
And- Subscribe to her weekly ezine RoseBouquet
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