Michael M's X10 Blog

In regards to yesterday's blog post, oddly enough I was on the phone this morning with my bank's automated phone service for over a half hour before deciding to just hang up the phone. I decided i didn't have the patience to continue to wait, and will most likely send an email request to them regarding my question, which will probably garner a reply sooner versus me waiting on the phone. What are the chances of that?

I was reading a great article published on April 24, 2006 on Articles Base, regarding 7 Highly Effective Web Techniques For Free Traffic Generation, written by Daniel Russo.

I often receive emails and calls from affiliates who are struggling to find ways to get site exposure. One lady I received an email from yesterday relies on the income from her website, but was finding it difficult to make sales and draw traffic. So, i thought that this would be the perfect topic to discuss. I thought i'd go over Russo's points and add my thoughts to them.

1) Free pay-per-click advertising that works: Russo mentions that there are dozens of search engines that will give out $100 worth of free advertising to prove that pay-per-click advertising will work for you (2006).

I did a search for search engine listings on Yahoo! and came up with a listing of a ton of sites. Some of the search engines are well known, while others not as known. However, your ability to take advantage of the free pay-per-click bonus is very available as I found multiple sites that were offering this bonus.

2) Use profitable keywords or keyword niches for your site's content: Search engines in return use keyword rankings to give away relevant search results. Russo says that if you'd like your site to appear at the top lines of search engine results, you must use proper keywords and keyword phrases (2006).

One thing i've stressed in prior blog posts is the ability to know and understand the company you are hoping to advertise for. We at X10 have a basic keyword list we are willing to provide at our affiliates request. In addition, we have a knowledgebase WIKI at http://kbase.x10.com that you can use to your advantage to find information about additional products catering to X10

3) Exchange links with partner sites: Another great idea is trading links with partner (or even competitor) sites. This works well especially when both sites feature the same niche (2006).

X10Community.com provides a free link exhchange to our affiliates or anyone catering to X10 or selling X10 products. I'm more than happy to add your links to assist you in generating more visits to your site!

4) Write articles and publish them across the Internet: There are a lot of sites that offer free submission and posting of your articles. You'd be better off to submit articles to sites containing the same subject that your site deals in. Writing articles that contain good service and knowledge would bring the necessary mileage your traffic flow needs (2006).

We like to know your stories about X10! We receive many great articles from people about their X10 experiences and publish them for everyone to read. If you have a great article send it to us and you'll find yourself on the X10 Community site!

5) Join forums, blogs, and other online communities: With online communities and forums you can build a reputation for your company. You must capture the market niche you represent and show your expertise and credibility. When you created a good foundation for your site, people will trust you and your web business (2006).

Our forum has over 6,300 registered members. Many of them have come here via word of mouth. Use the power of blogs, forums, and online communities, to help draw traffic to your site. If you do a search on Google regarding X10, you'll find many of our blog topics or forum posts rated high! These are great for generating traffic to your site!

6) Offer newsletter or eZines: Provide people with a catalog of your products and interesting useful articles. If your texts are really interesting and entertaining, more people will sign up for your newsletter and recommend it to other people. The more people who signs up for your newsletter, the more people there will be willing to visit your site (2006).

X10 receives many requests everyday from people wanting to join our newsletters! When people don't receive them as they are supposed to, we definitely hear about that also! Newsletters are great ways to keep your customers informed about your business and what's happening! If you make it entertaining or informative and provide many great things that people would want to know about, you'll see your readership numbers rise

7) Use advantages of viral marketing: Viral marketing is a promotional method that allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs. All it takes is to bring a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story; many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many web projects are advertised by using scandals and rumors to make them more popular. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the website content and they will pass it on to many people (2006).

The Onion.com and the Smoking Gun are two extremely popular sites that came about because of their use of viral marketing. The popularity of these sites draw millions of visitors to them, and have the ability to generate tons of sales! How creative can you be to bring the readers in to your site?

So as you can see, marketing your website doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg. there are many great ways to garnish site exposure, all it takes is a bit of creativity and the willingness to want the exposure!