So, is blog commenting a smart traffic strategy?

Well, it depends on how you do it. Let’s take a look.

Blog Comment Spamming Sucks!

There are A LOT of people out there who are trying to drive traffic to their own sites by posting spammy comments, manually or by using software, on other people’s blogs. If you’re one of those people, stop right now.

First of all, most blogs have “no-follows” scripted into their comments so that you’ll never get any search engine traffic from those postings.

Secondly, there’s not a REAL person on the planet that’s going to follow your link when you post some kind of ridiculous comment that doesn’t make any sense and only promotes your link.

People are smarter than that.

I seriously doubt that you’ll even get any curiosity clicks, so don’t waste your time.

Build Blog Commenting Relationships For Traffic

Now that we’ve gotten that whole spam thing out of the way, let’s talk about how you can use blog commenting to gain traffic. The key to success is to build relationships on any blog that you peruse.

If you’re the blog owner, it’s really a piece of cake to build relationships with your commenters.

But here’s a newsflash — you can build relationships as a commenter too!

Talk directly to the person who wrote the post, talk to other commenters, comment about other comments, and get involved in the blog.

Bloggers Build Community

It’s no secret that many of the people who comment on blogs, especially business oriented blogs, are bloggers themselves. That’s why relationship building on blogs is so important.

When you meaningfully participate in the community aspect of a blog, you’re creating relationships with other people who can send you a significant amount of traffic through blogs and other social media.

In other words, you have to give in order to receive.

Provide great content, post thoughtful and compelling comments, re-tweet posts, make comments about posts on facebook or other social outlets, and bookmark great posts. It all adds up to a lot of interaction with the blog community, gets the attention of the blog owner, and gives you credibility when you post a comment on that blog.

And other bloggers will reciprocate in kind.

That’s the way content REALLY spreads and how you get the kind of traffic that REALLY counts.

It takes time to build traffic this way, but it’s well-worth the effort because it becomes an unstoppable flood of traffic to your site or blog — traffic that converts.

In the end, blog commenting is a REALLY smart traffic strategy if you do it right!

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There’s really no secret.

I’ve been practicing attraction marketing for years in my own business.  If you’re successful, I bet you have too.

So here’s the big secret… Attraction marketing is any marketing strategy designed to “attract” people who are interested in your products, services, or business to you or your website like a magnet.

Frankly, I think attraction marketing and pre-selling are pretty much the same thing.

The idea is that you don’t want to SELL people your wares.  People hate to be “sold,” but they love to buy stuff when it hits their hot buttons and the buying experience is pleasurable.

In my mind, attraction marketing really comes in two parts… attracting interested people and enticing them to buy.  Let’s talk about each one separately.

1.  Attracting Interested People

The key to making a good living with your business, no matter what business you’re in, is to get your business in front of people who are interested in buying what you have to offer.  The more interested people who see what you’ve got, the more money you’re going to make — simple as that.

In the online world, there are lots and lots of easy ways to do that:

• Write great keyword rich content that attracts interested people through search engines.
• Write articles that will interest your target audience.
• Create videos that will attract interested people.
• Offer a free ebook, ecourse, or report to your target audience (lead capture).
• Advertise your free offer, rather than your products, services, or business.

You want to help interested people find you, but you don’t want to sell them.

You can practice attraction marketing in the offline world as well:

• Advertise a free offer on your website in newpapers, signs, flyers, billboards, etc.
• Create and advertise a recorded message about your business or products.
• Put a sign on your car.
• Use your own products publicly.

The essence of attraction marketing is that you want to give people who are interested in your products, services, or business a reason to be attracted to you and do it in a completely non-threatening way.

2.  Enticing People To Buy

First of all, you’ve got to get the dollar signs out of your eyes.  Too many people operate their business like a used car salesman.

Let me draw you a picture and you’ll see what I mean.

As you’re driving up on a car lot, you notice a group of salesmen sitting together near the entrance.  As your car turns in, all the salesmen turn towards you and you see the cold glint of dollar signs in their eyes.

You flinch just a little, but still find a parking spot and stop the car.

As you get out of the car, you notice that the salesmen are urgently talking amongst themselves until one of them puts on one of those fake smiles and starts walking towards you while the others quickly disperse.

“Hey what kind of car are we looking to buy today?”

YUK!  I hate that so much that I actually refuse to talk to sales people and make my husband deal with them.

No one likes to be treated that way in any situation.

But if you’re hard selling everyone who visits your website, then you’re acting like that money-hungry used car salesman and driving potential customers away.

You’ve heard it before, people buy from other people that they like and trust.

Your job is to give people the things that will attract them to your business, build a relationship with them, and then gently recommend your products, services, or business when they show an interest.

That’s the essence of attraction marketing.

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The Google Slap

Let me lay out my story for you.

I’ve been running Google Adwords campaigns for years from the same account, for several different niche websites.  I’ve never had a problem with them — I’ve always diligently followed the rules:

1. No squeeze pages.
2. Content-based landing pages.
3. Keywords matching the landing pages.

In fact, the majority of my landing pages have always been plain old article pages directly from my website — nothing fancy.

I had a pretty good thing going here… then I made a silly mistake.

For some reason, I got in a hurry and didn’t set up a proper article-type page for a new campaign that I started.  Instead, it was a php redirect to an affiliate sales page.  It ran for about six weeks and I made a killing with it — then Google caught it.

My sales plumetted and it didn’t take very long to figure out that I had been the victim of the dreaded Google Slap!

Every one of my landing pages in every campaign I was running (not just the offending campaign) carried a 1/10 rating.  That means that NONE of my campaigns were showing for any domain or product I was promoting through Google Adwords.

Further investigation revealed that Google also dropped my pagerank for iMarketingWatch.com site from a PR3 or PR4 to a PR1.

I immediately deleted the offending ads and hoped that Google would return my “good” campaigns to their normal 7/10-5/10 ratings.  Days went by and there was no change in my account status.

Then I deleted ALL my campaigns and started over fresh with brand new campaigns that went to articles that I have running on my blogs on other domains.  They were only designed to generate traffic, not sales, but Google ranked them at a 1/10 too, making it impossible to run the campaigns.

I repeatedly emailed Google to see if they would review my account, see that I was following the rules, and maybe stop punishing me for my one error in all these years.  They never answered my questions.

They did manage to send me an automated survey to see if I was satisfied with customer service however.

Google Slap experts claim that once you’ve been slapped you should get rid of the offending domain and start over with a new domain.  They claim that once you’ve been slapped, your site can never recover and make it back into Google’s good graces.  I haven’t decided if I want to dump iMarketingWatch.com and start over or not.  I sure hate to start over!

Apparently, you can never use the Google Adwords account that’s been slapped again either.

I deleted my account over the weekend and moved all my advertising dollars over to Yahoo.

I don’t know if starting a new account at Google would allow me to continue working with Adwords, but I’ve heard horror stories about Google tracking your IP or credit card and giving you the old Google Slap again on your new account.

Frankly, I’m not too inclined to give Google a second chance, despite it’s enormous search engine market share.  At Yahoo I’m paying less money per click and getting keywords that I would never be able to afford at Google — even before the Google Slap.

Although Yahoo generates a lot fewer impressions than Google, Yahoo seems to remember that advertisers are customers and they treat them like customers.

Obviously, Google doesn’t really care about it’s customers.  Rather than being punitive, they could easily just disable the offending campaigns for any advertiser – but they choose to brutally punish advertisers instead.

I guess you can do whatever you want when you’re the 800 lb. Gorilla.

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Most websites offer the typical ebook, report, or audio, but I think it’s high time to go beyond the typical and do something a little different.

Here are 3 seldom used, but highly effective ideas for freebies that you can use on your website to increase traffic.

1. Offer A Complete Plan

With a little research, you’ll find that many of your targeted visitors are actually looking for a specific plan to accomplish something within your industry or niche.  You can capitalize on that by offering a plan of your own.

All you have to do is find a targeted keyword for your industry that involves some kind of plan like a wood project plan, weight loss plan, craft plans, business plans, etc.  On one of my websites I even offer a plan for planning children’s birthday parties!

Once you find out what kind of plan that people want – create it and offer it on your website.

People love a good plan.

2.  Form Up On New Visitors

Speaking of things that people love – everybody loves free printable forms.

Take a look at your niche or industry, browse your keywords, and come up with a free form that your target audience is looking for.  I’ve seen forms for shopping, homeschool, legal forms, organizational forms, you name it.

Find out what your target audience is looking for, create a form for it, and offer it in a PDF.  Free printable forms always attract visitors.

3.  Cash In On Checklists

Checklists are probably the easiest of the seldom used freebies on this list to create.  All you have to do is to look at a process within your niche or industry and create a step-by-step checklist for that process.

For example, you could offer a checklist for how to create a website, baby-proofing your house, moving, planning a wedding, buying a house, etc. There are checklists for just about any niche you can think of, all you need is a little creativity and thinking outside of the box.

People love using checklists because it helps them keep organized and on track.  So all you need to do is create your checklist in a printable form, market it, and offer it to visitors as a PDF.

NOTE: Be sure to put your URL on every PDF and freebie that you offer.  It will keep your visitors coming back and may help you get new visitors when people use your freebies.

In the end, it pays big dividends to find new types of freebies to drive more targeted visitors to your website.  Be inventive and original with your visitor enticements to stand out from the crowd in your industry.

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There are lots of online entrepreneurs feverishly writing tons of puny articles that no one really wants to read in the hopes of driving hordes of traffic to their websites.  But here’s the problem:  you don’t just want hordes of traffic, you want high quality targeted traffic to visit your website.

Think about it for a minute.

You’re article marketing campaign is designed to to promote something:

• Website
• Newsletter or Ezine
• Blog
• Product
• Service
• Seminar
• Affiliate product

It naturally follows that you’re writing articles to attract the best visitors to your website.  I’m talking about the kind of high quality visitors that are actually interested in what you have to offer.  These are “targeted readers,” and they are what makes or breaks an article marketing campaign.

You’re not writing for every Tom, Richard, and Harriet browsing around on the internet, and you certainly don’t want to try to be everything to everyone!

So, how do you target your readers?

Your first stop is to put yourself in your targeted readers shoes for a minute and answer some basic questions:

1. Who do you want to read your article?
2. What is their age, sex, occupation, etc.?
3. What are those people looking for when they go online?
4. What kind of information are they searching for?
5. Do they have any problems related to what you have to offer?

Knowing the answers to these questions will allow you to write articles that go right to the heart of your targeted readers.  It will also get the most bang for your buck from each article that you write.

After you figure out who the targeted readers for your product are, then you have to do some keyword research.  You want to find keywords that your targeted readers would use to find information about your niche, product, problem, or subject area.

Once you’ve chosen a keyword to write your article around and you’re ready to sit down and actually write your article, pretend that you are talking directly to one of your targeted readers.  Make your article conversational and personable.  Your article marketing campaign should be designed to speak directly to your targeted readers in a way that will peak their interest.

You want them to find your articles, read them, and then click through to your website… simple as that.

Article marketing is a really great way to increase targeted traffic to your website, when done correctly. If you create an article marketing campaign specifically for targeted readers, then your article is sure to be read by the people who really count for your business.

If you’d like to learn more about article marketing and how to target readers, check out The Amazing Article Formula now .

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Buy Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time (Hardcover) at Amazon

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Twitter is an awesome tool for connecting with people personally and professionally.  You can talk to others in your niche or area of interest, share advice, provide resources, and network with people all over the world.

I love it and I’m becoming a total Twitter addict.

It’s so much easier to write a short 140 character post on Twitter than to write an entire blog post… especially when I only want to make a quick point and move on.

I have several different accounts that I use for my different niches.  After all, it wouldn’t make sense to use my Arvada Yates Twitter account to communicate with my friends in other niches unrelated to internet business and marketing.  And having all these different accounts is what made me realize how obvious it is that internet marketers don’t know how to Twitter right.

In my other accounts, I can:

• Communicate directly with like-minded people and tweet back and forth.
• Have online disagreements with others who have a different point of view.
• Post cute jokes or comments about current events.
• Add occasional links to interesting blog posts, news stories, or videos.

In my Twitter accounts directly related to internet marketing, I get a constant barrage of links to affiliate programs and promotions from other interent marketers.  There’s nothing that I can have a conversation about, make a comment on, or connect with.

It sucks!

And it totally takes the fun out of using Twitter… so I don’t spend much time on those accounts and opt to participate in the accounts that allow more interaction.

And that’s where internet marketers are totally missing the point of Twitter.

Twitter is about interacting with others and creating relationships.  It’s kind of like email… you have to build rapport with others and provide useful information before you start slamming offers to buy stuff down their throats.

So here’s my top three ways to improve your results with Twitter:

1.  Start a conversation.  It’s easy to do if you’ve got followers that are real people instead of automated accounts.  In addition, you can always join another conversation that’s taking place… just jump in and be a real person!

2.  Stop posting links every time you Twitter.  Links take time to follow and pull followers out of Twitter… plus too many links undermine any hope of having a relationship with your followers.  If you’re going to post links, post links to articles on your blog.  That’s what I usually do.  In fact, I never post links directly to products.

3.  Post tips and real information to your account.  People love short tips and they can also double as a conversation starter.

I’m sure there are a few self-declared internet marketers out there that are trying to Twitter the right way… but the majority of them seem to see Twitter as an opportunity to spam us all with sales materials.

It’s a shame… Twitter can be so much fun!

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According to the author of The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet Version 2009, the Latest Edition is everything you’d Expect From A Beginner’s Guide To Starting An Online Business with over 1,250 pages of detailed, moneymaking strategies and techniques have been carefully laid out in bite-sized, easy to grab-and-apply sections, making it dead-easy to determine what you need, apply it to your business, and move onto the NEXT step.

The “Insider Secrets” system claims to carefully guide you through all the critical steps:

1. Helping you decide what you should sell…
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3. Attract your first visitor…
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The way the positive review stack up, you can’t go wrong… especially with that return policy!

Read more reviews of The Insider Secrets to Marketing Your Business on the Internet Version 2009.

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If you never really thought about being at war when it comes to your blog and trying to get notices among the millions of other blogs on the planet, then you’ve got to check out this entertaining and enlightening post from Copyblogger.

If you stop and think about it, you’re in a battle for visitors, subscribers, and customers… and you’re fighting all those battles at the same time.

Want to actually start waging war and winning those battles? Check out the link below and play to win:

Your Blog vs. The World: 7 Steps To Winning The War for Attention

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Here are eight public domain use ideas to get you thinking:

1. Use public domain to increase your organic search engine traffic.

As I said in the idea above, you can cut up public domain content into separate articles and distribute them, but you can also slice it up to create articles for your own website. Make these articles keyword rich and submit them to search engines to gain a high search engine ranking for your keywords. The number one reason people go online is for information research. By setting up keyword and content rich webpages, the search engines will rank you higher and more of those targeted visitors will find you.

2. Use public domain products to upsell your own products.

Upselling is a really powerful strategy for increasing your revenues, if you have additional products to offer. Public domain can give you the opportunity to offer an ‘upgrade’ to your customers. Simply use a public domain product as it is or modify it slightly and you have a product to use in your upsell.

3. Create a digital information product.

This is probably the easiest and most often used method for taking advantage of public domain. You can easily compile the material as is (or with a few slight edits) and turn it into an ebook. Then you can sell the ebook, give it away to subscribers, offer it as a backend, etc.

4. Use public domain as a bonus to your own products.

Just like we talked about using it to upsell your products, you can also use it to create really great bonuses for your products. People love bonuses. Sometimes people will buy a product just for the bonus if it’s something that they view as unique.

5. Use public domain on your website as content and partner with Google AdSense to generate revenue.

Use the material you gather from public domain to create an information rich website. Then place Google AdSense ads within the site. Every time someone clicks on the AdSense ads, you earn a percentage of that advertising revenue. If done right this can add up very quickly.

6. Create a physical information product.

Just as you can create a digital information product out of public domain material, you can also create a physically delivered product and ship it to customers. The real advantage to creating a physical product is that it may work better for your niche audience (especially if they aren’t very sophisticated) and physically delivered products can generally command a higher price.

Some options for a physical product could be to read public domain material into a a microphone and then record that onto a CD, divide the material into sections and turn that into a home study course, or simply repackage the information into a booklet.

7. Create articles or mini courses out of the public domain content.

People and online businesses are starving for great content. You can literally slice up the material you get into smaller articles and distribute them online to gain traffic to your website. This is called article marketing, and it’s a great way to gain targeted visitors to your site, especially when the content actually comes from public domain works.

8. Create s product based on a public domain work.

Some people call these types of products derivative works. All it really means that you use the public domain material as the basis to create something completely different like a video, software, Cd, etc.

There are tons and tons of other ways that you can utilize this freely available material and make money with it. Hopefully this will give you some idea of the possibilities and give you a good jumping off spot for using public domain in your own online business.

Want to know more about public domain?  Get your Free Copy of 10 Days to Smokin’ Traffic Now!

Click the link to learn more about
Public Domain Riches

Or learn more about the
Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Kit

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