When marketing online, traffic is like blood to your body. Without traffic, your site will just be a deserted place and will die down eventually. So what are the ways to drive traffic and market your site on the world wide web? Here is a list of them:

1. Search engines. Search engines should be the fundamental of your traffic generation plan. It should be your largest source of traffic refferer. You can get traffic from search engines either through SEO (Search Engine Optimization) or PPC (pay-per-click advertising). Both of these methods can bring very targeted visitors to your website.

2. Article Directories. Article marketing is also a very effective way to drive traffic to your website. What you can do is to write articles about the topic that you are marketing and submit your articles to popular online article directories like EzineArticles.com. If your articles are interesting, you can get lots of click-throughs to your website through the link in the Author Resource Box of your articles.

3. Blogging. When you blog regularly (I am guilty about this… I should be blogging more often!), you can get more organic traffic from search engines due to unique content and long-tailed effect of SEO. Search engines like Google loves sites that update their content regularly. So with a blog, you can write blog posts with unique and useful content for your target readers to read. When the long-tailed SEO effect kicks in, you will get an increased organic traffic from search engines to your blog.

4. Forum posting. Participate in forums and contribute to the community. Include your website URL in your signature. As you submit posts to the forum, your signature will appear at the bottom of your post. If the people think that what you offer is good, they will check out your site through your forum signature.

5. Social bookmarking. Social bookmarking sites like Digg, StumbleUpon and Reddit are popular sites where people are actively seeking for quality information to bookmark, share and discuss about. You can submit your site to these social bookmarking sites but remember - do not spam.

6. Social networking sites. Create your profile on social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace and Friendster. Include your website URL in your profile and make more friends to expand your network.

7. Squidoo. One of my favourite technique is to use Squidoo to drive traffic. On Squidoo, you can create pages or also known as lens, and talk about any topic that you wish to share with people. Within your content, you can embed images and links that allow your lens readers to visit your sites. A good news for bum marketer is that Squidoo also allows direct affiliate links to be embedded within the content of your lens. So if you are a bum marketer, Squidoo is a channel that you MUST use.

Did I miss out any of your favorite way to drive traffic? Feel free to leave a comment and share with us.

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You can make money online by promoting other people products and earn a commission for every sale resulted from your marketing effort. This is known as Affiliate Marketing. Affiliate marketing is a very huge and competitive industry, and good affiliate marketers can earn a full-time income at home by promoting other people products.

Amazon.com can be considered the pioneer in implementing affiliate programs for people to join. People join Amazon’s affiliate program to promote their books… earning commissions from every sale resulted from their marketing effort. Personally, I don’t think that Amazon’s affiliate program is the best program for us affiliate marketers… simply because they pay peanuts to their affiliates.

I think one of the reasons the commission percentage that Amazon gives to its affiliates is so low because they are selling physical products. Merchants who are selling low-sale-ticket physical products have cost to cover. That is why it is very difficult for them to give affiliates a nice commission. However, they don’t understand that full-time affiliates love high commission and it is the main source of motivation for them to promote the product…

The time and effort spent on promoting an Amazon product is quite similar when compared to promoting digital products (such as e-book/software). But the commission of promoting a digital product is way much higher than an Amazon product… so it really doesn’t make sense for me not to favor digital products. =)

Usually, merchants who sell softwares and e-books tend to give very high commission (I am looking for at least 60% commission for each sale) to their affiliates. This is because, their product cost is very, very low. So if you really want to earn a full-time income from affiliate marketing, go to Clickbank.com and look for digital products to promote now.

To make money in affiliate marketing, you need to treat it like a real business. If you treat it as a part-time hobby, you will make part-time affiliate income. This is because other competitive affiliate marketers are working their ass out everyday to make more affiliate money online… If you are not focused on it, it is natural for you to lose some of your affiliate profits to them.

Before you start promoting an affiliate product, you need to do your own research. Research is the key to affiliate marketing success. There is a saying that one should promote a product that he or she has interest in. I think this is the MOST MISLEADING information! Why? Because promoting a product that you are interested in does not mean that your target consumers will love it. You need to look for hungry market full of buyers… not a market that is your hobby. Yes, you can make a few sales here and there by promoting your hobby product (let us take it that this hobby product is not in a hungry market), but it will be very hard for you to make a full time affiliate income with this.

You need to find a market with people who are so willing to take out their credit cards to buy from you because they WANT TO SOLVE THEIR IMMEDIATE PROBLEMS… This is why you need to do your research and find the right niche to enter.

After you have chosen a niche/market to enter, it is now time to test it out. To make sure that the niche that you are entering can convert, the only way to know is to test the market. Power up your Words processor and do some article marketing. When you are writing your articles, make sure that you apply BUM Marketing technique to it.  If you can get a few sales with bum marketing effort, you can go on to create a mini-site or squeeze page to actively market the product.

To do well in affiliate marketing, you need to be different. There are so many other affiliate marketers around, therefore you really need to differentiate yourself from them.  Once you have found a profitable niche, start building your own assets. Some examples of assets in affiliate marketing are lists, mini-sites, squeeze pages, free report to give away, or even your own competing products.

Do not just depend on article marketing, bum marketing or Squidoo to make affiliate sales. This is because the level of entry for these methods are way too low… ANYONE can easily enter and become your competitor. You need to build your own assets, websites, brands… and lastly your own product… in order to totally become an authority figure in the niche that you are in. This way, you will raise the level of entry and your competitors will not be able to so easily challenge you in the niche.

There are many things to learn in affiliate marketing and I believe I will always be a student in the art of affiliate marketing. Hope that this post can bring you some insights about affiliate marketing.

P.S: Last but not least, here is a resource that i strongly recommend anyone who wish to succeed in affiliate marketing to purchase. Yes, it is a selling product, not a free book. I purchased it last month and it really open up a lot of insights and ideas for me in affiliate marketing. Check it out yourself.

Click here –> Confession of a Super Lazy Affiliate… 

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I can still remember the times when I get my first Clickbank sale… the feeling is so amazing. The idea of making money online by selling e-books and other information product just seems too good to be true for me. However, after months of hard work, learning, and ACTION, I finally managed to get some consistent sales coming in. =)

Below is the stats for one of my Clickbank account:

I am not a guru… I am still learning my ropes in IM. To put my stats here is not to boast about it. I believe anyone who put in effort and possess determination, making money online is definitely possible. The only question is how much you make? And what do you do to make more money online?

When I first get into Internet Marketing (IM), there are so many things for me to try out. It is very common for someone who just started out to feel information overloaded. During that time, I basically read and try out all sort of things… paid survey, paid emails, adsense, affiliate marketing, etc. But I am not getting anywhere…

Until one day when I attended an IM seminar, a speaker shared with us a very good tip that I will never forget. He says that anyone who just started out in IM should just choose one thing to focus on.  This includes using 1 marketing channel to drive traffic before you move on to another. Do not try all marketing channels at one go!

So I made up my mind and focus my effort on Affiliate Marketing, promoting other people products. I choose affiliate marketing because it gives me the best leverage at that time. At that time, I feel that the most important thing to succeed in making money online is to learn how to drive consistent traffic.  So, with affiliate marketing, I do not need to spend my time creating products but just need to focus on mastering traffic generation.

After I decided on affiliate marketing, I start off by focusing on 1 marketing channel to drive traffic which is Article Marketing. Actually I am really glad that I have chose to focus on article marketing. Because it allows me to learn how to write. I believe writing is a very essential skill in IM. When you know how to write, there are lots of things that you can do. Writing articles, creating email content, blogging, creating sales page and squeeze page, etc.

So what do you do to make money online? If you are new to IM and focusing on lots of different things, i urge you to choose one and focus on it. ACTION is very important when it comes to making money online. A lot of people attend seminars, read e-books, participate in forums… but they do not take action. When you don’t take action, you cannot practice what you learn and there will be no result for you.

So do not procrastinate anymore. If you are still pondering whether to start creating your first squeeze page and build your list, just do it! If you are still pondering whether to create your own report for free distribution, just do it! Take action, track your performance and continue to improve your skills. This is the way to increase your earning online

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Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the foundation of Internet Marketing. In affiliate marketing, SEO is very important. SEO can be applied when you are writing your articles or designing your squeeze page. When done correctly, SEO is definitely the key to drive consistent targeted traffic to your sites, articles, or squidoo lens.

However, no one is perfect when it comes to the ever-changing technology of search engine marketing and SEO. Sometimes, even SEO gurus will make very basic SEO mistakes due to either miscommunication or just plain carelessness. So if you want your site to rank well organically, you need to prevent yourself from making the same mistakes as them.

Let me share with you 4 common SEO mistakes that people make during search engine optimization:

1. Using the same Title and Meta description for all pages. Every page has its unique content and it should go the same for the Title and Meta tags. Each page should be optimized according to a particular set of keywords that are the most relevant to the content of that page. If you place the same title and meta description for all pages, your keywords will not match the content and thus making it harder to optimize.

2. Stop optimizing once results are shown. Many optimizers stop doing the necessary optimization such as off-page optimization when they see that their keywords have obtained high rankings. SEO is an ongoing process. Every day, there are competitors competing top ranking positions with you. With complacency, sooner or later your website will be knocked off from the top positions by them. What I do us to write articles consistently and submit to various article directories to gain more back links.

3. Placing a splash page as the home page. The home page is one of the most important pages of a website, whether be it for SEO purpose or visitors experience. By placing a splash page as the home page, it will result in a SEO disaster. So try to avoid having a splash page for your website. Instead, use a flash banner to make your site more interactive.
   

4. Forgetting that content is the king. In SEO, one of the most important aspects is the content. Search engines love fresh and unique content. Sometimes, optimizers are too focused on tagging and forget that content is very important. When you write your content, do not just write for the search engine sake. You need to consider your visitors’ experience too. Content stuffed with keywords but without real meaning and value will not result in any conversion. This will defeat the purpose of SEO for your site.

So when you optimize your site the