Last post we looked at what to put on our landing page, now we have to get people to visit our website. This process you may hear referred to as getting traffic. As soon as someone visits a webpage, they are now a traffic.

The major cause of people not making as much money online as they would like, is that they can't get enough traffic to their website. On average you need 100 visitors to make 2 or 3 sales. This is called the conversion rate. A conversion rate of 3% means that three people out of 100 bought the product.

I will briefly outline some of the methods used to generate traffic, with the good and bad points of each.

• PPC - pay per click advertising. Google, yahoo and others will display relevant ads on their search engines and on relevant websites. When someone clicks on the ad, Google charges the person who set the ad up. The benefits of PPC are that you can get instant results. The downsides are that it does cost money, and if you haven't done your research properly, it can cost you a lot of money, very quickly. I would definitely recommend a training program which steps out how to set up AdWords campaigns and which keywords to target, so that you pay the least amount you have to. 

•Video Marketing - Videos are becoming very popular among people online. Sites like Youtube have millions of visitors every day. The idea is to make a video about something you are promoting, with interesting or funny content, and attach the webpage to the description box, and at the end of the video. If your video proves to be popular, then some of the people will click on your link to see what you are offering. This can be extremely effective if done correctly. 

• Search Engine Rankings - The more "Google friendly" your website is, the faster your website will appear at the top of the list when people search for a relevant keyword. Search engine rankings are good because they are completely free, but they can take a long time to start flowing in. 

• Blogging - Create a blog with the topic about the product you are promoting. Blogging useful, relevant information, will give you a better standing in Search engines, and you can post on other peoples blogs in return for posts on yours, giving you more exposure. This is great to do if you have the time, and you have to know your topic well, which is why you should choose to promote a product which you are personally interested in. 

• Article writing - Similar to blogging, write articles of around 500 words with good, useful information, with a link back to your website.

These are only a few methods, I have run out of room to list more. If you haven't started yet, or don't have the traffic you would like, I would recommend investing in a training program like Clickbank Mastermind, which will walk you through step by step how to generate traffic, so that you can successfully make money online.

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We have looked previously at the nuts and bolts of getting a website published on the Internet, but for those who don't know how to earn or make money online; deciding what exactly to put on the website is the hardest part of the whole process.

Everything else in the process is mainly mechanical, but publishing a website requires creativity.

So what is the idea of sending people to your web page first? How does this help you sell the product to people? There has been a lot of research over the years which has shown that someone will be more likely to buy a product if they build a relationship with you. The only way someone will build a relationship with you is if you are genuine and honest on your website!

We all have a very good idea when we are being lied to when we visit websites, so the best way to come across genuine and honest is to actually be honest on your website. If you are doing a product review, actually review the product. If you say you have used the product and recommend it, then make sure you have.

There are a few ways to setup your website, or landing page, as they are referred to.

1. As a sales page for the product - sometimes you may want to write your own sales page and send people directly to the checkout page. You would generally only do this if you knew it was a great product, but the official sales page was terrible.

2. A single product review page - A review is a great way to pre-sell the product, as long as it is honest and doesn't sound like a sales pitch.

3. A multiple product review page - A more official looking page with multiple products compared side by side is also a great way to warm up the people you have directed to your site.

Any product which you have chosen should be a great product, which will really help the person who is interested enough to look at your page. Choosing a good quality product to review on your landing page is critical, because you want the person buying to come and buy through you again.

There are different ways to layout your page, and different approaches work for different people who are visiting your site. I don't think it is critical exactly how the site is laid out, as long as it is simple and easy to follow. Some pages work very well with just enough information on it to tell the visitor what you are promoting, others can go into a lot of detail, and require the visitor to scroll right down to the bottom to access the product. Sometimes the best approach is to try it and see what works for you. Remember that you are finding people with a need and providing a means to help them.

Next time we will look at different forms of traffic, and the pros and cons of free traffic and paid traffic.

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Last time we looked at how critical keywords are to earn or make money online. Now that we have chosen a product to promote and have done the keyword research, now we need a website to direct people to.
 
Today we will look at the nuts and bolts of creating a web page and getting it online.

There are three main ways to achieve this :-

·         Create your own web page with software, buy hosting and a domain name and fit it all together yourself.

·         Find a website which lets you create WebPages for free, hosts your site for free, and buy your own domain name.

·         Pay someone to design your site, Buy hosting and a domain name and have it uploaded for you.

Which one of these three options you choose will completely depend on whether you have web design skills, a professional web design program, or money to pay someone to build it for you.

If you already have web design skills, you probably already know how to buy hosting and link your domain names all together, but for you who don’t, I will briefly outline the process.

·         Choose a web hosting company (There are lots of them out there) and buy a hosting package. Typically $5 to $10 a month will cover it.

·         Buy a domain name which suits you. (Typically $8 to $12 a year, more if you use email addresses)

·         Link your domain name with your hosing site, and upload your website.

How to link your domain name and hosting together is a bit difficult to describe here, but there are training courses which explain this in detail and have “how to” videos to make it easy. If you are just starting out, I would recommend buying access to a good quality online training course. A bit of training before you begin and a reference to come back to will make the whole process faster and less confusing, and may save you some money as well.

I have had a lot of success with my websites, using a site which allows me to create a complete website by dragging and dropping. It is free to use and provides hosting for free. The only concession I have to make is a small line of text on the bottom saying “Create a free website with websitename” I think this is definitely the way to go for those starting out.

I haven’t had to pay anyone for website design, but it is recommended by those who are successful as a way to leverage your time, and free you up to do other things. (Like take the kids to school). I personally enjoy the challenge of creating and designing web sites, but I completely understand that you may not, and just want it done quickly. Whichever way you choose to go will depend on your personal circumstances and skills.

Good luck with learning how to make money online. Next time we will look at exactly what do we put on our websites to make it a winner for us.

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Last time we looked at choosing the best products on ClickBank to promote, now we will look at keyword research, and how critical it is to make money online.

You may have heard the term keyword research if you have been looking around for a while, but if you are looking to make or earn money online for the first time, I will give a brief description of what keyword research is and why it is so important.

Whenever you type a phrase into a search engine, looking for something, this is called a keyword. Search engines track it, and people research it to target their ads. There is nothing mysterious about keyword research, basically we are looking for the words which people are searching for, and trying to match them with a product they want to buy. We are not trying to ram products down people's throats, we are not cold selling things, we are trying to find people with a need, and trying to fill that need.

There are two types of people who search on Google and other search engines. Those who are just looking, and those who have a need to be filled. The idea of keyword research is to find those people who need something. People with no money are looking for ways to make more money. Those who need to lose weight are looking for a program which suits them. As an affiliate marketer, we have access to tens of thousands of products which are there to fill people's needs.

There are generic keywords which huge numbers of people will search for, such as "weight loss". All sorts of people will search for this phrase, not necessarily to buy something. Lots of people just browse the internet to find out information. We all do.

There are also targeted keywords which only people very interested in a weight loss solution will type in, such as "buy weight loss program" these are the type of keywords we want to target, as there will be less people searching, but they will be a lot more likely to be interested on the products we can direct them to.

There are numerous tools available for keyword research; most of them have a free feature which will display a small number of related keywords. To access the full keyword search functions you will have to pay some money. This allows you to get all the keywords on the group, which may be thousands, and most will allow you to download the keywords as an Excel spreadsheet. This saves a huge amount of time copying and pasting.

There are also web based software programs which cater for affiliate marketers. These have a whole selection of tools combined in the one website, which can save you some money. If you are serious about learning to make money online, it may be worth subscribing to a training program which also has tools included, to make your campaigns so much easier and quicker to setup, and get you making money that much sooner.

Good luck with your online money making!

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