Hi folks!
A vast and growing number of people are coming online every day with the idea of jumping into the internet "gold rush" and making their fortune. The sad fact is, most never will. You can be one of the few who do, if you take the necessary steps.
This article is not about choosing the right products, host, website design, copy writing, or anything like that. What it is about is one excellent way to get real, quality traffic to your website.
It's easy to get a lot of generic traffic to your website, simply by sitting at your computer using click programs like
Clickthru or even autosurf traffic sites like
Towerhits.com, but while these systems can be useful for raising your Alexa or Ranking scores, they ultimately bring you a lot of totally useless traffic. The people who are using these programs are not interested in what you have to sell or offer; they are only interested in getting more useless traffic to their sites!
While it really looks impressive to see your hit counter rising quickly (and it does do some good - it will bring up you ranking), it is much better and far more profitable to get a tiny handful of traffic that is actually looking for your website. These are the people who will actually buy your products or services, or sign up for your opportunity.
One of the best and often most missed ways to gain access to real, quality traffic, is through communities and forums, using your signature file.
Most people who use communities or forums for advertising simple post blatant or very thinly disguised ads over and over again, and as often as they are allowed. The sad fact is, what this kind of advertising says to the discerning reader (your potential customer) is, "Buy my junk. I'm desparate!" Like it or not, that IS the truth, and it will result in virtually no sales. The people it might attract are those who think they can simply come online, join a bunch of free programs, and watch the money start pouring in.
The reality is, as anyone who has been online for any length of time knows, you will NOT make money that easily. The same thing happened during the gold rush years of the 19th century. Most people who headed for the gold fields were totally unprepared, thinking they could simply appear on the scene and start picking up two pound nuggets off the ground. The sad facts of reality become all too apparent when you visit the graveyards of some of the old gold rush ghost towns and see that the average age of those buried there is under thirty!
The same thing happens online. People rush to the cyber gold rush totally unprepared, and when they don't make money right away on free programs, start paying out money left, right and centre for every program that promises easy wealth with no work, until their credit cards are maxed out and they really are desperate. I REGULARLY receive emails from people who are in absolute despair, having buried themselves in debt, and who are losing EVERYTHING, including their homes!
You CAN make money online if you do things properly. One of the things you NEED to do, is to get that quality traffic coming in. Instead of thinking in terms of thousands of visitors coming to your site (who never buy anything), you need to think in terms of ONE person coming to your site who wants what you have to offer, who actually BUYS something from you! Then you need to think about ONE more person coming to your site who wants what you have to offer, who actually BUYS something from you! Then you need to do it again and again and again. One person who buys what you have to offer is better than ten thousand visitors who buy absolutely nothing!
By posting helpful and interesting information in your area of expertise on communities and forums, always with your signature file at the end, you will gradually build up that quality traffic and sales. If you want instant success with the money simply pouring in by tomorrow, noon, than the best advice I can give you is this: quit right now, unplug your computer, and sell or give it away before you lose your house! However, if you are willing to work, do the research, and slowly, but solidly build your business, you can do it.
By now, you might be wondering just what a signature file (or sig file) is. That's OK! I didn't always know what it was, either!
A signature file typically contains your name, a little information about your business, and a link. It goes at the end of your post or email (yes, use it in every email you send - it's not spam), and in most forums and email programs, is automatic, once you have it set up.
The more often you post, the more your signature file is seen, and the more attention it receives from the search engines, meaning your site is more likely to be visited by someone who is looking for it.
This brings us to a VERY important point about posting!! Do NOT use cut and paste, generic, meaningless, thoughtless, LAZY methods to reply on forums you visit! Some search engines will actually drop you way down or right off, if you do this. The search engines are always looking for FRESH content, and that means you need to think about every post you make if you want to get noticed.
It's actually better not to post at all if you can't think of something intelligent to say.
When you write an post you think might be quite good and useful to others, copy and save it on your hard drive. You can easily tweak it and use it where relevant on other forums, and you can also post it on sites that accept articles. (I will be writing more on article advertising in another thread.)
In closing, let me point out that many people will tell you that communities and forums are nearly useless as advertising venues. I'm here to tell you that they simply don't know how to use them, and now you can tell them how! Furthermore, don't make the mistake of not upgrading on paid communities. It is worth the very small monthly fee that most sites charge, and gives you the freedom to use the site properly and to a much larger audience. The sites that charge are only able to do so because they are that good.
Here is a list of some of the communities and forums I use:
Adlandpro
BizFriendz
Plan4Power
Busy Bee Safelist Community
Tower Hits Forums
Everything For Success
Direct Matches
Ryze
Conquer Your Niche
MySpace
Buddy9
God bless,
Dave