It doesn’t matter how good the content is on your blog. If you don’t promote it, nobody is going to find it. It is really important to actively seek exposure for your blog, especially during the early days.

We are going to be looking at 3 different tactics that you can use to acquire the links and brand exposure needed to take your blog to the next level. These strategies don’t even need to necessarily be done by you, as they can easily be outsourced.

Guest Blogging

Guest blogging has exploded in recent times, mostly due to the tactic’s ability to acquire powerful links, and greatly increase search rankings. I recently delved deeply into the strategy, analysing the effect of Google’s upcoming penguin update.

Whilst low-level guest blogging is likely going to be less effective in the future, focusing your efforts on high authority blogs relevant to your niche will remain a great way to gain exposure, traffic and links.

This tactic can be used to quickly gain recognition from your target audience, although it is entirely dependent on the quality of the post, and the quality of the blog you guest post for.

Aim to land a guest blog on the most widely recognised blogs within your niche, and your time and effort will be rewarded with an onslaught of targeted traffic.

Social Promotion

Social media fits nicely into an ongoing blogging strategy. Your ability to drive traffic through various social sites will increase each day, the longer you keep up the momentum.

To get started, ensure that your blog, and each of your blog’s posts has share buttons that are easily recognisable. People are becoming more and more accustomed to using these buttons to quickly share content with their friends or followers.

Once your sharing buttons are clearly in view, start developing your presences across Google+, twitter and Facebook, possibly creating a Facebook fan page. You may find yourself feeling overwhelmed, so you can choose one of the three and stick to it if you wish.

Make sure you make use of sharing communities like Reddit and Stumble upon too. They can be a great way of finding new exposure opportunities, and it doesn’t take very long to post your content onto these sites.

Take Part in The Active Communities Within Your Niche

There are probably a ton of forums and ongoing discussions going on in your niche right now. Seeking them and joining in with the discussion can be a great way to establish yourself as a thought leader, gain recognition, and send traffic through to your blog.

Most of these communities will let you have a signature, which will allow you to link through to your blog. Offer tangible advice and solve people’s problems, and you will start to gain more exposure for your blog.

You could also try commenting on other blog’s within your niche, offering help and assistance where it is needed.

With this strategy, it is important to offer exceptional advice and engaging comments. That way, you establish yourself as the person in the know, and they will be more likely to visit your blog as a result.

The key to success with guest blogging, social promotion and community involvement is consistency. You will not start to see results immediately. But over time, everything will start coming together and your blog will grow in strength.

Can you think of different ways to engage your target audience, and promote your blog? I’d love to discuss them in the comments below.

We will be looking at some of the common SEO mistakes that people make, whilst offering solutions to help you get your site on the right track.

Not Paying Attention To Webmaster Tools

 Webmaster tools is excellent for quickly finding the things that are wrong with your site. It can tell you if you have any URL issues, the crawl rate of your site, information on inbound links and more.

The information comes straight from Google, so you know you are dealing with issues that are inhibiting your site’s ability to rank.

Make sure your site is connected to Webmaster tools (it’s free), and check on it once a month. You will be able to efficiently target and eliminate common site issues as they arise.

The Site Isn’t Being Crawled

A site that isn’t crawled is a site that goes unnoticed. If your site isn’t being crawled, it’s invisible to the search engines and users can’t find it. Check Webmaster tools to see how often your site is being crawled.

A lot of the time your site simply won’t be getting crawled enough, and there are a few actions you can take to increase its crawl rate.

Make The Site Faster- Search engines pay close attention to the speed of a site, as a slow site is often avoided by users. Therefore, faster sites are given more authority and are crawled more often as a result. Google recommends that sites load in 1.4 seconds or less.

The act of speeding up your site can get a bit technical, so you might need a bit of help from your web designer to get the job done.

To work out your page load speed, head to the pingdom speed tool and enter your website URL. Then use Google’s pagespeed tool to identify the solutions to speed up the site.

Create a Sitemap- Creating and submitting a sitemap ensures Google knows about all of the pages on your site. By giving Google a map of your site, you are giving them a deeper understanding of its structure. This allows them to create a better schedule for the crawlers, which often means more frequent crawling.

To create a sitemap, you can go here.

Keep It Fresh- The more your site is updated; the more it will be crawled. So, you should be actively looking for ways to update your site. You could simply edit bits of the site every now and then, or you could create a blog onsite and start adding content.

Any effort to change your site and it’s content is going to be noticed by the search engines, which will mean you get crawled more often.

Obsessing over Links

 Whilst there isn’t really such thing as too many links when it comes to SEO, many people do become obsessed over the amount, and focus all of their marketing efforts solely on link acquisition.

A much more rewarding and secure tactic is to create a resource worth linking to. Developing your site and it’s content should be your first priority, once you have something that is actually worth linking to, everything else falls into place.

Google is actively targeting site’s that manipulate the process of acquiring links, and are constantly creating algorithms to counter it. The design, structure, and content on your site plays a bigger part in your rankings than you probably imagine.

Not Using The Phrases That People Search For

 Whilst you might well have created the best website within a certain niche, if you don’t tell the search engines, it means nothing and you won’t rank. You need to treat the search engines like a child, and spoon-feed them certain words, so they can associate your site with those words.

The first step is to research the words and phrases that your target audience is searching for. You can use the Google Keyword Tool.

The second step is to make sure you include those words and phrases throughout your site’s content and title, description and alt tags. But be sure to not overuse them and make it look unnatural, as that will do more harm than good.

Bad Title And Description Tags

If you get anything wrong with your site, make sure it’s not the title and description tags. They play a huge part in ranking your site, and how much organic traffic you receive.

Title Tags- Title tags are probably the single most important place to insert your target keywords in order to rank well. Make sure all of the title tags follow these guidelines:

Must be 50-70 characters in length.

• All titles must be unique.
• If possible, and if it makes sense, use the target keyword for that page twice.
• Use the name of the city for the business if it makes sense to do so.

Description Tags-Descriptions don’t actually help with rankings, but they do substantially alter your click through rates. Description tags need to be compelling, and give good reason for searchers to want to click through and visit the site. Follow these guidelines:

• Make sure that every description is unique, and relevant to that page.
• Include a call to action.
• No more than 160 characters in length, no less than 51. But ideally, the longer they are the better.
• Use the target keyword for that page where appropriate. It will appear bolded in the search results, which will draw searcher’s eyes to your listing, and improve click through rate as a result.
• Use the name of the city for the business, if appropriate.

That’s all. I hope you got some use from this, and you can begin to shape your site into a long-term source of free traffic. As always, if you have and comments, queries or thoughts, leave them below and I’ll get back to you.

Guest blogging has become one of the most lucrative techniques for building powerful links. SEO agencies and freelancers use it as a core part of their strategies, and it’s been working well.

But, website owners and SEOs understand that strategies that work well now, might not work well forever, and guest blogging is going to be effected by their upcoming changes.

Whilst guest blogging will remain a rewarding strategy when utilised correctly, the SEOs that have been abusing this tactic, will suffer.

In particular, Google is looking for links that are genuine references. A link must be a citation.

Links = Citations

We understand that links count as votes of approval. So when links strays away from becoming a vote of confidence, and enters the domains of manipulation and spam, Google no longer wants to count it as a vote.

Look at it this way, a research paper from Charles Darwin would be considered as one of the most respected pieces of authority content on the Internet. Any other papers that Charles referenced within his paper could easily be recognised as being important too.

These references or citations created the foundation for Google’s Pagerank, and how link juice is passed around the Internet. It also explains why links are not created equal, and a link from Charles Darwin’s paper would be more powerful than thousands of links from low quality sites.

So now that people actively abuse these concepts, Google is responding by creating algorithms that screen the obvious signs where links are not actual citations.

Guest blogging leaves behind these obvious signs. Lets take a look at some of the the instances within Guest blogging, where links are obviously created for the purpose of passing link juice, and not a genuine citation.

Rich Anchor Text Links

Google already punished sites that had unnatural looking link profiles based on the distribution of anchor text, but I’m expecting them to take this one step further.

If a site such as Apple, Microsoft or the Daily Mail linked to you, do you think they would link to the blatant money page of the site, using rich anchor text?

They wouldn’t.

Too many rich anchor text links, especially when used early on within a guest post, is a blatant sign that the link is not a citation. So, if Google sees too much of this, they can instantly recognize that both parties are taking part in a trade.

Trading content for links.

Google is looking for genuine site recommendations. Tell tale signs of trading, is not what they are looking for.

Rich anchor text is the first sign that a link is not a genuine citation.

It’s important to understand that rich anchor links to genuine sources would not be screened in this process, and a tiny number of them linking to your money site is fine.

But, over abuse rich anchor text and you will do far more harm than good.

Consistently Guest Posting On Sites Unrelated To Your Site

Let’s say you run an ecommerce store that sells sporting supplies.  You write a bunch of articles on completely random, unrelated topics and get them accepted to blogs covering a range of niches.

This is another obvious sign that the links from those blogs are questionable, and the value of the citation is extremely weak.

A link such as this seems more like a payment or a trade, rather than a genuine endorsement.

You can expect Google to actively devalue or discount links such as this.

Final Thoughts

Guest blogging is a tactic that Google is paying extremely close attention to at the moment. You can expect them to take action against the countless bloggers, SEO agencies, businesses and individuals that are gaming the system and guest blogging solely for the purpose of acquiring a link.

An easy way to shift your focus is to start thinking about your branding, and not the value of the link.

Does that guest blog reflect well on your business?

If it doesn’t, seek to post on blogs with the intention of acquiring referral traffic from the places that you get accepted on. If people are not actually going to ever click on the link and visit your site, it’s safe to say that Google is going to take a dislike to it.

Sites that are actively accepting guest blogs probably need to be the most careful. If you are accepting posts that contain any of the issues mentioned above, you have even more to worry about.

Guest bloggers only risk their links being devalued or discounted. Site owners risk their entire site being punished as a result.

To follow up on my first 2 Internet Marketing books – both available at Amazon – Successful Google AdWords Strategies and How to Get Selling on AdWords Fast

My new book is about SEO but specifically aimed at non-technical Small Business owners who may be intending to do their own SEO.

Having trained Small Business Owners over the past 6 years through my Face to Face SEO Courses I have written this book to cover exactly what you need to know, and where you need to spend the time.

I’m proud to be the only fully qualified teacher (with a full PGCE teaching degree) delivering Internet Marketing training in the UK, and the only teacher who has ever built and sold their own SEO & AdWords Management agency between 2008 to 2012!

So take a look at my new hands-on guide that explains exactly  WHY and HOW to do Search Engine Optimisation.

Here’s what you’ll Learn:

• The essential SEO strategies for making your website rank
• Choosing winning keywords
  • Keyword Research Tools
• Onsite SEO essentials
  • Metatags – how to craft them for maximum effect
  • Rewriting page copy so it ranks in record time
  • Site factors – what else do you need to consider?
• Link Building – what still works today after the recent Google updates?
  • Guest Blogging and how to do it
  • Essential directories
  • Do articles still work?
  • Web 2.0s and are they worth considering?
• Google Places / Local
• How to get to the top of Google Maps

The book is available here on Kindle (Amazon USA) or here on Kindle (Amazon UK)

I’ve compiled the 7 fatal errors that I see in I have spotted in SO many of these! And here they are…

This is a biggie. The Display Network contains thousands of unrelated websites all around the web. If you let your adverts show on them – your Click Through rate will drop hugely and your advert Quality Scores will be extremely low.  What’s Quality Score I hear you say?  It’s a score out of 10 Google gives you, mainly coming from how good you are at writing your adverts.  If you get low numbers of clicks, you get a low score and this means every single click costs you up to 10 x what it needs to! Owch!

Never send visitors straight to the homepage – send them to the most relevant page on your website instead.  These are known as landing pages and you should make sure you set up several for each product or service you offer.  People are lazy and if landed on a homepage, will simply leave!

If you are not tracking your results through conversion tracking (and ideally also tracking goals in Google Analytics) then you are throwing money down the drain.  You must set up a series of conversions or actions that can be tracked on your website. You then need to track these so you can see which keywords are working – and which aren’t! Simple as that.

A typical set up for one of my clients contains several hundred or even thousand Ad Groups.  A typical account I audit contains sometimes just 1, and sometimes a handful of Ad groups.  Normally this Ad Group contains hundreds of keywords!  Consider now that the aim in AdWords is to match the advert to what the visitor has typed, so that it shows in bold to the visitor on the Google search screen.  But how can you match hundreds of keywords to just one poor advert from its Ad Group!? The answer is that you can’t.  Don’t be lazy – set up dozens or even hundreds of Ad Groups, all containing a relevant keyword and relevant advert.

There are plenty of competitor research tools out there where you can see what keywords your competitors are bidding on.  Save yourselves some time, research their keywords and make sure you have included them all! Also make sure you have examined their adverts, and make yours stand out! What is unique about you? Make sure you include this in your advert.

People are now BUYING from their mobiles and tablets – not just searching! Your conversion rates will often be higher, and in some markets you can even set up adverts so you get 100% conversions! Make sure you make the most of Google’s new Enhanced campaigns and bid on mobiles too.  And don’t forget your mobile optimised website too if possible – so people can navigate your site easily.

I often see people spending just a couple of dollars or pounds a day as they aren’t sure AdWords is working.  This is due to the other mistakes I have mentioned, in particular the lack of AdWords conversion or goal tracking. You may as well not bother! To run a thorough test you need to be spending £600 / $1000 per month – only when you have made sure you have addressed the other points mentioned here of course!

I do hope you’ve found these points helpful. I know I’ve told you WHAT but not the HOW to fix it – if you need help with the HOW then why not check out my brand new Online PPC Training Product – Web Leads Unlimited?

Here is how the three tools can be combined to work together in a sales funnel:

Your website visitors click on a lead capture page, they enter their email, at which point they are directed to a sales video. From there, if they don’t purchase, they are sent emails consistently, offering them a mixture of value and further incentive to purchase the product.

Throughout this post, I will be referring back to this sales funnel, but I will often talk about how you can use these tools in other areas of your online business.

Let’s take a look at each of these tools individually.

Lead Capture Page

The process starts when a visitor enters their email into your capture page, and you acquire a new lead. You have probably heard it a thousand times already, but I will say it again.

The money is in the list.

If you want to build a long-term presence on the internet that you can use to make money consistently, you need to be building your list.

There is a massive difference between the amount of trust that we have with the people that email us, and the people that we see during the time we browse on the internet.

If you have done your job correctly, and offered your list enough value and enough reason to open your emails and connect with you, you have branded yourself. At this point, your email list will trust you.

It’s really easy to sell things to people that trust you.

This is where the relationship starts.

Sales Video

A compelling sales video can often make the difference between successful and broke internet marketers. Whilst it’s not actually essential to have one, it does help a great deal.

There are many people that make decent money without using sales videos. However, in the typical sales funnel that we are talking about, it is a fundamental part of the system.

After your lead has been captured, we use the sales video as an opportunity to properly present our lead with the product that we are offering.

From here, if the sales video has done a good job, you will make a sale. But the vast majority of the time, we won’t. That’s just how it is.

However, giving up at this point makes no sense whatsoever. We captured the lead’s email address for a reason, and we will use it to offer further value, and expose that product, or different products further down the line.

A recent study revealed that an average person needs to be exposed to a product around 6 or 7 times before they are ready to buy.

This is where the email auto responder comes in.

Email Autoresponder

An autoresponder is an excellent way to develop an ongoing relationship with your leads on complete autopilot. It can be used in a number of different circumstances, not just the sales funnel that we are talking about.

In this funnel, we use it to present out product time and time again, and give them more and more reason to purchase.

Your ability to keep your open rates and click rates high, and your unsubscribe rates low will be determined by the amount of value that you give.

In the sales funnel that we are talking about, we want to push our product strongly. This means sacrificing the relationship that we can build, by giving our list more opportunity to buy. You can alternate your approach as you see fit, to either build a more responsive and trusting list, or make more sales quickly.

If you are currently building a list of any kind, I highly recommend that you write out a minimum of two weeks’ worth of autoresponsder emails immediately.

It doesn’t matter if you have anything to sell to them or not. Just identify the type of people that you have on your email list, and offer two weeks’ worth of value tailored to them. In doing so, you will build a deeper connection with your list, and you will find it easier to sell things to them further down the line.

So that’s a typical sales funnel in action. This is an extremely aggressive way of selling, but it can be extremely rewarding if you have the right product and the right visitors. It will rely heavily on the quality of the three tools that we discussed.

If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

Creative Commons License Tristan Martin via Compfight

Well it’s been an amazing month, and I really hope it was for you too.

This is the second instalment of my monthly income report, following on from January and once again in the style of Pat Flynn with his monthly income reports.  Feb 2013 shows a small increase, which I am excited about.

This month here’s the total for earned income

1. AdWords Consultancy – one of my largest clients recently left due to taking on a marketing manager so this figure is likely to dip substantially in March. I currently have 5 Adwords clients £7416 total
2. AdWords & SEO Courses – quite a few bookings taken this month due to my imminent courses as well as a private course booking. £5439
3. Traditional SEO – I’m about to start offering SEO again using my Filipino team, this value is zero at present but won’t be in March
4. Local SEO – I still have 2 retained Local SEO Clients – £144 invoiced in Jan.

Total earned income = £13,126

And here’s the total for affiliate income

1. Affiliate Product Earnings – I’m an affiliate for Clicky web tracking and sent out a web blast to my list members about Clicky, earning me a nice $93.99 (£62.59) last month (and of course that’s recurring)
2. Guest blog – $100 – I was approached to receive a paid guest blog for one of my websites, for which I received $100 /  £66.59
3. Infinity Call Tracking – £240.  It should be more than this but sadly their affiliate scheme is VERY poorly run.  I would stop recommending it if I didn’t believe the software worked! This is actually a one off not recurring, as they changed the affiliate scheme (after I had sent them the leads….) This is a perfect example of how NOT to run an affiliate scheme.
4. White Label Dating – had the first sale come through for www.dating.gb.net totalling £3.38.  Not much but it’s a start! This is recurring.
5. Replace Myself – I believe strongly in hiring Filipino staff (I now have 4) and I’ve been talking about this a lot online. I had my first affiliate sale – $38.80 (£25.84) which again is recurring
6. Google AdSense – not much but I’m getting there, mainly via my website Couples Advice, which is now delivering $11.00 per month (£7.33).  I’m also looking at other ways of monetising the site as well.

Total passive income = £165.73  plus one off passive income £240

My aim is to replace the earned income with passive income and reach £10k per month in passive income.  This month, I managed to increase both which is great, but I definitely need to up the passive quickly.  So…onto the list of ongoing projects and the progress I have made since last month:

1. I have launched the site Locksmith Training Central – aimed at locksmiths looked for training in the UK market, currently doing SEO to get the site ranked then the plan is to bring in advertisers
2. This month I bought a website via Flippa – Purchase Silver and am intending to monetise the website with affiliate links and also great content.  It’s an area I’m very interested in having read quite a few of Robert Kiyosaki’s books amongst others – remember if you’re thinking of setting up an affiliate site make sure it’s in area you have some interest in!
3. Inflatable Hot Tub Reviews – set up as an Amazon Affiliate niche and intending to start writing more reviews and monetising the site. I LOVE inflatable hot tubs so will be doing the reviews myself
4. Amazon Drop Ship Site – I decided on a niche – Cat Products in the UK, and will be using Social Media to monetise the site as people love cute cat videos and pics!  I’m doing my best to get my site Cats Rule Okay launched, but not getting very far at the moment – time has definitely been a challenge. My main issue here has been that I need someone to help figure this site out and get it filled for me, but it’s too difficult for my Filipino VAs
5. My Filipino staff have been working on SEO for all my websites, creating content and also backlinking via Best Article Spinner and Unique Article Wizard (to web 2.0s never the site directly -  remember that guys!). I now have 3 writers and 1 WordPress Developer
6. iPhone Apps – just bought the App Empire system and am getting to grips with app creation but most importantly the skill of ASO  – App Store Optimisation. This is right up my street as it is very similar to SEO – so I’m very excited about it! The private Facebook group for App Empire is filled with people who are launching apps and making 5 figures per month.  It’s great to be connected to people right now who are making money with Apps.

Despite the progress above, it still feels pretty slow.  I’m finding time management a serious challenge dividing my time between my various clients and my projects. I would say I’m spending 50% of my time on clients, 20% on marketing, and 20% of time on my projects. I get leads in non stop who want web marketing (I get around 2 or 3 leads per day) and the remaining 10% of my time goes on dealing with leads.

New goals for March:

1. Devote dedicated blocks of time to my biggest project – iPhone Apps.  I aim to devote an hour per day
2. Write 4 articles for my Silver website and include affiliate links
3. Cut down on the web tools and packages I keep buying – I spent over £3k in February!
4. Set up SEO packages so I have a package to offer all the SEO leads I receive
5. Find someone who can help with my Amazon Store

Wish me luck! Comments or questions? Do ask them here!

But at the same time, if you aren’t getting the right affiliate products to the right people, in the right place, you won’t succeed. It’s as simple as that.

It’s all about balance.

But more importantly, it’s about your overall strategy and approach to affiliate marketing. Three words sum up the strategy that every smart affiliate marketer should be using.

Lead with value.

If you do a Google search right now for “how to get your competitors to stop clicking on your adwords”, you will see my mum’s post. (Claire Jarrett is my mum, in case you didn’t already know.)

That post earns her £100 a month. She identified a common problem that people have, she offered the solution, and she led with value, now it makes her money every month. That post took her about half an hour to write.

Do that 1000 times, you will be a millionaire by the end of the year. What a great way to create passive, recurring income!

Anyway, let’s get into the exact places you should be placing your affiliate links.

Within Your Content

There are a number of approaches that you can take when you are trying to make commissions from producing content.

One way is to solve a problem, or answer a common question. The solution to this problem or question would obviously be one of the products that you are promoting. This is how my mum did it.

You can also catch people when they have already shown interest in a product. You would create a blog post optimised for a phrase such as “Raven Tools Review”. (It’s worth mentioning that Claire no longer suggests you buy this product, following their recent removal of SERP tracking.)

Another strategy is to find people that are a little further back in the buying cycle. For example, I recently wrote a post titled “viral marketing tools”. It is crammed full of tools you can use to promote your content and increase you’re positioning in Google. Naturally, all of the links are affiliate links.

You can also make things more interesting. Pat Flynn at Smart Passive Income outlined the exact process he used to create a niche site. It was a detailed tutorial to how Pat created a niche site that earns thousands of dollars today. The blog series was 15 posts long, and whenever he demonstrates how to do something e.g keyword research.  He would include the relevant affiliate link to the product he was using whenever they are mentioned.

This is a great way to offer insane amounts of value by teaching others and making money out of it at the same time.

In Your Emails

The power is in the list, as they say.

There are people out there that could spend half an hour to write an email, send it out to their list, and make thousands in affiliate commissions by the end of the day.

Obviously they invested a ridiculous amount of time into building that list to that stage, so I’m not suggesting that you could do the same, yet.

For now, what you can do is go and add some appropriate products to your email signature. That way, any time you send an email out, you have the chance of earning a commission.

Resource Page

Resource pages are a great place to show your audience any tools, training or products that you use in your business. At the same time, you will be making a commission if they decide to purchase.

Resource pages don’t take long to make, this could probably be a quick thing you could add to your website within the hour.

However, make sure that the products that you promote there are related to the target audience of your website. Otherwise, you will struggle to make any sales.

Banner Ad

Almost every popular website out there makes use of banner ads. Simply because they are great for filling the white space around your website, and making money from it at the same time.

You don’t actually even need any kind of permission to use banner ads from the particular product you are promoting. Most decent affiliate programmes already have eye catching graphics that you can simply place on your site by copying some code.

Make sure you are constantly chopping and changing though. You want to be trying out new banner ads constantly to find the ones that convert best.

Can you think of any more places to put affiliate links?

I’d love to discuss them in the comments below.

P.S Claire  has just started running affiliate marketing training courses in London, if you are interested. You can also book her privately.

It’s also the reason why Pat Flynn over at SmartPassiveIncome.com earns over 50k a month from his affiliate websites.

One wrote a book, one is an affiliate marketer.

Regardless of the industry, the main reason for their success can be summed up in three words.

They are different.

Tim Ferriss bucked the trend by telling everyone that you don’t have to overwork yourself to succeed. His advice gave people their lives back; it showed them the route to success and financial freedom, without long 18 hour days of work. This advice was welcomed by everyone.

Pat Flynn is different because he doesn’t over sell anything.

Pat doesn’t shove links to his affiliate products in your face. Instead, he shows you how a product is making him money. He only recommends products that he is using himself. His website is virtually ad free. His monthly income reports tell everyone exactly where his income is coming from. He doesn’t hide a thing.

They both offer something completely new and refreshing. Their entire approach overturned an overcrowded marketplace that was filled with shady marketers and false promises.

Standing Out in an Overcrowded Marketplace

There are countless ways to be different in your marketplace, small or large. Take a look at your competitors and find out what they are doing. Find a common trend that everybody seems to be following, and do the complete opposite.

Of course, this has to be within reason. There may be a common component of your competitors businesses that is essential to their success. It is your job to find out what is essential, and what isn’t.

Your main focus within your business should be in gaining people’s trust, so base your approach around that.

If nobody else is offering detailed case studies, do that. You will be able to emphasise your skills and capabilities, whilst gaining people’s trust at the same time.

If nobody else is being transparent, be transparent.

Identify a common trend that everybody else is following, and think of ways that you can do the complete opposite, and offer better value in doing so.

Lead with value. Show your worth. Gain people’s trust.

Now go out there and be different.

Overturn your marketplace and you will be rewarded for it.

Everybody tends to head to Google Ad words for paid traffic, whilst the traffic you get through Google is high quality, it can be very expensive.

Why pay one dollar a click through Google Ad words when you can pay one cent a click through other networks?

Here are some alternative sources of traffic. They won’t break the bank; you can literally get a click for less than a cent in some cases.

Start turning a substantial profit from your marketing efforts.

Directcpv

With Directcpv.com, you can start advertising from as little as $0.015 for keyword, URL and category targeted campaigns and $0.004 for network advertising.

There is a minimum deposit of $100 to get started though.

Plenty of Fish

You may have already heard of plenty of fish, the dating website. But did you know that you can also advertise to their members?

This is a great way of getting cheap, quality traffic.

Perfect if you are looking to advertise anything in the dating industry too!

Adoori

Adoori’s network covers a massive number of countries, over 250! But most of the traffic comes from the Canada, US, UK, Eastern Europe and Western Europe.

All of its traffic comes from their exclusive publishers which means you don’t have to worry about getting the same traffic from anywhere else.

Every advertiser also gets their own dedicated account manager, they can help you manage your campaigns and answer any of your queries.

Clash Group

Clash Group was founded in 2007 and is a full service media company that is based in the New York.

They have access to over 25 million email addresses, 100,000 app developers and mobile publishers, and receives over 60 billion ad requests every month.

The group obtains its traffic through two unique methods; you can read all about that by clicking here.

Adknowledge

Some of the biggest brands in the world use adknowledge for their paid media, including McDonalds and Coca Cola.

It combines advanced targeting with a massive consumer database of over 400 million.

So there we go, 5 sources of paid traffic that are far cheaper than using Google Ad words. There are plenty of others, but I’ll leave you to discover them on your own!

If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I’ll get back to you.