Internet Home Business Articles

Is it really possible to earn a 6 figure income on the internet? The answer to that is yes, but not everyone will do it! WHY?

The biggest lie told everyday on the internet is you can make money at home doing nothing.

“Join my program and I will build your downline for you. I do all of the work. This is so easy anyone can do it in their
underwear. Buy my book and you will be successful.”And on and on…. We have all fallen for this at one time or another.

My book shelf is full of books I have bought online and never finished reading. Who has time to read all of this stuff and
still actually work at making money?

Here are the only 2 books you need to make money on the internet.
1. “The Insiders Secrets To Marketing Your Business On The
Internet” By Corey Rudl.

This is in my opinion the bible for making money online. While it carries an expensive price tag if you never bought another book these 1,000+ pages would be all you ever need to earn how to make money online. I use it everyday.

2. “Super Affiliate Handbook” by Rosalind Gardner

Without a doubt the best book ever written on making money at home with affiliate programs. Rosalind Gardner explains in detail how she makes over $400,000 dollars a year selling other people’s stuff. I read this 3 times on vacation in Mexico and still refer back to it over and over again.

Learning to earn is a big part of the make money at home formula. None of us have the skill level when we first get
started making money online. Either one of these 2 books, (or both), will be all you ever need to get started and move forward making money online.

If you have money to spend on promotion you are going to want to do pay-per-click advertising and Google AdWords campaigns eventually. This is a very targeted way to build your business, but should not be attempted by a newbie. Once you have the basics listed below you can branch out from there. To learn more about pay-per-click advertising go here:

http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com

But to get started right now let’s summarize what is the best way to set up your week doing things that will actually move
your online business forward on limited budget, and have you making more money than you spend.

Here is a simple outline for budgeting your time every week. Try to spend 2-3 hours or more everyday building your business. If you don’t have that much time everyday then make it up on days when you do have it. Expect to spend 15-20 hours or more every week working on your business. The more properly spent effort you put in the more money you will make.

Here’s a good way to schedule your week.

Monday

Research and write an article on a topic related to your business. If you are not sure how to write an article read this short article here:

http://team-schuman.com/howto/write.html

Tuesday

Submit your article  to the following directories. Here is an article I wrote on tips for submitting your article:

http://team-schuman.com/howto/submit.html

If you can afford it have it submitted for you here:

http://www.submityourarticle.com

http://www.thePhantomWriters.com

http://www.ezinetrendz.com

If not then submit your article yourself to these article directories.

http://www.advertisingknowhow.com

http://www.articlecity.com

http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral

http://www.article-emporium.com

http://www.authorconnection.com

http://www.click-partners.com

http://www.connectionteam.com

http://www.ebooksnbytes.com

http://www.ezinearticles.com

http://www.family-content.com

http://www.goarticles.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

http://www.impactarticles.com

http://www.internethomebusinessarticles.com

http://www.internetnewsflash.com

http://www.lyonsinternational.com

http://webmastertraffictools.com/articledirectory

http://www.workoninternet.com

Wednesday

Exchange links with possible partners. This is hard to do just one day a week. You will find yourself spending a few minutes here and there when you have time. Because exchanging links is so tedious that is actually a better way to do it then to sit down and spend several hours at a time.

Here are 3 excellent link directories to get quality link partners.

1. http://www.linkmarket.net/
2. http://www.infowizards.com/
3. http://value-exchange.sitesell.com/

Larry with Linking101.com has an great website to help you learn the basics of linking.

http://www.linking101.com/

Thursday

Post in at least 5 forums. To start with forums are a great place to ask questions and learn how to make money at home for
free. The nice thing is that you can add a free short classified ad about your product along with the link to your website at the end of your post. This is a great non-threatening way to increase your traffic as well as one way links back to your
website.

Forums are also a great place to get ideas for your weekly article. Look at the type of questions people are asking. Do
some research and formulate an article around the answer to these commonly asked questions.

You can find hundreds of forums here:

http://forumcity.org/links/dir

Here are some more great forums to join and post in.

http://biz-whiz.com

http://www.howtocorp.com/forum

http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/forum

http://www.link forum.com/index.php

http://www.ozemedia.com/cgi-bin/webbbs/webbbs_config.pl

http://www.siteownersforums.com/index.php?

http://www.smallbusinessbrief.com/forum

http://WillieCrawford.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi

http://www.Zeromillion.com/

Friday

Add fresh content to your site. Maybe a new article or another sales or training page. Over a period of time you will have a website with hundreds of pages and you will see it on page one of the search engines for your most popular keywords and keyword phrases.

RSS feeds are all of the rage right now. I have found a simple way to add fresh content by adding a few lines of javascript to a page. Here are a couple of places to get fresh content scripts.

http://www.articlewarehouse.com/ArticleHeadlineSyndication.aspx

http://thewhir.com/find/articlecentral/tracker.asp

http://www.topdesignfirms.com/site-free-content.php

Saturday

Catch up day. Return emails, research a new product or program to sell. Plan your next week.

Sunday

Take the day off.

This article should get rid of any notion you may have that you will get something for nothing when it comes to making money online. It is hard work. It takes patience. You have to have a long range view of what your goals are. Making money from the comfort of your own home is not going to happen overnight.

But the good news is if you will do the things above over time you will see your income growing and eventually you will be making more money at home than you do at your full time job.

I remember watching the greatest player to ever play the game of basketball, six time NBA Champion Michael Jordan.
On many different occasions Michael Jordan clearly stated that determination, focus, and persistence is what helped
him reach his amazing accomplishments.  There was one feeling in particular that gave Michael the strength, power, and desire to succeed as the greatest player to ever play the game. PASSION.

Webster’s dictionary defines the word passion as a powerful feeling or an outburst of strong feeling towards something.
This powerful feeling towards something can motivate us to accomplish anything.  Passion is also the same feeling that
has allowed hundreds of individuals run a successful online business.

Think for a moment of the many different occasions that a friend, coworker, or family member has told you that you didn’t have the ability to accomplish something.  After they tell you that your plan will not work then they advise you to move on to something else.  This is the first obstacle that anyone who wants to start an online business has to bypass.

Here’s the big question.  Are you going to pick a business that your peers recommend or are you going to pick an online business that you are passionate about?  There are two important questions that must be considered before you start an online business.  Is the business or product marketable, and do you feel passion for it?  If you can answer yes to these questions, you can start building an online business.

Over 90% of individuals that start an online business fail.  There is only one way to fail.  You fail when you quit. Some of the responsibilities of starting an online business include:

Finding or creating a product
Finding a web host
Creating a web site
Finding a domain name, plus much more.

More than 70% of the time that you use to run your business should be spent marketing.  In the beginning you will have
to keep your regular job and run your online business part-time. You have to set up a strict schedule and you must follow it.

Education is another important aspect of running an online business. You want to stay up to date with your competition
and new marketing techniques. During the first few months of your business you may not see any profits. Any profit
that is earned during the early stages of your business should be reinvested in the business.

Working when you are tired is another obstacle that you must bypass. There will be many occasions that you will feel like sleeping after working a full eight hours on your regular job. Friends and family can be another obstacle. You have to include your friends and family in your schedule and at the same time reserve time exclusively for your business.

All of the factors that we just mentioned must be taken into consideration when starting an online business. It takes tremendous amount of energy to build a successful online business. Will you do it?  Only if you start with one thing. Pick a passion. Pick a business that you feel an outburst of strong feelings towards and you will fuel yourself with the intensity and power that only passion can supply.

Here’s a really simple way…  to boost your sales.

10 points you must consider to increase your sales offline
and online.

1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a “thank you” email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up every few months.

As you know ” the fortune is in the follow up”.

2. You could upsell to your customers. When they’re at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You’ll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

As competition in many fields has grown, it’s become more difficult to turn prospects into customers Many ways have been invented to sells things over the internet. Following these principles online & offline is the process to keep the “High Touch” with your prospects, your customers  and finally increase your sales.

Some marketing experts would have you believe that the key to a successful home business is limited to a select few and that this chosen bunch have tapped into vast secrets where riches are to be found in abundance.

Others will push forward the idea that their product or service is all you need to make a monthly residual income a reality.

Statistically only 5% of budding entrepreneurs will make it online.

To be perfectly honest I don’t know which if any of these ideas are true but I do know what has worked for me and I believe it can work for anyone who is willing to take a risk, invest the little cash it takes and make a consistent effort for the next year or two to build their own work at home business. Note I am not saying that this will work overnight, I’m not even saying 6 months. Yes I did indeed say a year or two.

Having worked online for over five years now I believe I have finally found a PROVEN system for building a successful home business which will continue to grow year after year and, because it is MY business, it can be passed on to my children and children’s children.

This is not a new idea but it took me a long time to realize it and just as long proving to myself that it works.

How do we know it works Mal and you’re not just spurting us a load of old cobblers?

Well the proof IS in the pudding and the fact is that the five websites that I own all have a Google rank of PR6 and feature in the top pages of all the top search engines including Google, Yahoo and Altavista for many popular “home business”/”work at home” search terms and it is all down to my strategy.

Just do a search for the term HOME BASE BUSINESS on Yahoo or Google and you will see my site(http://www.freeadvertz.com) at number 3(At the time of writing).

Try doing a search for WORK AT HOME BUSINESS in the same search engines, see my site (http://www.workfromhomebiz.biz) at number 6(At the time of writing) and climbing.

How about BUSINESS TIPS or BUSINESS NEWSLETTER, and again my site (http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com) is number ONE(At the time of writing) for both terms.

These results are repeated across all the major search engines.

Have you seen enough? Do you need any more evidence that this works? These are only a few of the terms that we rank highly under. We are actually in the top rankings for scores of other “home business” search terms.

I could easily put this evidence and info into e-book form and sell it but I neither have the time nor know-how to do so(If you can help me out in this area then get in touch). So I’ve chosen to write this article and tell you exactly how you can build your own business to great success in three easy steps.

You have the proof now here is the plan:

In a nutshell the best way to build any online business, and the least expensive, is through a twin track approach of website search engine optimization and reciprocal link building. As I mentioned above this is not a new idea but you now that you have proof that it works, do you have the conviction to follow through?

Here it is in 3 easy steps:

1. Register and host your own domain name: http://www.workathomebiz.info/hosting.html (Put some home business keywords in your domain name, ie workathomebusinesssuccess.com)
Or:
Get a FREE website with hosting here:

http://www.workathomebiz.info/pluginprofitsite.html

Please don’t settle for a FREE domain name as this will NEVER be your own and can be taken away from you at any time or if the company goes bust you have lost all your hard work in building your web presence. Register your own business name.

2. Download web position gold, optimize your site for your keywords and submit your website to all the major search engines:

http://www.webpositiongolddownloads.com

(You can download a free trial from this site. You will need a full version to work this strategy.)

3. Start building those reciprocal links using links manager: http://www.workathomebiz.info/linksmanager.html
(Put your keyword terms in your linking text when exchanging links)

I currently get around twenty reciprocal link requests per day, and this will increase with time. At the beginning I barely got two daily. It may be slow at the beginning but as your business gathers momentum after a few months it will be like a steam train at full throttle, absolutely unstoppable.

I am a 31 year old father of two from Ireland who started from scratch, so if I can do it anyone can.

Believe me people it doesn’t come any more simpler than this.

So if you are serious about really building a successful online enterprise then DO IT NOW and tell me about your success in the coming months.

One more thing before closing. If you are going to give up on this strategy when you don’t see immediate results then please don’t even begin. The key to building success is PERSISTENCE PERSISTENCE PERSISTENCE.

Writing articles is one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic to your website and isn’t as hard as you may think!
You don’t need to be an expert on the topic you are writing about. Just pick an area that is related to the theme of your website, do some research using a search engine and before you know it you will have more knowledge on that subject than most.
Here are a few tips for writing your article:
·  Think up a catchy headline to attract readers. If you’ve not re-written your headline at least a few times, it could probably be better!
·  Try to keep the length of your article to around 500-1000 words
·  Keep paragraphs short and to the point – lots of white space makes your article easier on the eye for readers
·  Don’t waffle – people can become bored quickly on the internet and it’s easy to go and read another article instead.
·  Don’t forget to spell check your article and if possible get someone to proof read it for you.

Once you have your article written, you must remember to add a resource box. This is your chance to tell everyone about you and your website.

If someone has taken the time to read your article right to the end, the chances are that they will be interested in finding out more. This is a great opportunity for you to gain another targeted visitor to your site.

Your next task is to submit your article, complete with its resource box to as many article directories as possible. Start by adding the article to your own website, then submit it to as many directories as you can find.

You can find a list of article directories that I have successfully used in the past on http://www.homebiz-direct.com/articleWriting.html
Alternatively, just type “Article Directories” into Google and start working your way through the 2.1 million results returned!

Finally, the best part …  After a few days you will begin to see your article appearing all over the web.

The beauty of submitting to article directories is that other webmasters go there to search for content for their own websites or newsletters, so you may find your article in places that you didn’t expect for months, or even years to come.
Still not convinced? Here are a few more good reasons for you to start writing:

1. Improved Search Engine Positioning – all these high quality links to your web page from content rich pages will increase your popularity with the search engines
2. Increased credibility for you – it will help to brand you as an expert in your field
3. Free Advertising – you have the opportunity to advertise yourself and your site through your resource box
4. You can use your articles to add original content to your own website and send to the subscribers of your own ezine
5. It won’t cost you a penny!

Writing your first article can be scary, but the rewards gained from doing so are more than worth the effort!

What are the characteristics of the Best MLM Leads? This is a good question to ask before you spend any money buying leads to build your MLM business. Before we get to that let’s take a look at why you would want to buy MLM leads in the first place.

Over the years the multi-level marketing business has gotten a black eye because of the over hyped promises of money and freedom. Very few people have ever achieved a high level of success in any MLM business. And even fewer have ever been able to maintain the level of achievements over a period of time.

That does not make MLM companies bad. Nor does it make the opportunities they afford the average person as a way to make extra money or even as a way to drastically change your lifestyle. It can be done and using MLM leads is a great way to do it.

There are 2 big benefits to buying MLM leads.

1. It gets you away from approaching your friends and relatives. If you have been in more than one MLM business over the years you may have already approached them and used up your credibility when you were unsuccessful.

2. This is a duplicate way to build your business that you can pass on to your downline. Any successful network marketing  business will tell you that one of the main components of success is duplication. Anyone can buy leads and work them over the phone or thru the internet with the use of an autoresponder.

If you are unsure of how to work a lead over the phone I would suggest getting the book “Recruit Your Way To Millions” by Fred Stegge. After reading this book you will be able to explain what you do and what you offer to a new prospect in 30 seconds or less.  http://www.team-schuman.com/recruit-your-way

If you are unsure of what an autoresponder is or how to use one read this article I wrote “How To Effectively Use An
Autoresponder.” This is an absolutely essential business tool if you are going to succeed online with your MLM business.

http://team-schuman.com/articles/article15.html

Now that you understand some of the benefits of buying MLM leads and how to market to them let’s take a look at what are the characteristics of the Best MLM Leads.

1. How many times are the leads sold? Many MLM lead companies sell their leads over and over. You will be contacting a
prospect that has already been marketed to. Personally I like leads that are exclusive to me.

2. How old are the leads? Would you rather contact a prospect that has expressed an interest in the past 48 hours or in the past 48 days. Being able to strike while the iron is hot so to speak is a great benefit of a fresh lead.

3. How many leads do you get for your money? Obviously the more leads you can get for the best price the more leads you can buy at a time. This is especially important when you are first starting or when you are helping your downline get started.

4. What is the quality of the lead? Nothing compares to a lead that contains both a phone number and email address along with a few qualifying answers to questions like “How much can you invest to get started” or “How soon do you want to get started” or When is the best time to contact you?” If a prospect is answering these type of questions you are getting a much better quality lead than if you just have a name and email address.

5. What is the response rate? This will improve as your skill level at working your leads improves, but the fresher higher
quality leads will give you a better response rate even when your skill level is low.

6. Do your leads come with any extras such as an autoresponder, training on how to work leads, pre-written email marketing letters, phone scripts, your own website, flash presentations, etc.

These are the top qualities of the Best MLM Leads. Be careful when choosing a place to get your leads. Not all MLM Lead
companies are created equal. It is going to be the single most important decision you make when trying to grow your MLM Business. Make the wrong choice and you will waste your time and money as well as the time and money of your downline. Make the right choice and you can be building your business successfully for years to come.

Once you have written your make money article what do you do with it?

I will say without a doubt one of my top strategies for getting my Team-Schuman.Com website on page one of several
make money at home search engines is due to writing, publishing, submitting and posting articles.

I have listed several things that have worked for me to get my article out to the marketplace.

Put It On Your Website

If you have a website the first thing to do is get an article page and start putting articles on it.

Search Engines love this. They are constantly checking for fresh content and our job is to give it to them.

Adding your new articles as you write them is great because they are loaded with keyword content that relates to your
website and helps improve your popularity with search engines.

Trade With Other Websites

Offer to post their article on your article page in exchange for adding your article to theirs. This can be a
little more time consuming as you seek out webmasters to trade with, but it will work as well.

Have Your Article Submitted By A Professional Submission Service.

This may cost a little, but in my mind it is worth every penny. All you do is register yourself, pay them and submit your  article.

These type of companies will submit your article to 1,000′s of publishers and article directories in seconds. This is a great way to get name recognition for yourself, increase traffic to your website, sell products, get subscribers for your newsletter and on and on.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

Bill Platt does a great job with his article submission service “The Phantom Writers.” He’s great to deal with and can get your article submitted to 6,000 to 12,000 publishers in less than 72 hours. I have actually had articles submitted by Bill in 12 to 36 hours. He offers excellent personal service. http://www.thePhantomWriters.com

At Submit Your Article their claim to fame is submitting your article to thousands of publishers in seconds. Another very good company. http://www.submityourarticle.com

Trade With Other Publishers-Start Your Own AutoSubmit

Do you publish an ezine of your own? If you do you know that it is tough to constantly come up with fresh articles of your own. How about finding other ezine publishers that would run an article of yours in their ezine in exchange for you running their article in yours.

Run a few ads in an ad group like Theresa at MyWizardAds: offers:  http://www.team-schuman.com/mywizardads

Or here with 2 Bucks An Ad:  http://www.team-schuman.com/2bucks

Set up an autoresponder and call it something like “publishers.” Load your first message with an offer to trade ads and articles. Set a goal to add 5 publishers a day to your autoresponder. I prefer Aweber or GetResponse.

http://www.team-schuman.com/aweber

http://www.team-schuman.com/getresponse

Add publishers of the ezines you have subscribed to. Then subscribe to more. Keep adding publishers everyday to your autoresponder.

Whenever you write an article shoot it out to everyone in your autoresponder. In a year’s time you could easily have
over 1,000 publishers hearing from you about your new article.

Your cost for this was a little bit of time everyday.

Submit It Manually

I saved this for last because it is my least favorite, but if money is an issue for you and you have time then just start contacting ezine publishers and article directories one at a time and offer your article. Do a Google Search:

http://www.google.com

Type in ezine publishers. Then type in article directories. Start submitting your articles to the directories and to other
ezine publishers.

Here are 3 very good places to manually submit your articles:

http://www.authorconnection.com

http://www.ideamarketers.com

http://www.ezinearticles.com

Over a period of time you will see your articles popping up all over the place. All of this takes time, but is well worth the effort.

What is the point of writing a great article and never having anybody see it.

Reciprocal linking is an effective, free way to get more visitors to your website.

Exchanging links with other webmasters can help you in two ways.

Firstly, by getting your link displayed on other websites you are increasing the number of paths leading back to your your own site. This in turn will increase the number of visitors.

Secondly, exchanging links will increase the chances of getting your web page ranked more highly in the results returned by search engines.

The reason for this is that for most search engines, the number of links pointing to a site plays a huge part in determining where that site ranks. Why? Well, wouldn’t you be more likely to visit a place that had been recommended to you by a friend? The same reasoning applies to search engine positioning.

A link from site A to site B is like a vote for site B. The more votes that site B gets, the higher it is regarded by search engines.

However, quantity is not everything! A link carries more weight if it is from a high quality site – in the same way that a recommendation from a trusted friend would be taken more seriously than a recommendation from a casual acquaintance.

If you have been reading up on the subject of search engine positioning, you may be familiar with the term “PR”, or “Page Rank”. Page Rank is Google’s way of measuring the “importance” of a web page. In simple terms PR is a number between 1 and 10 and can be viewed by downloading the Google toolbar.

It is easy to become hung up on or obsessed by page rank, but my advice is to try to take your focus away from that PageRank icon on the Google toolbar and focus your efforts instead on building up a good set of reciprocal links. If you do this well, the PR and search engine rankings will come.

So, how do you start reciprocal linking?

The first step is to find other sites that you want to link to. Use search engines and links from other websites to find sites that complement your own and try to request links from sites that you think would interest your visitors.

You can find some linking directory resources to help you with your searching on http://www.homebiz-direct.com/Link-Exchange-Resources.html

You may have been recommended to avoid linking with your direct competitors. Whether you do this or not is entirely up to you – the main disadvantage of doing this is the chance of losing business, whereas the advantage is the extra traffic that you will gain by doing so.

Personally I feel that the additional traffic gained from linking to competitors outweighs the potential chance of losing business to them.

Before you start your linking campaign here are a few tips to help you:

(1) Ensure that there is a visible link to the “Links” directory on the index page of the site you are requesting the link from and that the links directory is organized. It’s unlikely that your link will be found by visitors if it is one of the 100 links on an unorganized links page.

(2) Follow the above rules for your own website – it’s only fair.

(3) Once you have found a page it is good manners to add a link to your own site before requesting a link from another. This way the webmaster of that site will know that you are serious and will be more likely to link back to your site.

(4) Being highly organized whilst requesting links is also important. Using link management software to keep track of all your link requests and automatically add them to your web page literally halves the time taken to request and manage links.

(5) Keep track of all the links you have requested, either through link management software or in a spreadsheet. Add the URL, date requested and contact information for all the links you have requested and update this every time a link is approved or declined. This will help you to keep track of your reciprocal linking campaign and prevent you from looking stupid by requesting a link from the same site multiple times.

(6) Use tools to help you decide which sites to link to and to help monitor your own progress. Tools that I use include

- Alexa Toolbar – http://www.alexa.com/

- Google Toolbar – http://toolbar.google.com/

- Link Popularity tool – http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop

Finally, set yourself a goal to request a specific number of links per week or per month. Keep going until you meet this target. It may be boring, but once you get into the way of doing this, it will seem like second nature and you will start to reap the benefits in the form of increased traffic to your website!

First off all let’s define what is a link exchange? A link exchange Internet marketing campaign is the process of exchanging hyperlinks with a quality site that is somehow related to a company’s product or service.

It is easy to get link exchange partners when you have a website that is getting a lot of traffic and has a high page rank with Google. What proves to be a little harder is getting a quality link partner to link with your site when you have little or no page rank and little or no traffic.

I have found that giving incentives will help get the link exchanges flowing and as your page rank increases so will links with websites that have a higher page rank.

Here are 20 things you can do to get people to link to your website.

1. When you visit a web site you’ve enjoyed a lot, write a review for the site. Write about the benefits you gain from the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they link to your web site.

2. Market your web site as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just allow other people to give away the web book by linking to your web site.

3. Offer other web sites free content to post on their web site. Include your link on all of your content. The content should related to your web site because it will be in front of your target audience.

4. Allow other people to publish your e-zine on their web site. Include your web site’s ad and link in each issue you publish. This may also help you increase the number of people that subscribe to your e-zine.

5. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article
directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main web site.

6. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what’s in your members only site and what it costs to gain
access. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

7. Trade other forms of advertising to people that link to your web site.  You could trade e-zine ads, print ads, autoresponder ads, classified ads, ebook ads, etc.

8. Allow other web sites to use your discussion board for their web site visitors. Just have them link directly to the discussion board. Include your web sites ad or banner ad at the top of the discussion board.

9. When you purchase a product and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Make sure your statement is detailed. Give them permission to publish it on their web site if they link to your site.

10. Offer your visitors a free sign up to your affiliate program. Pay them commission to sell your products or services. Just give them an affiliate link to track their sales.  People will link to your web site to make extra money.

11. Give away web space to people for free. Since you are giving it away for free, request they link to your site by placing your ad or banner to the site.

12. Create your own award site for other web sites. Give the winners a graphic or text link to place on their web site when they win.  This will link your web site to theirs and draw more traffic to your web site.

13. Create a directory of web sites on a specific topic. Give people the option of adding the directory to their web site by linking to it. Put your business ad at the top of the directory’s home page.

14. Offer a free e-book to your web site visitors. The ebook should be related to your target audience. Allow them to give the e-book to their own web site visitors by linking directly to your web site.

15. Are you an expert on a particular subject? Offer people free consulting via e-mail if, in exchange, they either link to your site. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive.

16. Exchange content with other web sites. You could trade articles, top ten lists, etc. Both parties could include a resource box at the end of the content.

17. Create an online club or association. Tell your visitors what’s included in the membership and what it costs to join. Offer them a free membership if, in exchange, they link to your web site.

18. Allow people to use an online service or utilities from your web site if, in exchange, they link to your web site. The online service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission, web page design, copywriting, proofreading, etc.

19. Join or create a web ring. A web ring is a group of web sites on a similar subject agreeing to link together. To find a web ring to join type keywords “web rings” into your search engine of choice.

20. Allow people to download software at no charge from your web site, if they link to your web site. The software could be freeware, shareware or demos.

There is no doubt that getting quality link partners takes a lot of hard work. Many times the benefits are not obvious for months and months. Don’t stop with these 20 ways to get link exchanges. Come up with incentives of your own.

In the long run all of this effort is worth it. When your website is getting more free traffic, and is enjoying a position on page one with the major search engines for the keywords that define your website, you will be glad that you have done more than your competition to get quality link exchange partners.

I don’t know about you, but when I first entered the world of internet marketing I thought I could just submit my newly finished website to a few search engines, then sit back as the visitors flocked to my site.

I imagined that people would arrive on my website, as if by magic, purchase goods, and perhaps come back again for more.

A week or so later I came down to earth with a big bump.

I realized that it would take a bit of time and effort to see the results that I was dreaming about!

Since my reality check, I have learned all about the weird and wonderful ways of internet marketing.

In this article I will tell you about my top 5 free ways of increasing website traffic.

All these methods are completely free and if you spend some time on them you will find that they work consistently.

(1)Writing Articles

Writing an article on a subject related to your website and getting that article published has two major benefits:

- People who are interested in your article will read it and often click on the URL in your resource box find out more. This gets you another free targeted visitor. Targeted, because that reader wants to find out more on the subject of your article, which is hopefully related to the subject of your website.

- Every publisher of your article must also publish your “resource box”. Adding a resource box with your URL to all of your articles will increase the number of links leading back to your website, which in turn helps to increase your search engine position

For a list of directories to submit your article to, see http://www.homebiz-direct.com/articleWriting.html

(2)Forum Networking
There are many discussion forums on the internet, on every topic you could possibly imagine.

Most discussion boards allow posters to attach a “Signature” with their post containing additional information about themselves, such as their name, URL and sometimes even an advertisement.

By visiting a few forums regularly and participating in the discussions, asking and answering questions, you can build up trust with other forum members, whilst at the same time getting free exposure for your website.

Just try to make a useful contribution to the forum – be sure to read the forum rules  and don’t spam!

(3)Reciprocal Linking

Reciprocal linking has two main benefits for you.

Firstly, the more links that you exchange, the more chance there is that someone will follow a link from another site and land on your website.

Secondly, your website will be perceived more importantly by search engines.

The more links you have from other sites, the greater your chance of getter ranked more highly by all the search engines.

Here are some Dos and Don’ts to help you get more out of your link exchanges.

- Do link with sites that will be of interest to your visitors.

- Don’t link with pages that have unorganized link directories with hundreds of links on each page. This won’t benefit you with increased traffic or search engine rankings.

- Do link with sites that have a clearly labelled “Link Directory” from their main page. You aren’t likely to get much traffic from a hidden or hard to find link directory.

- Don’t use link farms or FFA pages. You are unlikely to get extra traffic using these methods and the search engines may penalize you.

- Do use link directories to help you find link partners. Visit http://www.homebiz-direct.com/Link-Exchange-Resources.html to find popular link exchange directories.

- Do stay organized. Use link exchange software, or a spreadsheet to keep track of the link exchanges you have requested and the contact details of the webmasters.
(4) Email Signatures

This is a very simple, but often forgotten way of increasing your website visitors.

Most of us are sending lots of emails a day, but many of us just sign them with just our name, or perhaps nothing at all.

Instead, why not end your emails with a short signature containing your name, a bit about your website along with the URL?

Keep the signature short (4 lines), to the point and avoid hype or SHOUTING.

You may be surprised at the extra visitors you receive through doing  this. It’s amazing how curiosity will lead the recipients of your email to click on your link!
(5)Using Traffic Exchanges

Finally, this is one easy way to guarantee instant hits to your website. You can build up credits for free by surfing or building up a downline to surf for you.

The downside of this method is that the visitors you receive from traffic exchanges are not as targeted as the visitors that you will receive via the other methods that I have described.

The reason for this is that people surf traffic exchanges for one reason – to earn as many credits as possible in as short a space of time as possible!

This gives you a challenge – how do you attract the attention of someone who is looking at your web page for 20 seconds or less?

Here are two tips -

- Know your market – spend some time surfing on the exchange that you are advertising on and pay attention to the types of web pages being advertised. Make sure that the pages you advertise are going to interest your target market.

- Use a short, simple attention grabbing page that can be read in a few seconds – there is no point advertising a huge page of text that takes 5 minutes to read. The chances are, your visitor will get bored and click on the “next” button without giving your page a fair chance.

Regularly invest some time in each of these 5 traffic generating methods and you will see your web statistics moving in the upwards direction before you know it.