Is there one site that you visit several times a day, eagerly anticipating what you’ll see there next? If so, then you should learn from the experience. Think about what it is that has you coming back for more. Then apply what you learn to your own site. This is a great way for internet marketers to attract a steady flow of traffic.

Many internet marketers make the bulk of their income from their returning website visitors. It’s no secret that it’s easier to convert returning visitors into paying customers. This is because people who visit your site often will begin to trust you. And people are more likely to buy from those they trust. Even if your product can be found cheaper elsewhere, your loyal visitors will buy from you before going to an unknown merchant.

So it’s your job as in internet marketer to keep people coming back to your site. You can do this by thinking of sites you visit often. Why do you keep going back? When you find the answer to that question, then you can apply what you discover to your own website.

For instance, does your favorite website have a forum? People love forums because they’re often full of useful information. Forums are also good places for making friends and networking. If you visit any forum on a regular basis, you will discover that some people post a few times per day. Some forum posts even attract hundreds of views and responses. It’s clear that forums are highly addictive.

If you incorporate a forum into your website, your visitors will become permanent fixtures. This will also allow you to position yourself as an expert in your field. Participating in discussions will help you gain trust faster than just being an invisible moderator. Diving into the community you’ve created will surely help your business.

Starting a blog is also an excellent way to get repeat visitors. Simply keep it updated with industry news, news about yourself, and any other information your visitors will like. If you post to your blog a few times a week, your visitors will return to see what’s new. A good blog can do wonders for your reputation. A blog that’s updated regularly will also help you gain the trust of your readers.

Another good idea is to have contests for your visitors. One very popular website, ShirtWoot, uses this method. They have a weekly t-shirt design contest that keeps designers and t-shirt lovers coming back on a regular basis. Designers submit their work for the shirts, and members of the site vote for the best design. ShirtWoot is successful at selling t-shirts because their visitors feel involved in the process. If you can create a contest that applies to your niche, then you’ll surely gain a loyal following.

The Newbies Toolkit 

Newbie Friendly Products

ViralBeast.com - master resell rights - private label rights products

Only4Bucks.com master resell rights - private label rights products

You have probably seen  links like http://tomdean.net/Likes/Newbies (not a real link)

Now you can do those yourself. This guide thoroughly explains how to cloak links and includes the code to do so.

You can even give it away to others to build your list.

Download it here http://only4bucks.com/LinkCloakingDemystified.zip

There are plenty of ways to get website traffic. You can try article marketing, link sharing, forum posting, and a number of other things. But getting indexed by Google is one of the most important things you could do. Google isn’t the only search engine around, but it’s the most widely used. So if Google likes your site, it’ll be easier for you to get search engine traffic.

A search engine friendly site makes it easier for you to rank and get more visitors. Search engines like Google use robots to crawl website pages. These robots “read” the content on your site and record the findings in Google’s database. Then when people search for keywords related to your website, your site shows in the results. It’s your job to make sure the robots have something to grab on to.

You should make things as easy as possible for the robots. Avoid placing important information in Flash or images. If the robots can’t read the information, it won’t get indexed. The robots can only read text, and everything else will be ignored. A better idea is to include articles or content on your page with relevant keywords. This will help your rankings improve.

Meta tags are also important. Meta tags can basically tell a robot what a site or page is about. One of the most important tags is “title tag”. The text you place in the title tag appears when your website shows in a search. So if your title tag reads “How to bake cookies”, that’s the text that will show when a person views or bookmarks the page. This is important because it lets everyone know what your page is about.

Consider the following: Imagine you’re doing a Google search for diabetic recipes. One of the results says “Nutrition and Recipes” while another result says “Diabetic Recipes for Your Kitchen”. Which website would you visit first? Probably the second one, since it’s more descriptive. This is why it’s important to use a descriptive title for each page of your site.

Of course, creating a Google friendly website is more involved than mentioned here. But this is enough information to get you headed in the right direction.

The Newbies Toolkit

Alternatives to big-ticket Design

First, you must understand that you can’t have all the bells and whistles for cheap. If you want a fancy website with hundreds of pages and advanced features, then you’ll have to pay for it. There are some things you just can’t get done on the cheap. Or at the least, you can’t get it done well. You could get lucky and find a new designer willing to do thousands of dollars worth of work for cheap, but don’t count on it. Usually, when it comes to design, you get what you pay for. Now that you’ve been warned, let’s move on to brighter things.

This article assumes you want to hire someone to design your website. Of course you could design it yourself, but that’s not always an option. It’s time to call a freelance designer when you need help. You’ll probably want to avoid design businesses because they charge much more freelancers.

Design businesses usually have high operating costs and employees to pay. More than likely, the cost will be passed on to you. So avoid big design businesses unless you’ve the revenue to spend. Freelance designers, on the other hand, are usually sole proprietors with few operating expenses and no employees to pay. As a result, you can get good service for less.

At this point, when price is a major concern, all you want is a basic website. Remember, the fancy stuff costs more. So keep it simple. You can get a nice one or two page mini-site designed for less than a hundred dollars. However, you should choose your designer with care. There are some unscrupulous people out to take your money.

The best way to find a good freelancer is to ask for recommendations. Ask other internet sellers who they use and advocate. Whenever you belong to online marketing bulletin boards, merely start a topic asking about good designers. This is preferable to using freelance job bidding sites. There’s probably some good talent there, but you can never be sure about who you’re getting.

So if you can’t build your website yourself, a independent designer is your best bet. But keep the website uncomplicated and small-scale. A mini-site is the best way to get started  for low-cost.

The Newbies Toolkit 

When you see pretty websites, you probably think the website owner spent hours designing the site. Who knows, maybe they did. But it’s also likely that the webmaster simply personalized a template. Many internet marketers use website templates to save time.

You can have two or three websites up and running within a few days with a good website template. Compare that to the time it would take to design a website from scratch. It takes days or even weeks to plan and complete a website from the ground up. It’s great if you have time to do that, but there’s nothing wrong with using a pre-designed template.

Templates Equal Time Saved

Pre-designed templates are usually already set up to work with various browsers. This saves you hours of time that would be spent checking your template in different browsers. You also don’t have to waste time fussing with design elements that don’t look the way you wanted them too. However, there are some pitfalls that you should avoid.

The most obvious drawback to using a website template is that other people will have it too. Choosing a very popular template isn’t such a good idea unless you make changes. As a rule of thumb, always make changes to any website template you use. You never know how many other people are using the same design. Making changes in moderation will save you from looking like a copycat.

Don’t go overboard with your changes. The whole point is to save time by using a template. If you spend hours making tons of changes, then you’re not really saving time. The trick is to find a balance between enough changes and too many changes.

To avoid wasting too much time, just change a few things that are easy to edit. For example, let’s say you find a layout that’s perfect for your poker website. The only problem is that the template header contains a bunch of flowers and the color scheme is pink and black. You can easily fix this by replacing the original graphic with one that’s suitable to your site. Changing the colors should also be a snap.

Is the Template User Friendly?

You should base your template choice on usability. Never pick a template just because it looks good. Good looks are worthless if the template doesn’t serve your purpose. Besides, a pretty template won’t matter if visitors find your website difficult to use.

Some steps to take include:

1.Checking to make sure the font sizes aren’t too small. There are many beautiful websites (and blogs) on the internet that requires a magnifying class to read. In other words, they’re beautiful to look at but not easy to read. This shouldn’t be a huge problem since you can normally adjust font size. But when using a blog template, it’s sometimes difficult to adjust the font size.
2.Making sure the navigation is easy to use. People should be able to easily move from one page to the next. They also shouldn’t have to hunt for the menu.

These are just a few things to keep in mind when you’re looking for a free or low-cost website template.

www.templatemonster.com is one source.

Our favorite is www.pixelmill.net

admin

Designing a Pleasant Website

Make sure your website is easy to navigate. The menu should be clearly displayed on the left or right side of the page. You can also put it across the top of the page beneath the header. Some people put the menu at the bottom beneath the content, but that’s not a good idea. Putting your menu at the bottom makes it harder to spot, and your visitors may get annoyed and leave.

Your website should also be easy to read. One fault of many blog designs is that the text is too small to read. A pretty design is useless if people need a magnifying glass to read the content. So always put usability above looks. Use reasonably sized fonts and adequate line spacing.

People sometimes forget that it’s hard to read text when it’s too close together. This is why you should always check the line spacing between words, lines of text, and paragraphs. Better yet, make your fonts adjustable so readers can resize the fonts to their liking. You can find blog templates with this feature already built-in. And of course, it’s easy enough to adjust a traditional website’s text.

Pay Attention to Graphics

Graphics are a major concern. Very few people will stick around waiting for slow graphics to load. And with the popularity of Web 2.0, people are loading their pages with even more graphics than before. Web 2.0 graphics look good, but that doesn’t mean your website or blog should be overloaded with images. If you must use them, then at least make sure they’re optimized for faster loading times.

And last, but not least, make sure your website looks good in various browsers. Don’t take the lazy way out and tell your visitors to use either Internet Explorer or Firefox. It’s your job to design, or have designed, a website that visitors can use no matter which browser they’re using.

So to recap:

• Make navigation easy
• Use good sized fonts or make fonts adjustable
• Use enough line spacing
• Don’t overdo it with graphics
• Test your website with various browsers

You’d be surprised how many people fail to do these five simple things. Please keep these steps in mind when designing your next website. Also check your current website to make sure it measures up.

Many direct sales businesses offer their sales associates a website that links directly back to the parent company’s site. You might even have taken a bold step and chosen to purchase a domain name and created your own business website. Those are both good ideas, but perhaps you should also add a blog to your arsenal of online marketing tools.

You want to use every available option when promoting your direct sales business, whether offline or online. You wouldn’t think of starting a new home business without purchasing business cards. Why would you consider having one without using a blog to help generate leads and possibly recruit new team members?

A blog can be effective for promoting your business. It can also help you meet new prospects, either as customer or as part of your downline. Blogs can also be a creative outlet when you’ve had to deal with the restrictions of some direct sales companies. A blog can truly help your business reach a new level.

Before you jump on the blog bandwagon, however, you need to read and understand your company’s policy about using the internet for marketing. If they do not allow personal internet advertising it would be better to set this idea aside. Use whatever means they allow to do your marketing.

Consider your goals for having a blog and write them down. Know what you want to accomplish with your blog before you write your first sentence. Think about the people that will be reading your blog, usually your prospective customers or downline, then design your blog with them in mind. Find an area to focus on – whether sales, recruiting, or training – and build your blog around that focus area.

Blogging about your direct sales business gives you an outlet to discuss new products and specials that will be coming up, and gives your team members and customers a sneak peak at new items before they are available. Blogs also allow you to share things that may be related to your business but not a direct part of it. For instance, if your products relate to cooking, use your blog to post recipes for your readers to enjoy. Try to remember who your target market is and provide them with things they will find valuable.

It is easy to see why blogging has become so popular. Millions of people use their blog to express themselves every day. Why not take advantage of this tool and use it to help your direct sales business grow? All it takes is a little bit of time and thought, and a desire to offer your customers and team members another outlet to success.

admin