How to Get Traffic to Your Website

It's a question everyone with a website wants to know... "How do I get people to my website?"

Well, there's no single answer to that question of course, but there are 3 basic ways to get people to your website:

1. Buy
2. Borrow
3. Create

Buying Traffic I think the first one, buying traffic, is pretty obvious. You could buy advertisements such as Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, and other Pay Per Click methods. You could buy banner ads, ezine ads, etc.

Borrowing Traffic But what does borrowing traffic mean? Well, one way of borrowing traffic is to team up with someone who will promote your website for you without charging. Why would they do that? You can team up with someone who has a similar product or service to yours, but that doesn't directly compete (in other words, something that complements your product). They can either promote your product/service as an affiliate, or they may agree to promote your website if you promote theirs.

Often what would happen is you'd promote their website as an affiliate and they'd promote yours as an affiliate. So if they have a mailing list, they may e-mail their list about your product.

One of the best things you can do is get them to add a message to their autoresponder followup sequence so that every new subscriber gets the message about your ad and it's on auto-pilot. If they do, you'd want to be sure and do the same thing for them.

If you don't already have an e-mail autoresponder/follow-up system, the one I'd recommend is Aweber. You can get a free trial on their website.

You can also "borrow" traffic from popular websites like Social Networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, etc.

Creating Traffic How can you create traffic? One way is by writing articles. You can write articles and submit them to some of the popular article directories such as ezinearticles.com. You generally won't want to put many links in the articles themselves, but there is a resource box at the bottom of your article where you can provide information about yourself and a link back to your website.

Not only will these articles be posted on the websites of the article directories, but there is a chance that people who publish ezines and other online publications will use the article on their sites. If they do, they have to keep your resource box intact, meaning they'll be posting links to your website on their site as well.

Another way to create traffic is to write reports or e-books that contain links to your website that you can give away and get other people to give away as well. They'd be glad to do so if it's a really great report or if you can brand the links inside with their affiliate links.

A couple other sources of traffic would be videos and podcasts. You can display or mention your website address in the recordings, as well as in the descriptions.

Of course I've really only scratched the surface here, but it's too big of a topic to cover in one blog post. One of my favorite resources for learning creative ways to generate traffic is a newsletter called The Web Traffic Report.

It's a monthly print newsletter / CD set that's shipped to you each month. You can get your first issue for free and see what you think.

I'll post other ideas on my blog for you over time, so be sure to check back.

How to Make Your Own Blog

Creating your own blog is fun and easy. I'll show you a few basics so you can set up your own blog today.

I'll show you the easiest service to use (Blogger/Blogspot by Google) and step-by-step instructions on setting up your blog.

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I'm going to start off by going over some basics information about blogs. If you just want to get started making your blog, skip down to the heading below called "Setting up your Blogger Account and Making Your First Post".

Ok, so first off, what is a blog? "Blog" is short for "web log" and in simple terms, it's a website that the average person can set up and update without really know anything about building websites.

Some people have personal blogs where they can keep all their friends and family (and the rest of the world) up to date with what's going on in their life. They can post stories, pictures, etc.

Others use blogs for business purposes, either to make money directly or to provide news and information for their customers. Search engines tend to love blogs, so it makes sense for businesses to have blogs.

So, depending on the purpose of your blog, you might approach it in a slightly different way, but the basic concepts are the same.

A blog is a website, so it has to be hosted somewhere. The good news is there are many services that will host your blog for free. Services such as Blogger host your blog on their server. However, there are options for installing blog software on your own server if you want to. This can sometimes give you more control over it, but what route you choose to go depends on your situation.

One of the quickest, easiest ways to start blogging is to sign up at Blogger.com. Blogger is now owned by Google, which has some nice advantages.

Some other options are Blog.com, BlogHarbor, WordPress, TypePad, and there are tons of others. I haven't tried a lot of different services, but I have tried BlogHarbor and I don't really like them. I found it difficult to modify your blog, plus you have to pay to use it and there are so many free options out there that I wouldn't waste my time there.

I've also used WordPress and use it on one of my websites, but I'm using the version that is installed on my website itself, so I haven't tried the version that's hosted on WordPress's website.

Since Blogger is so easy to use and free, I'll show you how to set up a blog there.

Setting up your Blogger Account and Making Your First Post

1. Go to Blogger.com
2. If you already have a Google account such a Gmail e-mail account, log in and it'll walk you through the process of tying a Blogger account into that account so you can get to everything with one login. If you don't already have some type of Google account, Click "Create Your Blog Now" (they may change their site over time, but it should say something like that).
3. The sign-up process is easy. It'll just ask you for a few pieces of information and ask you to agree to their terms, so follow the instructions to create your account
4. Once you've created your account, you'll end up at your Dashboard. From here you can create a new post, edit your profile, etc. You're probably anxious to start posting, so toward the top of the page it should say something like "Your Name's Blog" and under that it should say "New Post". Click that.
5. Now you should see a box at the top asking you for the title. That's where you put the title of the blog post you're about to type. For instance, the title of the post I'm typing now is "How to Make Your Own Blog".
6. Now click into the big box below. This is where you type the blog post itself. Just type whatever you want to talk about. There are some buttons above the box that will allow you to make your text bold, italics, a link, etc. You can insert pictures or video as well.
7. When you're done typing your post, you can enter "labels" which are basically keywords that people could search for to find your blog post. So if you enter something here, keep it simple and make sure it's about your article. For instance, if you post an article about how to teach your dog to sit, you might enter something like: "dog training tips, teach your dog to sit". Separate the keywords and phrases with commas.
8. When you're done, click "Publish Post"
9. Now you're ready to view your blog. You should see a link at the top called "View Blog". That will take you to your blog, live on the Internet for the world to see.

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If you post something and decide later you want to change it or remove it altogether, it's not a problem. You can log in to Blogger and edit your post. If you're on the Dashboard page of Blogger, you'll see "Manage:" and one of the options is "Posts". Click that and it'll let you pick the post you want to edit. If you're on another page inside Blogger, click the Posting tab, then "Edit Posts".

Of course, you will probably want to customize the look of your blog. You can click on the Template tab to choose a different template. If you know HTML, you can customize it even farther by clicking the Edit HTML link. But if you don't know HTML, you can still pick from the pre-made templates available and do a lot of customization.

By default, Blogger will post your blog to a page on their site, at something like yourname.blogspot.com. If you'd rather have this set up on your own web site, with your own domain name, you can do this but still use Blogger to post and edit your blog.

To do that, you'll need a domain name. You can get one cheap at BestSiteNow.com. Usually you can get a .com domain name for under $10/year.

You'll also need hosting. You can also get that at BestSiteNow.com, usually for under $5/month.

When you set up the hosting, you'll need to make note of the FTP login information - the server name, user name, and password. Once you have those, you can go into the Settings section in Blogger and enter them and Blogger will post your website to your own domain name.

For personal use, you may want to just keep the default address of yourname.blogspot.com. Of course, you may want to put your blog at YourName.com if it's available. That's what I've done. So I can just say, go to ToddHeitner.com to see my blog. Or for business use, you'd most likely want to put it on your own website. If you want to put it on an existing domain name but don't want it to be your home page, you could put your blog at something like YourDomainName.com/blog.

One final note on using Blogger. Since it's owned by Google, there are two really nice things built in. One is that it's easy to add Google Adsense ads to your blog (you'll see an Adsense link under the Template tab). Also, Google will add your blog to its database of blogs so if users go to blogsearch.google.com and do a search for a particular topic, if your blog matches, it'll be in the results and people can find your blog.

Well, we've covered a lot of information here, but at the same time I feel like I've just scratched the surface. However, this will give you a great start on making your own blog and starting your first post today!

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Learn How to Make Your Own Websites for Free

If you've ever wanted to make your own websites but didn't know where to start, I'm going to share a resource with you that will show you how - for free.

A friend of mine named Dan Kelly put together some training videos that will walk you through it step-by-step. It's called Mini-Site Secrets Revealed.

The videos are primarily geared toward setting up "mini-sites", which are basically one-page sales letters to sell something such as an e-book or other product. However, most of the basic principles are the same with other types of websites as well. The main difference is just the look and layout.

For instance, a "mini-site" typically doesn't have a menu with links to other pages, whereas other websites usually do, such as an "About Us" page, a contact page, and possibly links to pages describing products and services. But again, a mini-site has one purpose: to sell one thing. It doesn't link to any other pages or sites in most cases because those links will take people away from the page, meaning you'll lose a sell. A mini-site forces a visitor to your site to make a decision: buy or don't buy.

So depending on what your website is for, you'll adapt accordingly. If it's just a general website for your business, you'll usually want to have an easy-to-use menu, linking to multiple pages on your site, divided by category. For instance, your menu might look something like this: "Home", "Our Services", "About Us", "Contact Us". However, if you're selling a single product, it's been proven that you'll get better results with a single-page sales letter.

But again, using Dan Kelly's Mini-Site Secrets Revealed, you'll learn the basic principles of web design and once you know those you can apply them to whatever type of site you're wanting to make.

Most of the resources Dan recommends are either free or very inexpensive, which is good when you're starting out. For instance, he shows you to use the NVU program to edit your pages, which is FREE. I've posted some comments about that previously.

He refers you to GoDaddy to get domain names. You can usually get them a little cheaper at BestSiteNow.com. You can also get hosting there. But overall, Dan's resources are pretty good.

So if you can learn to make your own websites, why would you ever pay someone to do it? Well, there are times when it might make sense to do it yourself but other times when you'd be better off paying someone to design your website.

If you're setting up a personal website for your family or hobby, most times it wouldn't make sense to pay someone to do this for you. Or even if you're going to be selling something, if you're just starting out and can't afford to hire someone to set up your site, you may not have any other choice but to do it yourself.

But keep in mind that if you hire someone with experience who has set up many websites and who does it every day, the website is going to look a lot more professional. Also, it will take you much longer to do it yourself. There is a learning curve you'll have to get past before you can set up pages very quickly.

So I guess what it boils down to is that you may want to do it yourself if you have more time than money. But just know that when you're starting out the websites you make may not look as professional as some. That may be fine, though. And even if you're selling something, I've seen some pretty terrible looking websites that still made sales. So it's better to get it going than waiting forever to get it perfect.

If it's between doing it yourself and getting it done today or waiting till circumstances are perfect to get your site set up, you'd be much better off getting it going now. You can always improve it later.

If you watch Dan's Mini-Site Secrets Revealed videos, let me know what you think.

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Google 411

I came across something pretty cool a while back and have been using it for a while now. It's Google 411.

Did you know Google has a free 411 service?

Just call 1-800-GOOG-411 (that's 1-800-466-4411).

An automated prompt will ask you for the city and state. Then they'll ask you for the business name or category. It'll search and give you the top results, just like Google.com. Just say the number of the listing you want and it'll connect you. It's free and there are currently no ads.

For instance, let's say you're in town running errands and you decide you'd like to pick up a pizza to take take home because Pappa John's doesn't deliver to your house. Just call "Goog" 411, say your city and state, then "Pappa John's" and it'll give you top results, with addresses. For instance, it may say "#1: Pappa John's Pizza 123 West Main St." You just say "number 1" and it'll connect you.

This has come in really handy a lot of times. Here are some situations where I've used it:

• On my way to an appointment (like dentist, doctor, etc.) and run into traffic problems and don't have the phone number to call to say I'm going to be late
• On my way to a business I haven't been to before and I can't find it (and don't have their number with me) - get in touch with them through Google 411 and ask for detailed directions
• Out driving and get the idea to go by some business but don't know if they're still open - call them through Google 411 and find out their hours so I don't waste a trip over there
• At home and want to look up a number - Google 411 is often quicker than trying to find it in the Yellow Pages

I put the phone number for Google 411 in my cell phone so when I'm out and about, or even at home, I can call it easily and get the information I need quickly.

I've used other 411 services and some charge and others have ads you have to listen to. Google's 411 service, at least at the moment, is free and doesn't have ads, so it's quick and easy to use.

The number again is: 1-800-GOOG-411 (that's 1-800-466-4411).

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