My next step is to monetize the list even more with my own product offerings.  Creating your own products is a real time sucker however, and that’s been my sticking point.

I’ve got lots more ideas for how to really get this thing to take off, so stay tuned. Sorry for the lack of specifics…no secrets really, just not enough time to go round.

BTW, I’m using aweber as my autoresponder. Give it a test drive today.

Visitors arriving at these sites may find what they are looking for, but there is one thing for sure.  If you do not regularly add content to your site in the form of valuable information, your site will simply get pushed further and further down in the search engines.

Creating content takes time…either from you or somebody else.  For the time being, I prefer to write my own content.  Most of my enterprises thus far, are in niches that I currently, or at sometime in the past, have had an interest in, making it a bit easier to spend time creating original articles.

Tonight, for example, I spent about an hour in total researching a new topic, writing an original article, posting it to my website, then submitting it to several “social” sites, such as Digg, Stumble, Facebook, Propellar and Delicious.

I have been cultivating a network of friends on Digg.  In addition to helping them out and Digging newsarticles that I like, whenever I submit a new content article to one of my websites, I send a “shout” to all my Digg friends…most of whom will Digg it as well.  This usually gets me about 10 diggs, and is enough to get my article to hang out the “upcoming” section of the site, gets me several new visitors who may (or may not) be interested in my products.  But most importantly, these activities get your new post indexed quickly by the major search engines, and get backlinks “deep” into your site, to inside articles.

In all this took me an hour (plus some time to post about it), but I hope to speed that process up in the future.  It obvously depends on how much research I do vs. how much of the knowledge is already in my head.  Frequently, the knowledge is already there, but by browsing manufacturers websites I get some great ideas about how to organize my thoughts.

What kinds of activities do you do to increase traffic to your site?

My latest activity that I’ve added to my (endless) list of to-dos is to post in a niche related forum, at least 5 times per session.  That sure doesn’t sound hard, but the trick is not to become engrossed in the forum itself. I get in, make 5 posts and get out.  Now you may think that I end up making garbage posts, but I try my best to be sure they are quality posts that add something to the thread being discussed.

Don’t get me wrong, the niche is one that I’m interested in, and I think that if I could tap into a forum market (possibly several forums), that I could dramatically increase the traffic and repeat visitors to my site.   But I’m also not so deeply involved in the forum that I become engaged in reading every single thread. I’m perfectly happy to enjoy my “performance” of the niche activity without much input from others.

This detachment from the forum, combined with a true interest in the niche, allows me to spend only about 15 minutes at a time getting this important marketing activity done.  By posting in a niche related forum, I build relationships and trust with the other forum members, contribute something positive to the community and eventually, will have a potential base of new visitors to my Build a Niche Store site in that particular market.

It’s a win/win situation for both me, and my future new visitors!

What are some ways that you make efficient use of your marketing activities?

US Free Ads is basically a classified site that has both free and paid subscriptions. The free version allows you to run only 2 ads at a time, but for only $10 a year, you can run 25 ads at a time. I am doing a 7 day free trial for the premium version at $10 a month for unlimted ads running. I figure if I get even one sale a month, at the rate my commissions seem to by paying, it will pay for itself.

It seemed like a no-brainer to at least subscribe to the free version for only $10 a year. Go ahead and check out the US Free Ads website and look around a bit.

But before you make your decision, take this into consideration…it’s not just running a classified ad that you may benefit from. The US Free Ads website really seems to do well with Google organic searches. Many Build a Niche Store users are finding their US Free Ads listings when they do a regular google search on their keywords for the ad.

So there you have it. I signed up for a 7 day free trial of the premium version, $10 a month, and I placed my first ad.

In the next post, I’ll talk about how I set up my landing page for the ad I placed on US Free Ads, and of course, I’ll keep you updated on the traffic results!

In the meantime, keep in touch by letting me know how you are getting traffic to YOUR sites. Be well!

I’m going to wait  because I want to give commission junction stats some time to  catch up after the holidays.

This post is really about another “feed drive”.  See that orange RSS icon in the sidebar?  RSS is a way that you can keep up on my blog postings without having to actually open a web-browser and come to my blog.

Instead you add the “feeds” of the blogs you want to follow into your feed reader, whether it’s Google, Bloglines, etc.  It’s a great way to keep track of a large number of blogs and just read the posts that capture your attention (Which is most of mine, I’m sure. )

So go ahead and click on the orange icon, and sign up for Bloglines if you havn’t, it’s the one that I use.  It’s free, there is no affiliate program (that I know of), it’s just a great way to keep in touch with your favorite bloggers (like me!).

Will you be one of ten new subscribers to my RSS feed?

Thanks, let me know in the comments here!

According to Wikipedia,

The term keyword [...] refers to a word or phrase (combination of words, such as ‘Chicago Courier Service’) used to find relevant and useful webpage.

Crafting the content and structure of your website to rank highly for your selected keywords is the art of “Search Engine Optimization.” I’m not trying to write an article about SEO, there are entire blogs, books and businesses that cover SEO. But I would like to introduce you to a few ideas about keywords.

Wordtracker is a company that uses information from actual search engine databases to help you find keywords for your articles, websites and blog posts. Here are a few screen shots of me actually using Wordtracker for a recent post I wrote.

Using “Keyword Thinking”, I logged into my Keyword Account to figure out how I could maximize potential search engine traffic for this very post by using a keyword phrase with active searchers but little competition.

Using Wordtracker’s Keyword Research Tools

Here’s how it went…

First I logged into my Wordtracker account, and entered two keywords into the Keyword Researcher area of the page. I simply used two general phrases that I thought applied to my intended post, “Search Engine Rankings” and “Webmaster Tools”.

The first thing WordTracker does is look through its database for the phrases you typed in, and shows you similar phrases to the kewords you typed in. You can get anywhere from just a handful to 300 additional potential keyword phrases that you might not have thought of! Can you see how much potential a keyword tool has for helping you maximize your search engine results?

With keyword tools like Wordtracker, you can get an insiders peek at what phrases people are actually using, and then focus on those phrases. It doesn’t mean you have to change the content of your post or webpages, it simply means you can customize your post titles and headers in order to maximize search results.

Discovering your Keyword Efficiency Index, or KEI…

The next step is to click on “evaluate” and Wordtracker does it’s magic. The resulting table shows you how many times the keyword has been typed into engines in the Wordtracker database in the past 90 days, and an estimated number of times the phrase is typed into global search engines on a daily basis. This information is available in Wordtracker’s Free Trial version.

But how much competition do I have?

But with a paid subscription, you are able to see how many competing webpages exist on each of the major search engines as well as a “Keyword Efficiency Index” or KEI. The KEI is a reflection of the number of daily searches versus the number of competing pages on the major search engines.

A keyword with high searches and low competition will score a high KEI. Those are the prime keywords you want to search for.

How do you choose a keyword phrase based on KEI?

When I sorted my Wordtracker results by the Google KEI score, one keyword phrase stood out as having a reasonable number of searches with low competition, and thus a reasonably high KEI of about 9. In general, anything above 10 is pretty good, results between 1 & 10 are reasonable, and anything less than 1 is not really worth trying to optimize for because there is simply too much competition.

Here’s the screenshot with the keyword phrase highlighted. Look familiar? It’s the title of this post!

So what’s the end result of all of this?

Hopefully using Wordtracker to find high KEI keyword phrases will help this particular post stand out in the search engine results, and I’ll get a lot of “organic” search engine traffic for this particular post.

I’m sure you can see the potential power of this type of keyword research for your website! Just pop on over to the free keyword tool at Wordtracker and try it out. In order to use the free keyword tool, you’ll just have to supply a valid email address and confirm the trial. Your confirmation link is good for two hours after it’s sent and you can conduct unlimited searches.

Want to use it again? Just reapply for the free trial (you can even use the same email address!). With the free keyword tool, you won’t be able to see the KEI directly, but you’ll get an idea of the potential that this type of research tool can have for your websites as far as increasing your search engine traffic.

Download the Free Keyword Guide by wordtracker for more information about keyword research.

Got any other keyword tools you like to use? Let me know about them!

Let’s assume that you’ve got this step started.  How do you begin to develop links to your site to increase traffic and search engine rankings?

One great way is with article submissions.  Article directories are sites that accept article submissions from authors and allow publishers to reproduce the article content on their own sites.  How do you benefit from this?  When your article is reproduced, your “resource box” or biography is reproduced also.  Included in your resource box are few sentences describing your qualifications to write the article as well as a link to your site.

Are you following me on this?

Your article is first published on the article submission site, with a link to your “money page”.  Not only does this get you traffic, but it counts as a backlink to your site as well.  Now imagine that 10 or even 100 publishers looking for content in your niche republish your article including your bio box.  Now you have backlinks from 10 or 100 sites getting traffic and increased search engine rankings.

Here is one site to get you started (no affiliate links)

www.ezinearticles.com

It’s very easy to submit an article which is then reviewed within about 7 days for publication.   Got a niche website?  Write an informative article and include a backlink to your “money page” and see how much your traffic and backlinks improve!

For the past several days I’ve been following Ed Dale’s Thirty Day Challenge.  I mentioned it to you briefly last week, but I wanted to wait until I’d gotten through the whole market research phase before mentioning it.  Part of me wants to keep this a secret because the information is so powerful for an internet marketer!  But I’ve picked up much of my internet marketing knowledge from generous bloggers and want to return the generosity.

Not to mention that the entire course is free, and even when he recommends products that do have affiliate programs attached, he never offers or mentions an affiliate link.  Ed Dale and colleagues spent loads of time and money putting all this educational material together and organizing the thirty day challenge…it baffles me how the found the time and energy to do it, and they are not even charging for it!

Well, I’ve bascially been obsessed with it for the past several days, and crammed the first 14 days of the 30 day challenge into about six days.  Basically the first 14 days are all about market research.  Ed shows you how to use tools you know about in new ways, and introduces several new tools.  In addition, they’ve even created some new, free tools that combine their knowledge of internet keyword research.

So what is the 30 day challenge?  THe challenge is to make $10 in thirty days with the techniques he teaches in the course.  I know some of you will scoff at that amount (why so little?) but before you can run you need to walk and before you walk you need to crawl.

If you can learn the techniques and apply them to a small niche and make $10, then you can continue making $10 a month or multiply your efforst across many keywords and make $100 a month or even $100 a day.

The first 14 days of work is the most challenging, I think, because it requires patience and persistance.  I’m sure many people quit around day 7 or 8 when the work starts to get a little bit hard.  But without this groundwork, you could waste months (even years) of time trying to assert yourself in a market with either too much competition or too little consumer demand.

So at the end of Day 14, I’ve found two keyword phrases, with little competition, adequate daily search volume that represent two different markets.  Before I’ve spent any time working on content, I’ve found two phrases that I know for certain people are searching for in Google and other search engines.

I hope you realize how valuable that proper keyword research can be and are willing to learn how to do your research correctly.  Check out the thirty day challenge for yourself.

These small text ads can be your own affilaite links, text links to other blog sites you own, friends blogs, charity blogs, etc. Or you can sell text spots in your RSS feed through Text Link Ads. Advertisers are able to select your specific RSS feed to reach readers in their targeted niche.

For example, I run a healthcare blog with an RSS feed. After signing up as a publisher for Text Link Ads, I made my RSS feed available for advertising. My first advertiser was for an electronic medical records software group. This is a great match…many of the readers of my health blog are nurses, physicians and administrators. But advertising in my RSS feed, the software company actually reaches the people who may be making buying decisions for electronic medical records.

When you use Text Link Ads for feedvertising, you have full control over the content of the ads. You can use all the spots for your own personal use. Your account gives you full control over the appearance of the ads you want to keep for personal use (for example, advertising your own product, your affiliate product, etc). You also have the opportunity to review potential advertisers so that you can ensure a good match with your readers.

In summary, you can make even more use of your RSS feed by including small text links at the end of each feed…personal links, affilaite links or even ads that someone else will pay you for!

Interested in signing up for Text Link Ads? Just use the button in the right sidebar. When I sort out how to how to prevent javascript from getting stripped from WordPress posts, I’ll just include the button right here.

So how are you using your RSS feed?

“I’ve Heard About RSS, but Don’t Really Understand it… “

RSS Stands for “Really Simple Syndication”, and is a specialized text format, similar to HTML, that allows you to view summaries of your favorite blogs. RSS feed addresses can usually be automatically detected by an RSS reader, such as Bloglines or Google Feed Reader. All you have to do is type in the RSS feed address, and your feed reader will grab headlines from the site.

Alternatively, many sites have a small RSS icon like the one you see in the top right of my sidebar. Typically, clicking on this icon (usually orange with three arcs representing broadcast syndication) will automatically pull the feed into your browser where you may have a choice of clicking a button to subscribe to it. I use Bloglines for all of my RSS feeds.

Why should you use RSS as a blog consumer?

RSS Readers allow you to keep track of all your favorite blog headlines without having to go and visit each site in your web browser. Newly published articles and posts are automatically brougth into your feed reader. If you want more details or want to see the original article, just click on the headline and you’ll be taken right to the site.

Why should you provide an RSS feed as a blog or website Producer?

RSS feeds allow people to ‘subscribe’ to your blog much the way they would subscribe to a newspaper. Your headlines are delivered right to their doorstep everytime you publish a new article. Your subscriber simply opens her RSS reader (Bloglines for example), and all of your current articles are available. Your readers no longer have to phyisically (or virtually) stop by your site to look for updates. This saves the visitor time, and keeps you in touch with them at the same time.

How do I create an RSS feed?

Most blogging software will automatically publish an RSS (or similar technology) feed when your blog is created. Simply typing in the domain name (for example, www.newaffiliatediscoveries.com) is frequently sufficient for your feed reader software to find the actual feed and grab it.

You can have more control over your RSS feed, as well as seeing regular statistics by using a service such as FeedBurner. With Feed Reader, once you create an account, you can “burn a feed” by typing your domain name or current feed (the one automatically created by blogger or word press), and Feed Burner will create a new feed address.

Wait, aren’t I simply trading one feed address for another? Won’t my readers get confused?

FeedBurner allows you to track statistics on your feed such as how many subscribers you have, what links feed readers are clicking on, and whether your feed subscription is growing over time.

If you direct your readers to your Feed Burner address by simply pointing the RSS image to the FeedBurner address, then the feed burner address will automatically be used by your subscribers. This gives you a greater understanding of who is reading your feed on a regular basis.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, How to Earn Money from your RSS Feed with Feedvertising.