Hi

Apologies for the delay in getting this to you……..let’s just say things have been a bit hectic both on and offline recently!

Anyways, enough of that……what’s coming up?

Well, in this post I want to cover the ever popular and sometimes controversial subject of traffic.

Regardless of wether you are a blogger, article marketer or affiliate marketer, we all have one thing in common…..TRAFFIC!

Getting visitors to your sites and webpages is probably one of the biggest elements in making money online because without it, you will not be successful.

Visitors = Traffic = Money

I want to show you how I get the bulk of my traffic using both free and paid for traffic techniques and systems.

Let’s get to it………..

Actually, many of the free traffic techniques have been covered in previous posts. Specifically, I am talking about:

Article Marketing

Squidoo and Hubpages

Social Media – Stumble Upon, Digg, Technorati etc.

The above methods generate varying amounts of traffic in their own way – the most popular being article marketing by far.

If you haven’t done so already, have a flick through:

My Internet Marketing Tool Kit Part 2

My Internet Marketing Tool Kit Part 3………

for more information on these super traffic generating techniques.

However, although most of you may well be aware of the following methods, I will cover these anyway for those who are not:

1) Forum Marketing

If you are not already doing this then a massive slap on the wrists goes out to you

Posting comments in related forums is absolutely invaluable to your online business.

However, the key to this is that you must leave a signature link to your chosen squeeze page or offer.

Here is a clip from a reply that I left for someone on the Warrior Forum

The text which is circled in red is my signature link. In fact, I have links to 3 products here:

1)      My Blog

2)      A Free List Building Report which is one of Alex Jeffrey’s products

3)      My own eBook – Jump Start Marketing Guide

You would be amazed at the amount of traffic which comes to these pages just from posting frequently on this forum and there are lots more forums like this one too!

Provided you post good quality replies in these forums and offer value to posts, you WILL get clicks to your links in your signature boxes.

Remember – you are reaching literally thousands of like minded individuals in forums like these. Whenever you start a new thread or add to the debate on an existing thread, your comments will be seen by potentially hundreds of people!!

Remember also that by offering your help in these forums and adding quality and informed comments to topics, people will start to quickly value and respect your opinion which can only help enhance your online reputation.

Regular users will see you as an authority and someone whose advice they can listen to.

On top of that, you will get more and more hits from these forums to your links.

And, if you were wondering, this is applicable to ANY niche you may be in.

Let’s go with something completely off the cuff and try it out.

I will use Cross Stitching as an example……not my thing guys and I’m revealing no dodgy secrets here trust me!!

To find suitable forums to join up with, go to Google and type in “Cross Stitching Forum”

As you can see there are a number of results for forums specifically for Cross Stitch fans (of which, with all due respect, I am not!!)

Therefore, if you were selling products or information in this niche, you have a target rich environment to participate in, making sure you leave a signature link directing to your chosen product!

Just another quick note on this……

It is also well worth spending some time trawling through these forums and finding out if there is any particular recurring theme.

For instance, if people are frequently asking questions such as who the best online suppliers are, where can you get particular products from, etc, and then see if you can come up with a solution for them.

Matching a good solution to people’s problems may sound obvious but believe me, it is often never thought about by a lot of marketers and you could be missing out big time on a simple way to cash in!

2) Blog Commenting

Again, something which you should be spending some of your time doing.

Finding blogs in a particular niche and commenting on posts will work in a similar way to forum marketing.

Before commenting on any blog post, you are usually required to fill in your details such as name, email address and website. See below as an example:

When your comment is submitted, your name will become a clickable link. If someone clicks on your name, it will take them to the website which you enter into the form.

So, say I enter my name, James Stewart and I enter the website http://www.marketingwithjames.com which is my blog.

Next I post my comment and this will appear as the below diagram:

Now, if you were to click on my name which I circled, then it would take you to my blog http://www.marketingwithjames.com since that is the web address we entered.

This might seem very simple but it actually a very powerful and proven system.

Blog commenting works folks and seriously….you need to be doing it!

One of the biggest benefits however, comes when commenting on high traffic blogs. By this I mean blogs which receive high numbers of comments.

There are numerous ways to find these blogs but a simple website to visit is one which was shown to me by my mentor Alex Jeffrey’s:

http://www.winningtheweb.com/im-top-blogs/

These are seriously good sites to start with from some of the most successful, full time bloggers around. By posting your comments on these sites, believe it or not, you will get a lot of traffic coming your way fast!

Much the same way as forum marketing, you need to leave good, valuable comments to help get yourself recognized.

Leaving a comment like “Good Post…I like it” is not acceptable. What value or interest does that add to the subject?

Read the post carefully and try to add to the debate or topic. As long as your comment is supportive, is interesting and adds to the value of the original blog post, people will value and appreciate you more.

This will almost definitely get people clicking onto your name and hopping over to your blog. My mentor calls this “Oil Rig Hopping”

It is a proven traffic method so again; take some time to do it!

Finally, on the subject of blog comments, I put a mark which you will see at the bottom of the post which is next to a heart.

This is a fantastic Word Press plug-in called Comment Luv.

Whenever you leave a comment on another person’s blog, it will leave the title of your last blog post at the bottom of your comment, thus encouraging people to click on it.

In my case it is – My Internet Marketing Tool Kit – Part 3 and this is automatically linked to make it clickable to this post.

Again, this will direct more traffic to your own blog and encourage others to leave comments for you!

You can get the Comment Luv plug-in here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/commentluv/

To finish off, here are just a couple of really amazing traffic sites you should check out as soon as.

Some of these do have paid upsells but there is some really great free information in here which I have taken. Click on the banners below for more information:

Internet Traffic Coaching …….direct from my top mentor Alex Jeffrey’s. This guy knows what it takes to generate traffic!!

Dean Holland’s Traffic Secret

Free Traffic System

Now here is a really cool video (absolutely FREE with NO OPTIN)

Okay, that’s it for now. I hope this has been of some use even if you were well aware of these tactics and ideas.

As usual, any thoughts or comments, I would love to hear them. Please feel free to leave a comment below and I will reply.

James