Trust me, despite the ongoing financial upheaval, there has not ever been a better time to create online income.

Despite this fact, it looks like many beginning Internet marketers are finding it hard to break through and acheive the traffic numbers they want. When I first started out, I thought there must be some secret technique that would instantly increase my traffic, if only I could find that ONE successful method! While there may be hundreds of ways to get visitors to your site – I’ve selected the techniques that have worked best for me. They can work for you, as well.

You see, there IS a secret to traffic success, and it’s this: Do not rely on just ONE technique to drive traffic. Get acquainted with, and use several of them. It’s better to have numerous traffic tactics going to your website, rather than just one. It’s surprising how many Internet marketers disregard the basics. One of those basic ways to increase your traffic is to be utterly certain that your site is listed in the search engines. Don’t just trust that the search engine spiders will do your work for you. All of the major search engines have elaborate and easy-to-follow instructions on submitting your site as well as how to produce and submit proper site-maps.

Then, there is the power of blogging. The search engines LOVE blogs. The SE “spiders” thrive on freshness and change, so if you post a new entry to your blog every day, or every other day, the search engines will see what’s going on and start to rank your blog higher than those websites that don’t change their content from month to month. A higher ranking means one thing: visitors to your site.

Another method is to place your website link in your signature when posting to online forums and discussion groups. This is especially good if your product is in a specific niche. You know that there are hard-core and pertinent online communities and groups who want to hear from you. The ever popular weight loss niche, for example, has hundreds of forums and discussion groups you could be posting to with your link in your signature. Just make sure that is allowed by their rules first, so as not to get into grief with the site admins. Your forum signature can be an absolute goldmine once you have figured out the best way of showing your product’s best features so that the readers will find your website irresistible.

One of the best ways to get visitors to your websites is to write an ebook. Remember, we’re not talking about the Great American Novel here. We’re not even talking more than 30 pages or so, double spaced, and using size 12 font. The fact is your ebook will bring in visitors to your website. Whether you are selling it or giving it away doesn’t matter really, though giving away a smallish ebook based on your niche (with giveaway rights) with your website link in it will definitely get you that targeted traffic you’ve been wanting. Later on, you can set up your paid eBook to affiliates so that they’ll be sending visitors to your site too! If you’re more into audio than just writing stuff, then create a podcast. If you are a video kind of person, then create a video and pop it up on YouTube and any of the other free video sharing services. See, everyone loves information but not everyone finds the printed word the best way to get it. Provide that same information where it can be listened to on an iPod, a mobile phone, or can be seen in a video, and you’re offering a much higher value product. Look, you have the reports and ebooks that you’ve written on your harddrive and you can add value to it by converting it into an .mp3 or a video. There’s even free applications that will help you do this, so money doesn’t have to be a stopping point for you.

How about getting your website seen by ten million people in ten minutes? Well, it sounds bizarre, but it’s very possible, if you do it right. Google Adwords, also known as Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, can get you instant and massive exposure, but you’ve got to be careful with it. People tend to go a little insane getting their ads absolutely perfect. It doesn’t need to be perfect, just understandable, and eye catching. Be sure to read the small print, or you could end up with your budget depleted very quickly. Follow the guidelines, budget sensibly and you could easily attract many hundreds of visitors, even on a daily basis.

This one is not new, but it is overlooked by many. It’s eBay. You don’t want to ignore eBay simply because the digital rules have changed. Selling physical products on eBay is still extremely viable for getting visitors to your site. If you would have normally sent a buyer a digital link to download your eBook, simply send them a CD instead. The possibilities for driving traffic here are endless. You can include all kinds of things on the CD along with whatever it is you are selling, such as your website address (to remind them of it again), your email address, which should be based off your domain name, a link to a help desk at your website, if they have questions about what they’ve purchased, etc. You get the idea.

How about Ezines and Newsletters? Well, they work! Many Internet Marketers bring in a ton of traffic using this method. If you like to write, or have someone that writes well that you can outsource to, then be sure to include this as a definite means to boost your traffic. If you love your niche, and you love your product, then obviously you’ll have alot to say about both, and there are people out there who want to hear what you have to say. You can build a huge subscriber base with a good Newsletter.

One of the basic items that is sometimes overlooked on a website is your meta tags. A “meta tag” is a tag that is used by the search engines. It allows them to accurately list your site in their indexes based on the tags they find. Your meta tags need to be relevent to your site. You don’t want to have a meta tag in your page header for “dieting” when you’re site is about dog training. These tags work most of the time, but you have to remember the search engines are always changing their methods, and they don’t all use meta tags the same way. You don’t want to ignore this technique, no matter who is using what algorithm, as the main ones still use them to categorize sites.

Leaving testimonials on other people’s sites, and commenting on niche related blog posts is another very easy way of getting your link noticed by others that will definitely get you more traffic. This doesn’t take long to do, but your website link will be visible for a very long time. Make sure that you write your comments so that they are understandable, and that they fit in with the post and the niche.

I hope this list has given you a few good ideas on how to increase traffic to your website. Remember, the idea is to not just focus on one method, but to incorporate, in all practicality, as many as you can, so that you are utilizing as much of the vast range of the internet as possible.

Wishing you great success,

Ross “The Pit Boss”

Of course, this had to happen at some point. Some bonehead(s) decided that they are going to go after the mass appeal and market of Twitter.com and try to hack in by using a phishing scheme. Well, Twitter has been all over this, as have the majority of the members, so I don’t expect this one to cause any lasting damage.

For more information, here’s the link to the blog post direct from Twitter.com: http://blog.twitter.com/2009/01/gone-phishing.html

Just to reiterate what they say in their post, if you are unsure if you’ve been “attacked” or if you can’t log in to Twitter, either change your password by the regular means, or use the password recovery if you’ve been locked out of your Twitter account.

Kudos to the staff at Twitter for doing everything necessary to squelch this as fast as possible. That said, it is up to each of us to know what it is that we are clicking/signing up for/approving on-line BEFORE taking that action. Our safety and security is in our own hands, so be wise about what you are doing on-line and if in doubt, DON’T do it! Get it checked out first by a professional.

As an aside, it is always a good idea to change your passwords on a regular basis, especially if you do anything with money on-line. Also make sure your anti-virus, spam filter and firewall are updated daily and that they are more than adequate to the job at hand.

I had someone ask me why I had removed the Self Improvement and Health & Healing posts/products from the site, so I figured if one person is asking, there are probably more that are wondering, so here my answer. 

The main reason is that I want GamblerMan.com to be focused exclusively on Internet and Affiliate marketing. That was the number one idea when I created it in the first place.

Indeed, I have plenty to say and post regarding self improvement, health, healing, meditation, energy work, etc. etc., but I felt that trying to combine them all in one blog was just not going to do any of them justice. With that in mind, I pulled the non-marketing posts and will be creating a new blog page at my current psychic healing site: Tolemac.net

It just makes more sense to have them separated than to have it all jumbled together. Plus, I can then also separate the traffic I get for marketing from traffic for the self improvement, et al site.

Once I have the blog page set up over at Tolemac.net, I’ll post here with the link and let you all know it’s ready.

EDIT: ‘Tis ready. Come visit and leave a comment. http://tolemac.net/blog

First off, you gotta love Twitter! One of the people that I’ve been following is an excellent marketer named Jim Connolly. Earlier today, he sent a Tweet with a link to a new blog post where he asked if he should set up his blog as a do-follow, so that anyone who posts a comment would have the do-follow tag go to their link.

The main concern he has (as we all do) is dealing with spam comments. After reading that post, I decided that I would also set up my blog as a do-follow, as we can all use as much link-love as possible. So off I went in search of a good to great Wordpress plugin. That brought me to this post at Perishable Press. Jeff there has a review of 4 different do-follow/no-follow plugins and after reading his reviews and checking out each one, I settled on Michele’s NoFollow Free plug-in.

This is a dead easy plug-in with some very good options. The one that caught my attention and convinced me this was the one to use, is the ability to set up a “comment word blacklist”. Basically, I can put any word I want into the blacklist, and if anyone uses that word (think mega-spam words like Cialis, or Tramadol) it will immediately set that comment to no-follow, thereby reducing that links juice with the search engines.

It also gives you the option of setting up how many comments a person must make before they have the no-follow turned off and the do-follow turned on. Right now, I have it set at one posted comment for right now. I see this as another way of doing away with the “hit-and-run” commentors.

Using this plug-in along with Akismet, I can definitely see almost no spam being posted here.

If we can all utilize similar plug-ins/code for each of our sites to reduce or eliminate the spam, we could all be the recipients of alot more link juice, and have better rankings for our sites. Please leave a comment and let me know what you think about this and what you’re using on your site.