We all know it takes money for marketing and advertising. The key to making money online or anywhere in this bad economy is through guerrilla marketing. Guerrilla marketing has the best budget. FREE!!! That’s right people it only cost’s you 0, zilch, absolutely nothing. The only thing it costs is time, energy and imagination instead of big marketing budgets. So you better get out the elbow grease because once you get done reading this it’s time to use guerrilla marketing for your business.
Now all of my guerrilla marketing efforts are online because this is where it’s free and you can reach more people this way. The internet has endless possibilities of getting your product or website or whatever it is that you’re doing out there. One of the main key factors is knowing your product, who else is selling the same product, where are they marketing and tons of RESEARCH. I would say research is the most important because it will give you access to free resources and all the other things I mentioned.
Research can take hours but costs you nothing. All you are doing is browsing the internet. I can guarantee any one who is reading is browsing for guerrilla marketing or how to make money online or viewed this from my MySpace bulletin I put out. Guess what I got your attention and it didn’t cost me anything but 15 minutes of my time to write this. See it’s already working.
Where to market
In case you didn’t know, there are thousands of free web directories, article directories, social bookmarking sites, social networking sites, press release directories that you can submit your information to for FREE. Thousands of users go through those sites every day. So start submitting your website. If you don’t know where to find these resources email me directly and I will guide in the right direction. I would start by googling “list of web directories”. There are hundreds of sites that list them.
Free Websites
If you do not have money for a website, go with a service that provides you a free web builder. There are plenty of companies that will give you a free website when you buy a domain name for 6 to 10 bucks. Yeah, they are basic, but it’s a start. At least you will have something up. You can still get plenty of web traffic from this.
There are plenty of people that use MySpace for a free website. You pretty much get everything but a shopping cart. If you are good enough at MySpace you can add product for FREE using pay pal.
All you have to do is research. Just google “free website with domain name”.
MySpace and YouTube
MySpace and YouTube are both great sites to market. I’m going to use musicians for an example. You see music groups all the time on MySpace. The reason they get hundreds of thousands of visitors is from adding friends and post their videos on YouTube. Again it’s time consuming but well worth it when people are buying CD’s. You can do the same for any product. All you have to do is find your target audience.
Things to get you started
A really good book that I love is Guerrilla Marketing For Free by Jay Conrad Levinson. I think you can go to Google Books and find a FREE copy of it there.)
Create accounts at MySpace (if you don’t already have one), Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Squiddo
Create a free blog at Wordpress, Blogspot (These all get ranked by Google and all the other search engines.)
Google “how to blog” and google “backlinks through blogging” (This will help you to not only to promote your website but to get other websites to link to you.)
As you can tell I’m trying to write this blog post quickly so you can get out there and start making money. I’ll keep updating this as there’s tons more information. All of this should get you started. Have fun.
SEO Steve
steve@stevedifabio.com
Social bookmarking is yet another way to build traffic to your own website. No matter what your website is about, it can be used to generate good traffic to your site, improve your search engine ranking results and increase sales.
Social bookmarking or social media optimization can be explained as saving bookmarks to a site and giving them tags as keywords. It’s simply saving a website URL in your web browser that you wish to view later. There are thousands of social bookmarking website to register with for FREE and store your bookmarks FREE. Once a visitor visits a social bookmarking and sees your link, you just got a web hit.
The oldest and best known social bookmarking sites are de.lirious, Simpy and Furl. Other well known ones are also Technorati, Digg, Sphinn, Mixx, Tailrank, Tumblr and Pownce.
All of these sites are free. Once you submit your bookmark or tag you will receive traffic to your website instantly.
Here is a list of social bookmarking sites:
i89.us - Export to several formats, see popular & recent bookmarks, ability to shorten URLs.
AllMyFavorites.net - Create an organized page for your bookmarks that you can share with friends and family, access from any computer.
Backflip.com - Check out the most popular links each day, set “The Daily Routine” as your homepage so you can visit your must stop sites each day with ease.
BibSonomy.com - Public & private bookmarks, tag cloud, related tags, duplicate detection with the chance to merge their info.
BlinkPro.com - Dynamic folders, bookmark all links of a page plus all the usual features.
BlogMarks.net - Save your bookmarks, tag them with keywords for easy searching amongst your list, share with others.
Bluedot.us - Tabbed user page showing a network of friends, bookmarks, and related tags. Allows you to import contacts from all the major mail services such as GMail and Yahoo.
BmAccess.net - Bookmark a site, add tags, when you look up a tag, you get the names and a little thumbnail image of the site along with it.
BuddyMarks.com - Store your bookmarks online, share some or all of them, discover new sites to visit by searching the public bookmark area.
Chipmark.com - Browse random “chipmarks”, share them, sort, filter, and get personal recommendations.
Complore - 10MB of file storage, public & private sharing, tag cloud, popular feeds and more.
Connectbeam.com - A themed social bookmarking site for enterprise-scale business.
Connectedy - Import your bookmarks, batch edit them, check in on hot topics.
Connotea.org - A themed social bookmarking site specifically for researchers, clinicians and scientists.
Diigo.com - Highlight portions of a page, write on it like you would a piece of paper, share with your group, and search all publicly saved pages.
Excites.com - Organize your bookmarks by tags, add comments and notes, share publicly, subscribe to certain tags so you can be notified when a new site is added that may interest you.
Feedmelinks.com - All the usual social bookmarking goodies, but you can also add links via email.
GetBoo.com - Export your folders to HTML, import and remove duplicates, delete all bookmarks.
Givealink.org - Donate your bookmarks to this site to help them recommend sites and get a better understanding of how each person bookmarks.
Hyperlinkomatic.com - Import/export, categories, notes, sharing, block users, RSS, tags.
IKeepBookmarks.com - Folders, search folder names and more.
Lilisto.com - Ratings, notes, categories, smart categories and in-page editing.
Linkroll.com - Links open in new window, subscribe to tags, browse by archives.
Ma.gnolia.com - Discuss all the saved bookmarks in groups, see what the Featured Linker is all about, join discussions in the Hot Group.
Mister-Wong.com - Bookmark and tag, search for tags that interest you, make buddies with people who have interesting saved sites.
Netvouz.com - Save your bookmarks in folders, tag them with keywords, share them with others or password protect them.
Nextaris.com - Folders, tags, clippings; store up to 100MB for free.
Shadows.com - Share your already existing bookmarks, discuss and rate sites and see what you can find.
SocialBookmarking.org - User and global tag cloud, blogs, social networking, avatars and more.
StumbleUpon.com - Lets you “channel surf” the Internet and review sites; it learns what you like and recommends more of the same.
Unalog.com - A basic social bookmarking site, but with the ability to look back at specific days and see what was going on.
WireFan.com - You can vote on links as well as add thumbnails for sites.
Xilinus.com - Tags, rating, search, public & private listing, drag-and-drop sorting.
Yahoo! My Web - One button click adds your bookmarks to the search engine giants system, features duplicate detection to help you keep your bookmarks tidy.
BlinkList.com - Save sites for later reading, share your list or keep it private, even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.
Clipclip.org - Like an online scrapbook, you clip out the part of the site you want, then share it with whomever you want, and discover new places to visit.
Clipmarks.com - Allows you to clip just the chosen bits of a webpage, save them to the main website, or even insert them into your own blog. Think of it as fancy block quoting.
del.icio.us - You add your bookmarks and access them from anywhere. Check out what others are saving and see where it takes you.
Furl.net - Not only can you do the standard bookmarking and sharing, you can save archived versions of a webpage and even export all your saved pages to a ZIP file.
Linktopia.com - Keep private, share, mark as friends only, edit bookmark dates.
RawSugar.com - Can cluster your tags for you based on recommendations by other users.
Simpy.com - This social bookmarker does all the usual plus detects links that have changed, and distributes your bookmarks via your blog’s RSS if you like.
Spurl.net - You can upload your existing bookmarks to get started, add more for centralized access, check out hot lists and recommendations.
SyncOne.net - All the usual features plus the ability to add your own Google Ads to the top of your profile page.
URLex.info - Inbox, group creation, directory, all of the usual features, plus being able to send your RSS feed to the site.
BlinkList.com - Save sites for later reading, share your list or keep it private, even send your saved pages to your blog for wider sharing.
Clipclip.org - Like an online scrapbook, you clip out the part of the site you want, then share it with whomever you want, and discover new places to visit.
Clipmarks.com - Allows you to clip just the chosen bits of a webpage, save them to the main website, or even insert them into your own blog. Think of it as fancy block quoting.
del.icio.us - You add your bookmarks and access them from anywhere. Check out what others are saving and see where it takes you.
Furl.net - Not only can you do the standard bookmarking and sharing, you can save archived versions of a webpage and even export all your saved pages to a ZIP file.
Linktopia.com - Keep private, share, mark as friends only, edit bookmark dates.
RawSugar.com - Can cluster your tags for you based on recommendations by other users.
Simpy.com - This social bookmarker does all the usual plus detects links that have changed, and distributes your bookmarks via your blog’s RSS if you like.
Spurl.net - You can upload your existing bookmarks to get started, add more for centralized access, check out hot lists and recommendations.
SyncOne.net - All the usual features plus the ability to add your own Google Ads to the top of your profile page.
URLex.info - Inbox, group creation, directory, all of the usual features, plus being able to send your RSS feed to the site.
Blog-buzz.com - Similar to Digg, but for blog posts.
Digg.com - Synonymous with social bookmarking: you Digg a story, others Digg it, the more popular it gets the better chance it has of hitting the first page.
Netscape.com - A former contender in the browser wars, and the “mother” of Mozilla, it’s now a a social news aggregator with voting of stories similar to Digg.
Newsvine.com - Users can write articles on current news events, save links to external content; vote, comment and chat on article pages created by both users and by journalists.
Reddit.com - You vote up or down on a story making it move around on the home page.
Shoutwire.com - Similar to Digg, except instead of “Digging a story”, you “shout it”. Still a way to vote on unique Internet news stories.
Thoof.com - Add news stories you find interesting, anyone can “improve” the article by fixing the URL, editing the summary and more.
Writing Content For Social Bookmarking
It will be easier for people to find you with related tags or keywords about your listing. Users can also see how many times the listing has been view so you want to get as many clicks as possible. The more clicks you gain the more people will view your listing.
Be sure to write content that is useful and interesting, tag the content properly and submit to the above sites I’ve listed in the proper category. In the long run this will help your search engine rankings as well.
Learn more about social bookmarking
I’m going to basically talk about the key points of search engine optimization and how it will benefit your website. The new marketing strategies compared to old marketing strategies are very different. For example with the old types of marketing consist of inside sales, telemarketing, tradeshows, seminars, print advertising direct email and email, things like that.
New marketing strategies are all about seo, pay per click, blogging, buzz marketing, conversion tools etc. It’s basically all online.
Below are some key points and tips of building an online marketing machine:
First I want to talk about organic search engine listings. Organic search engine listings are the listings that show up on the left side of the page. Pay Per Clicks are the top three and right side of the search results. You pay for those. And the cost per click can get pretty pricey. The organic listings which show up on the left are free. The only time you pay is hiring an expert to get you where you want to be. Hiring an seo expert is not a bad thing because they know the ins and outs of search engine optimization. Once you are in the organic spots you stay there as long as you keep up to date with the pages you are optimizing.
25% of people that search on google click on the pay per clicks. This means 75% are clicking the organic results. You are most likely to get a high Click Through Rate (CTR) on organic listings.
There are two types of optimization. On Page SEO and Off Page SEO. On page optimization is the visible content and graphics that you see on the web page itself. The most important thing on your web page is the Title of the page. The title tag is located at the very top of the browser above the file, edit, view etc. The title tag basically tells you the subject of the page. You want to add some keywords in the title. For example: If I generally want to talk about search engine optimization, my title tag will be Search Engine Optimization. Aside from the title tag the search engines also look at the keywords in the URL string. Example: http://www.your-domain.com/search-engine-optimization.html. Notice the keywords. Also notice how it matched the title tag. This is a key point to remember. Next, heading tags such as H1, H2, H3. On every page you build use these heading tags. The first heading tag should always be H1. Heading tags are important because, well, they are the heading, stronger than a bullet point. They are recognized. H1 tags are rather large so you can use css to shrink it down. Page text, bolded keyword and italicized keywords are an import thing to on page optimization. You want to have good clean content with keywords in the body on your webpage. Make sure to add some key phrases as well and bold them or italicize them so they are more noticed.
Meta data still matters for on page seo. The description is good for a higher click through rate. The search engines scan the description and you also want to use the keyword you are targeting in the description.
Now we go to off page optimization. Off page optimization is your site on other sites. For example, you have page rank as an off page optimization technique. Page rank basically is how important Google thinks your website value is form a scale of 0 to 10. Off page optimization also is the number of backlinks you have. The more links that point to your site, the better. But you have to be careful where you go to get links and what the link says to point to you. Carefully choose the website that you want pointed to you. See if sites such as link farms are pointed to them or if they use what is called black hat seo. Black hat seo is a bad technique. Think of it as the dark side of the force. When you have a site pointing to you as a back link make sure the link has the keywords you want to rank for. For example: You don’t want your domain name as the link, you want Search Engine Optimization as the link. This technique is valued more. But notice the backlink has the keyword search engine optimization as the link, title tag, in the URL, and heading tag. Notice how they come together. This is important to SEO.
Start a blog! Don’t go to websites like blogger.com or sites that offer you a blog to run off of there site. Start a blog on your own domain name. Something like this, http://www.your-domain.com/blog. Blog’s always have fresh content and the likelihood of your getting a backlink is better. Blogs are more conversational especially if there’s something good to talk about. Wordpress blogs are free to download and to install on your hosting account. I recommend the word press blog because it is simple, user friendly and allows you download free specialized plugins that are great for seo, social bookmarking which is a another part of web marketing and submitting rss feeds.
You can also make forms more appropriate and appealing to the eye. If you design your web forms well enough, you’ll most likely have more of a conversion rate. What turns people off are long forms. Try to have the basic stuff. You don’t want to have a lot of thing s to fill out because people just don’t like to fill out a bunch of information. Do your best to shorten your forms. Try to use cookies to get more information on your users. This will allow you to understand how they found your site, how many pages did they view and how they stayed on your site. Another tip for web forms is to remove site navigation. This allows people to be more focused on filling out your form mails. You can add a short testimonial with a photo next to the form for more confidence and also adding special offers for users to sign up that day. It is custom for people to add email addresses to forms so next to the email address put a link to the privacy statement so they are more secure. (Make sure the privacy statement opens in a new browser window)
These tips should get you started in developing an online marketing machine. If you have any questions please contact me personally. steve@stevedifabio.com
