In a previous article I talked about the top three ways you can pay to get traffic to your web site. Today I want to cover something everybody is interested — free ways you can generate traffic.

Keep in mind that most free ways to generate traffic can take some time to build, while using a paid method such as Pay-Per-Click can start bringing in traffic within minutes. With that in mind, let’s take a look at the list.

1. Article Marketing — This is not new, companies have used this method for decades. You write an article that would be of interest to your target market and then include a link to our product or service. The article gets published as widely as possible and when people read it, they click through the link to get more information about the subject. That’s when you can start pitching them more directly on what you’re trying to sell.

Hundreds of people are using the Article Architect software to help write and manage their article marketing. You can do it without anything special, but often a tool or utility will take away some of the drudgery and time-consuming aspects.

One thing to be aware of with article marketing — it doesn’t usually send you a flood of visitors. But a single article can send you a trickle of traffic day after day, for weeks or months to come. And the more articles you have out there, the larger the flow becomes.

2. Social Media — Whether you think Facebook, mySpace, or Twitter are fads doesn’t take away from the fact that there are MILLIONS of people using those services. Twitter, for example, is a real-time tool, so once you’ve built a list of “followers” all you have to do is type a quick message with a link and get traffic to a site within seconds.

Social media methods can be time-consuming and there are more sites and services coming online everyday, so you’re going to have to try and figure out which services have the most bang-for-the-buck so you don’t waste time on the also-rans.

3. Joint Ventures / Affiliates — This has the potential to be the biggest traffic generator of the three, but I put it last because it’s not something you can do by yourself. You need to build a relationship with someone with a large list of people who will then promote your product for a cut of the action.

While some people use the term Joint Venture (or JV) and Affiliate interchangeably, a real JV happens when two people each contribute something to a product or service and then promote it. But no matter how you define it, getting someone else to promote for you can bring in significant traffic.

There are other sources of free traffic we’ll cover in the future, and some people may think the three I listed shouldn’t be the top 3 — that’s fine, it’s mostly opinion. What matters is which method works best for you in your business?

Start trying some of these traffic generation methods and track your results. That’s how you’ll finally know where you should be spending your time and energy.

For a comprehensive look at some of these methods, see Sonic Traffic Tools.

A supermarket that doesn’t have any walk-in traffic will soon shut it’s doors. Your web site is exactly the same — without traffic you won’t have any opt-ins, sales, or anything else.

Even a bad sales letter or web site can convert some prospects to sales — as long as there is traffic going to the site. Does that mean traffic is the top priority of online marketers?

If not, it should be.

So let’s take a quick look at three of the top sources of traffic that you have to pay for (sources of free traffic can be seen in an upcoming article).

1. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) — Most people are familiar with Google’s Adwords program. You can set up an ad, define keywords, and when those keywords are searched for on Google, your ad will be shown. If someone clicks through it will cost you a certain amount of money (what you’ve chosen to spend per click).

This is, hands down, the fastest way to get traffic to a web site. Which is wonderful when you launch something and want to do some testing to find out how well it will convert prospects to customers.

1. Banner Ads / Site Advertising — People usually think banner ads are “old school” and while they’ve been around for a while, they can be one of the most cost-effective ways in which to drive traffic to your web site. Find a site that’s complementary to your product or service and ask if they accept advertising.

Unless you’re a designer, hire someone to create your banner ad. Whipping up something in Microsoft Paint isn’t going to cut it these days — you need something that looks good and has a definite call-to-action.

1. Ezine Advertising — Another one that most folks think died out, but it’s especially effective when it’s presented more as an endorsement than a straight advertisement. There are sites out there with thousands of people receiving their ezines and many of them don’t have ads.

What’s cool is a lot of the ezines that don’t have ads aren’t necessarily opposed to it, but nobody has approached them about it. Which means you can usually get a rock-bottom price to include your ad.

You can’t go wrong using one of those three ways to generate traffic to your web site. If you’d like more information on traffic-generating ideas, see this link.

Here’s a look at the Intro video of Wordpress In About An Hour - note that the videos inside the membership area are full size 640 x 480; this small size is just for the blog.

Those of us who are web-heads and tech-geeks sometimes forget there’s a learning curve to everything…

…even setting up your own blog.

Which is why I created Wordpress In About An Hour — a set of Wordpress tutorial videos that show how to install and use the latest (2.7) version of Wordpress.

Wordpress In About An Hour - Tutorial Videos

If you want to set up your own blog and would like step-by-step instructions, this is the video tutorial set for you!

Check it out and let me know what you think.

I haven’t even looked at the sales page of the latest big guru-led launch.

What?! How could I pass up a chance to make $100K PER FREAKING DAY?!?!

That’s what the guy behind the thing does, so say all the emails that flooded my in-box.

But I have ZERO interest in hearing about it. I don’t believe it. Okay, I believe he (they) has done it. Yay for him!

But do I believe it’s an attainable goal for others? Nope. Not in the slightest. I know some people will point to that as the reason I’m not a gazillionaire — that my “mindset” is too small. If I focus on small amounts of money, that’s all I’ll make, blah blah blah.

Pfft.

While I do believe in that concept somewhat, there’s also the whole thing about not getting sidetracked.

My business isn’t arbitrage. My business is creating and selling utilities that help people save time and make more money.

I’ve done the “hop from one thing to the other” and all it does is raise my frustration level through the roof. When I stop focusing on my core business, it suffers.

I don’t think experimenting or diversifying is a bad thing, but in my experience, most people who are “diversifying” haven’t solidified their core business yet. If you don’t even have one stream of income working, what business do you have in trying to get others working?

If that’s you, it makes you ripe for the kind of launch we see happening over and over again. And while some of the products launched are worthwhile, most are playing on your fears…

…this, FINALLY, is what you’ve been missing and if you don’t get it you’re going to remain stuck in your dead-end job, etc., etc. And since there are ONLY 100 (or 500, or 1000, or whatever) copies available, only the dedicated, smart, and QUICK people will be able to become gazillionaires.

The rest of us, I guess, will just have to become the servants of our new rich overlords.

Um, yeah.

What am I trying to get across in this rambling post?

Don’t get sidetracked. Stop looking at everything that comes down the pike. Usually in the first email about something new you can tell whether it will help your core business or not. And if not, skip it. Don’t even give it another 10 seconds of your attention.

And if you don’t already have a core business, and are still looking? Well, then maybe you get a pass and can look at everything that comes down the pike — but don’t be a sucker. Paying big bucks for something that promises you even bigger bucks isn’t a business plan.

If you don’t know what kind of business you want to build, throwing money around is just stupid.

And $100,000 a day? Pffft. Sorry, I can’t get excited about that — it smacks of a “maybe I’ll win the lottery” mentality.

What do you think? Am I making a mistake in ignoring these launchfests? Leave me a comment and let me know.

What could you do with a link that would expire after a certain number of clicks?

Or that would expire after a certain number of hours?

Expiring links are a typical part of good shopping cart systems — it makes it more difficult for people to pass along a download link to all their friends and family. Once the ebook, software, etc., has been downloaded, or a certain amount of time passes, the link stops working.

I’m proud to announce the birth of a new product, called, believe it or not, Expiring Links.

It allows you to quickly create links that expire when you want — after x number of clicks or x number of hours.

And it’s separate from a shopping cart so you don’t have to pay for an entire system, just the expiring links themselves.

But you can still use Expiring Links with something like PayPal to automatically create expiring links when someone buys a product from you.

Or, use it with your Aweber account to give someone a time-limited bonus for signing up to your list.

Expiring Links is a part of the Sonic Toolkit membership site…

…but I’ve also decided to offer it as a stand-alone product.

Watch for an announcement tomorrow on how to grab your copy. I might even use an expiring link to give the first 10 people a big price break. =;)

Just in case some of you hadn’t heard, I moved my family into a travel trailer and we’re going to noodle around the US for about a year. If that goes well, we’ll then sell the trailer and buy a sailboat and noodle around the Caribbean until we get tired of it.

We’re down in California right now and will be here for another 2-3 weeks, then heading for Texas (and possibly into Mexico) for the last part of December and January.

I’m still working my business — I just do it from coffee shops and the like (I’m in a Starbucks in Vallejo, CA, right now). It’s not an ideal setup, but it does work. The main drawback is that I’ve slowed down on some things — it’s harder to carve out several hours at a time to focus on things.

But the next version of Article Architect is coming very soon and a new tool will be added to Sonic Toolkit right after that.

The other big news is that I’m going to do some “Brainstorm Weekend” sessions as I cross the country. If you’re interested in getting together to swap ideas, see the official site:

http://BrainstormWeekend.com

I’ve had a few people ask about using Sonic Memo Pro with a self-hosted Wordpress blog. Yes, it works, and it’s very easy and straight-forward.

Here’s a video that shows what to do — note that the audio starts right away, the video starts about 12 seconds in.

Put audio on your Wordpress blog.

I’ve received several tech support queries today about AVG flagging Cloak and Tracker, Article Architect, etc., as having a virus.

It’s not true.

AVG has done this in the past — they flag ALL programs written in REALbasic, which is the development environment I use for all my programming.

I’m hoping their next update fixes this (like I said, this is a recurring problem with AVG). The work around is to set up an exception for your application or turn off Resident Shield.

The other workaround is to switch from AVG to something else more reliable.

I’m selling a limited number of resell rights licenses for my new product, KompoZer Video Tutorials. I think this is the first time I’ve offered resell rights for a new product right out of the gate.

This is the product: KompoZer Tutorials

However, the only people eligible for buying one of the licenses are those people on my JJ List (current customers) or my Select Marketing Info list — to join that one you can use the form to the right.

If you have a target market that would benefit from instructions on building their own web pages, you might want to look into one of these limited licenses. Join the Select Marketing Info list and watch for a broadcast telling you more.

I’ve finished the KompoZer tutorial videos site. You can see it here:

KompoZer Tutorial Videos

If you don’t know, KompoZer is an open-source, cross-platform program kind of like Dreamweaver or FrontPage — it’s a WYSIWYG web site maker.

The tutorial videos I created show how to use KompoZer to create your own web pages — so it cuts the learning curve waaaay down.

The price is really cheap and I’ll be adding more videos as members make suggestions, so if learning how to build your own web pages is something you want, you should join right now.

I’m still in Alaska (it’s a loooong story) but should be leaving after the weekend.

While I’m waiting to leave I decided to spend the holiday weekend creating a product that’s been on my “to do” list for a few months — a video tutorial on how to use the Kompozer software to crank out your own web site.

For those who don’t know, Kompozer is an open-source program that’s available for Windows, Mac, and Linux and is a good alternative to using something like Dreamweaver (which is way spendy).

I’ll be launching the tutorial videos next Tuesday (that’s the plan today) and will be allowing XX number of people to also buy resell rights to the videos.

Come back here late Monday or early Tuesday for more details…

I’ve done a split test on the Article Architect site over the last 42 sales — I was testing a different audio message. Both the same, except one added this wording in the middle:

“Before you decide whether Article Architect is the right software to help you reap the benefits of article marketing, I want to make one thing clear, because I know there are people scouring the internet for shortcuts to success — Article Architect does NOT write articles for you. All of the article creators out there turn out garbage and people who use them should be ashamed of themselves.

If you want to build a long-term online business, those shortcuts will end up hurting you. Instead of shortcuts, look for tools that will help you do the things that count, faster and easier.”

Basically, I was searching for a way to lower my refund rate from people who were looking for something that would actually generate articles without human intervention.

Here are the conversion numbers:

Normal wording: 7.71% Blunt wording: 3.46%

First thing is, even the “bad” number is a pretty good conversion rate.

Second thing is, the “warning” message really cut sales.

What I haven’t looked at is whether the refund requests differ based on which audio messsage they listened to. I’m actually not sure if I can track the numbers to the individual, but I’ll check into that.

Just thought I’d share these results with you. If nothing else, it shows the contents of an audio message can really make a difference in your conversion rate.

Members of Sonic Toolkit can use Sonic Memo Express and Sonic Test and Track to perform their own audio-based split tests.

I’ve had a LOT of questions about yesterday’s post and would like to try and allay some of the fears that have been expressed.

1. I’m not “leaving the business.” I’m still going to do internet marketing but will focus on non-marketers. And that doesn’t mean I won’t ever release another tool. After all, my original utility, Sonic Memo, came about as a result of me trying to better market a cookbook. Upon offering Sonic Memo I just kind of got sucked into the “sell to marketers” niche.

2. Your products will still work. A couple people seem to think that if I stop selling a product, the copy they bought will stop working. Nope, I don’t have any software like that. If you’re happy with it now, you’ll be happy with it whether I’m selling marketing tools or juggling balls.

3. Article Architect owners will still get the upgrade to v2. Even if I sell my business before the AA v2 launch in July, a condition of the deal will be that existing AA owners get v2 for free, just like I’ve intended. The upgrade is coming! =:)

4. How much do I want for my business? Hmmm… good question. One that I don’t yet have an answer for. I was “floating a trial balloon” to gauge interest, and now that I see there is some interest, I’ll nail that down.

5. Will I split things up? Yes. I’m willing to keep Sonic Toolkit (I want to, actually, since I use it so much myself) and sell off all the stand-alone products.

Once again, nobody will be “left out in the cold.” I wouldn’t sell my business unless I was assured current customers would be taken care of. I’m NOT going to just drop things and walk away — I’m just refocusing.

Thanks!

Jay

I’ll be offering this “officially” in a couple weeks but figured I’d float it out here first because I’d rather deal with someone who “knows” me and my business to some extent.

I’m contemplating getting out of the internet marketing business — well, kind of. I’d like to market on the internet, just not to other marketers. =:) That’s what I’ve focused on for the last several years and I’ve had fun and made some money, but in keeping with my new life offline (moving on to a sailboat the end of this year) I feel like I need a fresh start online, too.

What I’ll be offering are complete rights to all my existing programs - and I don’t mean just resell rights I mean ALL rights. Someone can get the source code, docs, videos, marketing materials, customer and prospect lists, etc. Even I won’t be able to sell the products after someone else takes them.

We’re talking about everything from the original Sonic Memo Pro to the latest Content Conveyor Belt, and everything in between — Sonic Info Riches, Cloak and Tracker, Sonic Opt-In, Podcasting In About An Hour, Joomla In About An Hour, Article Architect, Audio Editing Secrets, Sonic Snooper, etc.

It also includes the monthly membership site, Sonic Toolkit which contains Sonic Flix (for video) Sonic Memo Express, Sonic Survey, Sonic Flycatcher, etc.

Basically, I’m looking at selling my entire marketing business.

However, I don’t want to sell it to someone who will just take the stuff off the market. I get emails weekly from people trying to buy PLR Commander — but I sold that last year (so it’s not included in the package) and the guy never put it back on the market. I don’t want that to happen with this stuff.

Yeah, it’s a business deal for me, but it’s also kind of personal, if you know what I mean.

Like I said, I’ll be writing up a complete description of the business in a couple weeks but if someone knows what I’m offering and makes me an offer I like, I’ll do the deal just that fast and can skip the whole “sales” process.

I’m not planning on vanishing — I just want to focus on non-marketing niches for a while.

Interested?

I subscribed to Trafficology and enjoyed the newsletter — then messed up and didn’t switch my credit card when it expired.

Which turned out to be a GREAT thing because I was really impressed with the “Hey, you won’t get the next issue” emails I started receiving. I saved them so I could study and implement something similar in my own marketing.

Until the last email they sent me.

That one pissed me off and cemented my decision to NOT renew my subscription and paints Nitro Marketing (the parent of Trafficology) as a deceitful company.

Here are the paragraphs that did it for me:

If you do not provide us with your updated billing information before then, your account will be DELETED and the balance you owe will be forwarded to our collections department.

Their collections department? I’m being sent to collections?

If you update your billing information TODAY we’ll agree to wave any past due charges. Just pay for your current month’s subscription and we’ll call it even.

First, it’s waive, not wave, but they say I have past due charges — which is why I’m being sent to collections, I guess.

Except that after getting clarification from customer service it turns out they wanted money for something they were GOING to send me (the next issue), not something I’d already received.

So there was no PAST DUE amount, and thus no reason to send it to “collections.”

Which means the email to me was full of lies designed to scare me into paying them more money.

Nitro Marketing is that kind of company, eh? So why in the world would I ever give them a single, solitary dime in the future?

I can’t think of any reason. And as long as they continue with deceptive marketing practices, you should think before you give them any money, too.

My plan was to post some things I’m getting rid of this past weekend — but we ended up in a flurry of packing and cleaning and I’m still way behind the 8-ball.

If you had to get rid of all your marketing stuff except that which would fit in 1 or 2 medium boxes, what would you keep and what would you ditch?

Let’s take the 7 Figure Code, for example — 3 huge binders and 16 DVD cases. The video I handled by ripping all the DVDs onto my hard drive and then copying the MOV files to one DVD-R (would be nice if people shipping multi-DVD packages would include an extra one with all the content already ripped).

So the video is easy to take with me but there’s no way I can take the binders — so do I give/sell them to someone? Okay, then what about the 16 DVDs? If I’m keeping a copy (for now I am because I haven’t watched them all) then I can’t send the DVDs on to someone else — so do I throw them away? That seems wrong, too.

And over and over it goes. I have 4-5 “big package” courses sitting around and time is getting very short.

And I know the thrift store here doesn’t want the stuff, so I’d better figure out a solution quickly! =:)

If you’re looking for the “audio thing” I mentioned in my email, it’s the next post down. It went in less than 15 minutes.

I am doing the last of the packing before moving and am coming across stuff like the original Traffic Secrets, Underachiever Course, etc.

It’s all GREAT stuff but I can’t fit it onto a sailboat so I’m going to sell some of it and give some of it away.

Watch this blog over the next 3 days because I’ll be posting — and taking whoever gets in first!

Thanks!

SOLD!!!

I’m selling my pro audio gear — I’m switching to more portable gear since I’ll be on the road/ocean for the foreseeable future.

I’ll be advertising it on Craigslist this weekend but if you know what the stuff is and don’t need a “sales letter” to convince you to buy, I’ll sell the entire set (which cost me about $1500 just a few years ago) for $500 to my ———- (SOLD!!!) PayPal account.

• Digidesign MBox w/ProTools LE software (2-channel USB mixer)
• Audio Technica AT-3035 Microphone w/Shockmount
• Daptor Two Wireless Interface (record cell calls)
• JK Audio Broadcast Host Digital Hybrid (record phone calls from landlines)

This system will work for Windows or Mac people (better for Windows because the MBox drivers for Mac usually lag the current system by a few months).

This is the setup I’ve used to create podcasts, tutorial videos, host teleconference calls (to record and then sell), etc.

First $500 to my PayPal account takes it.

Oh, the first three pieces listed there fit into a foam-filled silver case that makes it EASY to take the gear to mobile locations.

I’ll pay shipping to a US destination.

Yesterday I told you about a content conveyor belt I created and said I’d let you know what kind of results I got in 24 hours.

This is a niche that I’m new in, so I didn’t know what kind of response I’d get. I also didn’t know what kind of monetary reward I’d have to offer to get results.

So I asked for “tips” on a certain topic and offered 10 cents for each one. 24 hours later I have 10 good tips — 9 that I can use right out of the box!

It cost me a buck and the conveyor belt is still running and I’ll let it run until I have 50 tips. At that point I’ll compile them into a booklet and use it as a give-away. Actually, I’ll be selling reprint rights to the booklet to people who do business in that niche.

Which means my $5.50 investment will make…well, I don’t know how much it’ll make yet, but I’ll bet you my next two desserts it’ll be well worth the time and money I’m putting into it! =:)

Have you started a content conveyor belt today?