A marketing newbie requires help!

[Haris]

Hello,

Since I'm new to the forums, I must tell you that I don't have a good marketing mind. I'm only average when it's come to marketing.

Whenever I launch my websites, I generate LOT of traffic during the first month but gradually the traffic decreases. The same thing happened with ProxyBucket.com. I lost LOT of traffic during the second month and it's declining.

Today, I have submitted the site to 10+ proxy topsites and I'm thinking that would generate fair traffic for me but still that's not a reliable source of traffic.

I have a blog which I manage and I'm thinking about adding a nice forum to the website since I have little competition AND many people are jumping into proxy bandwagon.

It would be nice to get some professional advices on how to generate traffic for that kind of niche.

I have $100 budget for marketing right now.

[jackbdirty]

Don't spend any money.. do it yourself if you don't have the money. Here some info that I've worked very hard to learn..and I hope it help you.

So you've come up with a great idea or product and want to start a website? With all the people starting up websites today, they have no idea what it really takes to become a successful website owner, and not to have to work their daytime job anymore.
I've done a fair amount of research and found out how some of the "big" guys have made it, but yet don't want you to know about it. They keep the secret close to them, because it could spell disaster if the secret is let out. So, I'm here to tell you everything I've learned on my own, and it don't cost a red cent.
Before building your website/blog, ask yourself this first question
#1.) What idea does your site revolve around? Is it about gardening? Sports?
Electronics?--Whatever it is, make sure to write down specifically what your website/blog is going to be about. Get a specific as possible.

#2.)The next thing that you should do is build your website/blog. Come up with every bit of resource to make the site interesting with all the content that you can come up with. There are plenty of freebies out there, and I can tell you about those later on when you are building your website. When you build your site, make sure to put meta tags in it. If you don't know what that is, there is a site that shows you on the internet that I found http://www.dalleh.com/HTML/Meta_Tags/meta_tags.shtml
This will help your site be indexed into the search engines when submitted. If you don't have meta tags in your site, your sit cannot be spidered by the search engines. I am trying to brief as possible so that I don't confuse you if you know nothing about the matter.

#3.)Submit your site to the search engines. Don't...and I repeat...don't pay for
this service to be done. Many of the search engine submitting companies want a bunch of money for things that you can do for yourself in a matter of a couple of hours at the most. It sometimes takes a few weeks before you show up in a couple of the big name search engines like http://www.yahoo.com and http://www.google.com, but I'll show you how to get around that later on in the article. There are also a lot of submission service companies out
there that will submit your site for free in the major search engines if you just
place their banner/button upon your website/or blog..

#4) Gettin' down to the nitty gritty. This is my favorite part, because I love research. Now, you may not be one that likes to dig things up; but this a crucial part of the process and is definitly needed for success. You need to do research on your competitors. Remember when I was talking about write down specifically what your website is going to be about? Well, here is where it will come handy. Referring back to (#1), type in your key word on
a big search engine such as http://www.yahoo.com or http://www.google.com and locate your competitors. BOOM! There they are! Your competitors that you either have to team up with, or absolutely
crush to get to the top. I know it sounds ruthless when I say crush; but hey, we're talking about the internet here and not a playground. Copy each url of the sites. Copy and paste, or whatever works best for you. Go to each and every one of the websites. Write down their strengths, weaknesses (or what they are lacking). Write down everything you can find out about their site. Keep this for your records on your computer, or print it out and keep it in a folder.

#5) More Research-- Copy each url that you collected information on and go to http://www.alexa.com and do a rank search. This site has so much infomation there. It's incredible! This shows how many hits they are getting, and how long they've been around. Your asking why this is important, but I'm about to get to that. You can even look up information about your site. Don't think much information at all will come up about your site at first, especially if it's brand new.

#6) Find the best competitors rank and find out who's linking to them I found out all about my competition there; who was linking to them, and everything about the sites on alexa.com. This is the key right here. This is where the big boys play, and where you find out who's linking to them. Find out what their rank is. Always try to find the biggest ones linking to the site. Always try to find the ones that are in the top 100,000 in the world. See what the sites are about. Your gonna find out that some of them are just forums-(message boards), or just online document saving communities in which you will save your filed documents, images, etc.
#7) Go to the site that are linking to them and find out how or if this site is doing link trade. If it's just a forum-(message board), then join it anyway. Please make sure to get a free email address when you are doing all of this, because it could clutter up your personal email. Trust me, I've been through it and its not fun. Trying to delete or save all of this stuff can be a little bit confusing at times. Also, another thing that is pretty tough to do is remember all the passwords. So,.. write yourself emails to forward to your free account to try to keep them
in order. This stuff will definitly come in handy later.

#8 Before doing a link trade with the site; make sure to already have a link back to them before asking a link. The website you've already built needs to have a link section in it. Make sure to have them placed in there. Also, you don't want to be very generic when asking for a link trade with a site. Don't write "Dear webmaster, I would like to submit my link for a trade." It will get discarded. You have to have a reason for link trade. Give them some insight as to why you
are submitting your trade with them. I'm sure if you've done your research, it is a matter of relevance in material in the site itself. Give them reasons why you like their site. Heck, I don't know any other way of putting it besides kiss their ass.

#9 keep doing it... find the highest ranking websites to link to and the relevance of your content. I know that this part seems redundent, but it is a tried and true process that works over time. Don't spam people or boards, but approach them. Write nice formal emails, or if you have a way to call them to talk to them do that. Remember, you are building a business and not a scam operation, so treat it like your business. This takes time and discipline. Eventually, you
will get some good inlinks coming into your website.

#10 Start writing informative article on a subject and submitting it to several different online ezines! This is where things really start to take off for you. There are many publications out there on the internet that would love you to write your articles and submit them to their sites and ezines. Just to name one that is high on the list would be http://amazines.com/ amongst a list of so many that I wouldn't be able to fit in this article. You would have to contact me for that information.

#11 Get them published on top ranking which will raise the (PR- page rank) level of your site and search engine exposure and get hits to your website just from writing good quality articles. A good example.. do you have a key interest
in music or plants which is what your website is about? Do you know more about a subject more than others know? There it is. By writing articles on certain subject matters and linking to your site/or blog can improve search engine rankings, not to mention a lot of traffic coming your way to find out what more is
on your site. So, be prepared if you are a good writer because you will be swamped.

#12 Continue to build informative subjects on your website/blog to help make it interesting. Always update your website at least one time a week, if not everyday. find all the free stuff you can to install to your website or blog. Whatever you do, keep it interesting and real. Don't ever try to just sell,
sell, sell because people are a lot smarter than you think. The internet is fun and profitable as long as you take a soft approach to selling quality things to people. I have my own things to sell amongst affiliate programs that I participate in, and if you don't have a product and need help with getting products to sell, I have no problem in helping you out there either. Don't know how to build a website or a blog? No problem.. I can help you do that too. Now, there is no reason for you not to go out there and get your dreams of becoming a webmaster.

I found out all about this research through 16 hours a day of hard work on the internet right after I lost my job when my boss had a heart attack and decided to go out of business. I've learned a lot and wouldn't mind helping a few people out.

Jack

[look4edmund]

Try doing SEO. A lot of people fail on internet business because they don't treat it like a real business.




Regards,
Edmund Ng

[Aztral]

Great Info JackB!

I'm also a 'newbie', but i'm getting bettah! I'd also like to add the possibility of creating an affiliate network.

I'll have to report back how well it works though. I'm almost done with the coding, etc. but I'm hopeful if I drive some untargeted (ie. random) traffic to my site (via a buy-20k visitors scheme) that some of those visitors would be interested in making money as an affiliate.

We'll see.

[Camber07]

Go Jack! Awesome insight and tips

[rcajht]

Do SEO first, use SEO tools to optimize your site:http://webmaster.helpisland.com/index.html

[NothingButNet]

Originally Posted by Haris

....
Whenever I launch my websites, I generate LOT of traffic during the first month but gradually the traffic decreases. The same thing happened with ProxyBucket.com. I lost LOT of traffic during the second month and it's declining.

You've got some very good answers already. I have a question: how do you generate the traffic in the first month? Maybe you should repeat those steps each month, or each two months...

[tdgac]

Good points all around and good clue Nothing When you find something that works, replicate it.

As for Alexa, I can't help but throw in my two cents about it. I don't personally feel it's very reliable - based on being ______ over by it. One of my sites has been around since 2001. I worked extremely hard and slowly but surely it made it's way into it's rightful niche position. Prior to the google rescramble in November 2004, that site was sitting in position 21,000 on Alexa for, again, a very specific niche. It was where it belonged, not hatted into position in any way (other than white). Then, the major dance began...

The fall out pushed the site to 40K, 80K, 120K, and now sits somewhere in the 200+ for traffic. In the meantime, many sites that have nothing whatsoever to do with what I do come in much better. (So obviously what a page is about ain't all there is to it.) Lucky for me, mine's a word of mouth type business

Also along those same lines I've seen Alexa give their stamp of approval (a ranking of 6 or higher not unlike Googles) for sites that they (Alexa) sit out in the 6 MILLION plus slot for actual traffic - no man's land. If someone can explain to me how a site can have a higher "rank" than the guy sitting down in the under 50K slot, I'd deeply appreciate an explanation.

To add insult to error, Alexa - though they say they will - never updates your "who's linking in." I have a ton of cr.ap that has nothing to do with me plus old sites of my own that don't exist and haven't for years that they ignore and will not remove. So much for "if you are the owner of this website help us out" request they post themselves...

Alexa drives me nuts so I just ignore them lol! Rankings are good to go after, you can't get away from it, but if you build a solid network of like-minded marketers and business owners all helping each other out (word of mouth, etc.) you're site can do just as well.

[sheena]

Try the social bookmarking and social network. It help boost traffic for site as well as search engine rankings. Not only for the traffic produces but providing us useful bookmarks.