Traffic Promotion

Leads and Subscribers – Are They Same?

In internet marketing the terms “subscribers” and “leads” are often used interchangeably giving the impression that they mean the same. However, they are not same and understanding the difference is crucial for succeeding in net based business.
 
Subscribers are people who have subscribed to receive information from you. They have given you their email addresses and permission to contact them on those addresses. Information you send them could be in various forms such as newsletters, ezines, your special offers and relevant announcements.

Your subscribers can turn into leads once they respond positively to your call for some action. The subscribers joined the list in the first place to receive information from you, or maybe to receive gifts that were offered for subscribing. When you send them information, most likely you also send them offers that promise to help them in some way. In fact selling your offers may be your primary reason for starting the list. In your offer you call for some action on the part of the subscribers – to buy something or join a private membership group. As long as your subscribers do not respond to your “call” they remain subscribers. But as soon as they accept your offer they convert into leads.

Why are leads important for a business?

Your leads are your customers who purchased something from you or followed you to an area of common interest. You spent your resources to find them and bring them around to trust you. They converted into leads because they have interest in your offer and the niche it belongs to. They became your customer because they believed that your offer would give them something of value that they do not already have. They found the answer to their unsatisfied demands in your product.

There are few special features that set your leads apart from your subscribers. Your leads are seriously interested in your niche. They have developed enough faith in you or in your product to actually respond to your call for action. Additionally, they are also willing to give out their money, time or attention to obtain the product you are representing.

Your leads develop an emotional involvement with you that you can turn to your advantage. When your leads spent money or other resources to get your product they were emotionally moved to take that decision. They expect to find something to satisfy their requirements. You are in a position to grow personal relationship with them. You can give them support to ensure that they make good use of the product they obtained from you.

If you are able to retain their faith in you by giving them what they really wanted (information, or success in some field), you have lifetime customers. You can sell them other products and help them achieve what they were looking for. To sell your new products you have a ready, responsive customer-base. You do not have to spend your resources to find them again. It will be too much to expect that all your leads will take your second product also; but still you will have most targeted market with high conversion rate. Your leads remain the base on which you can grow your business.
 
How would you like to have responsive leads in the first place?

You have to pay a price to get and maintain your subscribers. Some of your subscribers joined your list because they were looking for freebies. Many of your subscribers are not serious enough to ever accept your offer. But you still carry them, and that certainly costs you something. It will be in your interest to have a high conversion rate. You would like to have a large number of subscribers turn into leads.

Your conversion rate will depend upon how you get your subscribers and how effectively you are able to pre-sell your offer to break down their resistance. To get targeted leads your marketing and promotion should be extremely focused. Secondly, you will need a system such as auto-responder to engage the attention of your subscribers and to convince them that your offer can meet their expectations.

You may be operating in any area, you need leads to sustain your endeavour. A smaller number of targeted leads are much better and preferable to a large number of uninterested subscribers. For any market niche – mortgage loans, insurance, real estate, home based business or any other niche – your leads are your real assets.

To learn about a powerful lead generation system, visit this page: http://goodleads.leadgenerationsecret.com

By McKenzie Taylor

So what do you do once you have traffic coming to your site, but you are not getting as many sales as you should be getting? This is a simple question to answer and the following few paragraphs will help you with building and tracking your new quality traffic.

Once you have a steady flow of traffic you need to know where your best traffic is coming from and where the actual sales are coming from. This means that you need to track your traffic, sales, and everything else that you can track. It would be great to know who is coming to your website, where they are coming from, and how much money they are spending with you at your site.

It is an absolute must for you to track your traffic. This will allow you to test many methods of advertising and figure out which ones are giving you the best traffic for your money. Then, you can invest more in these types of advertising instead of wasting your money on advertising that is not working.

Tracking your traffic is one of the most important things you can do online. This is how all the best internet gurus make their money. They test and track all kinds of methods and then use the ones that bring them the most money. This is what you should do also. Find yourself a good company that will track your traffic, sales, profits, and many other things for you. This may cost you a few dollars every month, but it will be well worth it at the end of the month.

Learn more about building quality traffic with this FREE Traffic Report. Go here to claim your copy now: Free Traffic Building Report

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=McKenzie_Taylor
 

You are not going to believe this…but you need to!

I just checked out Matt Callens incredible software called
HyperVRE, and this could be the first time that I have used
a free software more than I do my other paid apps.

Matt told me I could let a few people know about the site before
he starts charging for the product, therefore I decided to put it here:

http://www.sanjay-j.com/Recommends/HyperVRE.html

While I could go on and on about the features and how they have
benefited my business, I think you really need to see for yourself
what this software really can do.

For now - he is giving this software away for free, so there is no risk.
But you need to hurry before there is a hefty one-time payment.

=> http://www.sanjay-j.com/Recommends/HyperVRE.html

Sanjay Johari

Sanjay here…

I just got an email about Mike Filsaime’s Free Report called - “The Death of Internet Marketing”

I will admit, like you may be feeling now, that I thought it was some hyped up offer to get me to join for free and get some offer…

…Turns out I was wrong. Way wrong.

The bottom line is, this report really opened my eyes to what really is the death of Internet marketing. The good news is, the report also shows you what you need to know to succeed in the near future.

The times are changing and I it would be a shame for anyone to not read this report and fail like many will.

I read it, and I wanted to share it with you ASAP.

I recommend you take a break from what ever it is you are doing if you can and get access to this report now.

Consider your future success by going here now…

http://www.TheDeathofInternetMarketing.com/?see-why=1651

Thanks,

Sanjay

PS - Mike says it will only be available for a few weeks at most so do not delay…

http://www.TheDeathofInternetMarketing.com/?see-why=1651

By Sean Mize

How important is a list, your very own personal list, when you are building an online business? Think about this. Are you more likely to open an email that has a sender email address and name that you recognize or a sender email address and name that you do not? If you subscribe to a newsletter and you receive an informative newsletter once a week or every few days, are you more or less likely to open an email from the sender of that newsletter than one from someone you don’t know?

That’s right–and others online behave much as you do. So if you cultivate a list of your own, sending emails to subscribers who recognize your return email address as one that sends informative useful information, will your emails be opened at a stronger rate than they would if you bought a “safelist” or rented someone else’s list? I think the answer should be clear. Your own list wins hand down. Keep in mind, when you buy a list, it is most probably being sold to many others. So the recipient not only gets your email but 30 or 50 others, all from email addresses they don’t trust.

You must develop your own list.

So how do you do it? At the very least, you need a web site. It does not have to be anything fancy, just a landing page for interested visitors, where you will put your opt-in script.

You must have an autoresponder account. You will use the autoresponder account to deliver messages that help you build a relationship with your potential customers.

Your emails must be informative and useful in order to keep them getting read. If you provide useful and informative material, people will look forward to your email as often as you send it. If you do not provide useful information, your emails will not get opened.

You must have patience. You will not build a huge list overnight. But as you build your list, you will be building a business. A long-term business, with repeat customers.

One note to the wise: Be sure you use the “double opt-in” feature you will receive with your autoresponder. This will ensure that anyone who opts in to your list will have to click through to a confirmation link before they receive any emails from you. This helps protect you from SPAM complaints.

A word of warning to those who really want to buy a “safelist” and simply email your offer to the email addresses on that list. Is it worth a one-time mailing to get your web site suspended for spam activity? Don’t do it! Build your own high-quality list and develop a strong long-term relationship with those leads.

by Brian Offenberger

Do you know what your website is telling you? A crucial part of your online marketing efforts lie in understanding your website traffic patterns. If you don’t know how people find your site, what they do once they’re on your site, how long they stay on the site, what they respond to and what they reject, you won’t achieve maximum online results.

Look at your website traffic logs

Information is collected as visitors find and move through your website. This information is displayed on what is referred to as “traffic logs.” This marketing data is pure because it is collected mechanically as visitors move freely throughout your website. Your website offers unprecedented opportunities to gather visitor and customer behavior data. Keep reading to learn more about this valuable information source.

Traffic logs provide key indicators of online marketing performance

Before diving into the wealth of data available through these logs, let’s clear up a common misconception that exists amongst most business executives: “hits” really aren’t a sound indicator of website traffic. A “hit” is counted every time a visitor requests a page or every individual image that a visitor requests. This means that the vast majority of visits generate multiple “hits” per visit. Ratios of “hits” to individual visits can be quite high.

The first section of the traffic log shows visits and/or visitor sessions. This is the indicator to use concerning site traffic measurements. This section also shows the average time per visit spent with the website.

Pay attention to the most requested and least requested page information contained within the traffic log. This is great information for business development purposes as well as many other applications.

Traffic logs show what is known as “top entry pages.” These are the first pages that a visitor sees when coming to a website, and great sites drive entry traffic to multiple pages, not just the home page. The information contained here helps you determine what is driving the traffic to your site. It also assists in helping make decisions concerning overall site navigation.

Logs also show what pages visitors use to exit your site. At a minimum, these exit pages should match your expectations and should contain strong call to action statements.

Some visitors only visit one page of a website and then go off the site. These “single entry pages” again reveal a lot about your site. Your site may be too slow in loading, may not have contained what the visitor is looking for etc. There is a myriad of potential strategies and tactics revealed in the page information within the traffic log.

Find out where visitors come from and what keywords drive the visit

Traffic logs will let you know which search engines send you website visitors. They tell you what links generated site visitors for you. They’ll tell you what search keywords and phrases people use to find your site. They’ll even let you know what call-to-action initiatives on the site produce the best results.

Low cost data for online marketing and entire business marketing applications

Information from traffic logs is pure data that is gathered mechanically through visitor actions. There is no outside human influence in data collection, making it an invaluable part of your entire marketing efforts.

Web analytics value is found in the answers to these basic questions

The high value of regular review and analysis of your website traffic logs (along with a few other key performance measurements we’ve previously written about) is directly reflected in your online marketing ROI. To see the value in another way, look at the answers analytics provides to necessary business questions:

* What do people do when they visit your site?
* Is that what you want them to do?
* Where are they coming from?
* What terms are they using to find you?
* What other websites send visitors to yours?
* What activities generate the most sales or lower costs of sales?
* How long are people staying on your site?
* Much More

It’s nearly impossible to reach your full potential in anything without measurement and analysis of performance and accomplishments. A website is no different. Take the time to regularly review and analyze these logs for improved internet marketing results.
———–

About the Author

Brian Offenberger is a certified eMarketer and host of weekly radio program “Online Marketing with RSS Ray.” He is also the founder of search engine marketing and web analytics company, BizGrowth Search Engine Solutions. He can be reached at 877.837.8803. Visit Brian’s website website at http://www.bizgrowthseo.com for more details and to view his other free reprint articles.

by Peter E.

Alexa is an Amazon owned company that is famous for its public traffic ranking service via its alexa.com website. Website promotion guides often make a big deal about how to improve your Alexa ranking because a top position is often associated with high profits. As a new webmaster, you must understand a few very important points about Alexa’s service. This article will explain what the data collected by Alexa mean and then describe why you should care or not.

There are three numbers that Alexa reports, reach, page views and overall rank. Reach refers to the percentage of all web users that visited your site. Alexa reports this number as “reach per million users.” For example if Alexa reports a reach of one, it means that on average out of one million web surfers one visits your site. Page views simply measures the average number of pages a surfer examines when at your website. Those sites with a lot of content and targeted visitors tend to generate a larger number of page views. The overall Alexa rank is a combination of the reach and page views numbers such that the larger both of them are the lower the site’s rank will be; for Alexa, a smaller rank indicates a more important website. Alexa reports these numbers for each day, one week and three month averages and the overall change over a three month period. So, how does Alexa gather these data?

On a daily basis, Alexa collects statistics about the number of visitors and page views for every website on the Internet. Actually, it does not have data for all the sites. You see, data collection happens via web surfers that have downloaded and installed the Alexa toolbar for their Internet Explorer browser. When one of these users visits and explores a site, the toolbar sends this information to Alexa’s servers. What this means for webmasters is that only those sites visited by users that have decided to install the toolbar will actually have data collected for them. In addition, since only a rather small subset of all possible Web surfers actually uses the toolbar, the ranking is a statistical average that is not necessarily a true indication of the quality and number of a site’s readers. In fact, the number is really inaccurate for sites with a small number of visitors and Alexa admits that this is true for those sites not in the top 100,000.

To make matters worse, the toolbar is only available for Internet Explorer. Of course, IE is the browser used by the majority of Internet users with data showing that it is used by about 83% of them (onestat.com). This is not a problem unless your audience is more likely to be in the other 17% of surfers, i.e., those that prefer to use Firefox, Safari, Opera or another alternative browser. For example, slashdot.org is a technology news site with an audience that is known to be very anti-Microsoft; Slashdot’s motto is “News for nerds. Stuff that matters.” One expects that most of its users would use any browser other than IE and in fact it was recently posted that an estimated 65% of Slashdot’s readers use a browser other than IE. As of this writing (July 12, 2006), Slashdot’s ranking was 176 with a reach of 5450 per million surfers. Slashdot is known for something called the “Slashdot effect” that is when a story on the front page links to a site, it receives so many visitors that the servers often are not able to handle the sudden increase in traffic. In other words, I would expect that Alexa’s rank is actually an underestimate of Slashdot’s true rank.

From a statistics point of view, Alexa’s rank cannot be thought of as an unbiased statistical measure. The sample of people used by Alexa for collecting data is not a randomly selected set but rather it is biased towards users of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer as well as those who are willing to install the toolbar and submit to Alexa information about their browsing behavior. If your audience is similar to Slashdot’s then don’t expect accurate results. Anticipate the same if your audience includes people who are pro-privacy and would never install a toolbar that calls home making their browsing behavior known to a large corporation.

So, if you really want accuracy in terms of your site’s number of users and page views then you are better off using analytics software, for example Google Analytics, rather than Alexa. However, many advertisers use Alexa’s ranking as a neutral third party estimate of a site’s popularity; they consult Alexa in order to determine how much advertising space is worth on your site. This is the reason why many webmasters display their Alexa rank on the front page. If you happen to be on the upper end of Alexa’s ranking then you should be able to benefit from it; if you are not then you probably shouldn’t lose too much sleep over it. Focus on adding fresh content to your site; this way you will be able to drive more traffic to your site via the major search engines and also keep your visitors coming back.
—————–

About the Author

Peter E. is the creator of The Dollar Factory, a portal for webmasters with articles, news items, website spotlight and forum. If you are a new or old webmaster, join our growing community at The Dollar Factory (www.TheDollarFactory.com)

By Tim Wren

Improve your business online… just by reading this article.

Businesses that succeed online understand the importance of analyzing their Web traffic. All the traffic in the world will not mean a thing if you don’t have an understanding of what is working and what is costing you money. Do you know what happens when a visitor gets to your site? How many visitors are going to your site? Where do they come from? What pages do they read? What keywords lead to sales? Are your visitors getting lost? You need to ask those types of questions, and we can help you answer them.

It is important to understand that good advertising and a successful Web site are backed by sound data analysis. It is even more important to track Web site behavior patterns, understand navigation patterns, analyze overall site performance and make changes based on your findings.

Capturing metrics, or measurements of potential customer actions, is a key benefit of having an e-presence. Technology has enabled Internet marketers to measure every aspect of their online marketing campaigns and you should take full advantage of it. Analyzing your Web stats can be instrumental for your business  success in a number of different ways. This article will help you understand what stats are important and provide some insight into knowing your audience.

Statistics You Want To Pay Attention To:

unique or return visitor – this is a person who visits your site more than once within a specific period of time.

visitor duration – how much time each user spends on your site and on which pages.

page views – what pages most interest your visitors?

referral sites – what other sites are sending you traffic?

history – what hours, days, weeks, months do you receive your heaviest flow of traffic?

search engines – what search engines drive the most traffic to your site?

keywords/phrases – what keywords/phrases drive traffic to your site?

The goal here is to use your Web stats to determine how your site is performing for first-time visitors and return visitors. The visitor duration stat tells you how much time a visitor spends on your site. You may notice visitors are leaving soon after they land on your site. This could be a clue that they are not finding what they are looking for.

Pay special attention to page views. This stat will tell you exactly what pages most interest visitors and can help determine which pages need to be tweaked. Page views will calculate how many visitors viewed a particular page and how many exited through that page as well. If you can see that visitors spend a lot of time on a particular page it may be worth focusing more attention on that page or moving some copy around to cater to these visitors.

Whether you run an online retail store or you use your Web site for informational purposes, it’s essential to analyze the performance of keywords that drive traffic to your site. You must identify:

*what keywords generate traffic

*the density of keywords on your site

*how much each keyword costs per click

*what keywords generate page views

*keyword conversions

*ROI

A keyword analysis will help you put your marketing dollars toward the keywords that generate superior results.

Ranking high in the search engines is a goal every business admires but ranking high with poor results is just a waste of money. A full understanding of your search terms, what kinds of visitors they generate and their performance levels will dramatically improve your site’s performance and ROI.

Tim Wren Internet Marketing / Business Development / Web Development.

Bringing Internet marketing experience to the Web development team, Mr. Wren’s experience includes search engine marketing, website analysis, e newsletter development and Web marketing. Creative ideas and concepts along with experience with numerous online media platforms are his foundation for successful Web development. Mr. Wren earned his BA in Communications from the University of Iowa.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Tim_Wren

By Daniel Cassidy

Before you spend hundreds of dollars on website advertising, you should consider cost effective ways to promote your site for free. Some people think that you can just submit your site to the search engines and then sit back and watch the sales come in, but this is one of many Internet marketing myths.

I used to think that I could just submit my site to hundreds of search engines and wake up in the morning with hundreds of sales. After a couple of months of aggravation and no money coming in I realized that there must be a more effective way to do this. I came to the conclusion that it was going to take a little bit more effort to see the results I wanted.

I have since learned the tested and proven methods that have worked time and time again for Internet marketers. I am going to tell you about the top 5 ways that are 100% free to increase your website traffic, and if you spend time on them and do it religiously you will find that they work consistently

1. Article Writing

These are the two major benefits of writing an article related to your website content and submitting it to free article directories:

* The people who read your article will most likely click the link in your resource box and this will send you targeted visitors to your website. If you write a informative article, people will recognize you as an expert and will want to find out more information about you and your business

* Every person who publishes your article must also include the resource box with your website link in it. The more articles you have published, the more backlinks you will have to your website. This will help increase your search engine ranking and page rank over time.

2. Posting To Forums

There are many forums on the Internet on every topic you can think of.

Many forums will allow you to attach a signature to your post. Many times this signature can include a link back to your website or a affiliate link. You should pick a few forums to visit regularly on topics related to your website and answer questions and make informative posts. After awhile you will build a good reputation with the other members and they will trust you, and you will get free exposure to your website. Some posts receive thousands of visitors. Posting to forums can also be indexed by the search engines.

Be sure to make a useful contribution to the forum and don’t just spam.

3. Reciprocal Linking

There are two main benefits to reciprocal linking:

* The more links you exchange with other websites, the more of a chance the person will click on your link leading to your website.

* More links to your site will increase your page rank and it will be perceived as more important by the search engines. There are some things to avoid when exchanging links with other websites.

* You should link to sites that will be of interest to your visitors. And also link to sites related to your site content.

* You should not link to sites that have hundreds of links on one page or a very un-organized directory, this can hurt you in the search engines. Only link to sites that have a clearly labeled link page and not hidden where no one can see or click.

* Do not post to FFA link farms. This is a waste of time and will not get you any traffic. It also might get you banned from search engines.

* Keep track of all your link exchanges with software or a contact sheet. Also make sure that your link partners have not removed your link from there website.

4. Email Signatures

This is the oldest and simplest way to get traffic to your website

Millions of us send e-mail everyday, but most of us just sign our name or nothing at all at the end of a message.

Try including your name with a URL, tag line or slogan. Keep it short and to the point and avoid shouting at someone or hype. You will be amazed at how many visitors this will bring you. People will click your link out of curiosity and send traffic to your site.

5. Traffic Exchanges

This is the last and easiest way to generate free traffic to your website. You can surf for free credits or build a downline and receive free credits for the sites that they surf.

The only bad thing about this is the visitors will not be as targeted as the other four methods. Most people surf traffic exchanges for one reason only and that is to surf as many pages as possible in the shortest amount of time to gain credits for there website.

So how do you grab the attention of someone who is only looking at your website for 30 seconds?

* Spend some time surfing and learn what type of market it is. You are going to want to advertise a site that is going to be of interest to the people on the exchange.

* Use a lead capture page instead of your sales page. If people are only looking at your site for 30 seconds they are more likely to request more info then sign up for a program on your sales page.

Do these five free methods regularly and you should be on your way to free targeted traffic to your website which will increase with time.

Daniel Cassidy has been helping people find reputable home businesses online on his website Start Your Own Internet Business From Home. To learn more about getting started with your own home business get your free E-Book The Science Of Making Money Online.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Daniel_Cassidy

By Khieng Chho

So, you have made a blog and wrote your first post. But how sure are you that people will read what you made? How will you convince people to read about your blogging?

Here are suggestions so you will be able to promote your blog.

• Quality Content

If your blog has an interesting content, you will surely have a good distribution of your blog. You must update your blog on a regular basis. This is because your readers will only get bored if they read the same post over and over again.

• Participate in a forum concerning blogging.

Never hesitate to ask other bloggers for their opinion about the blog that you made. You should take their advices wisely and considerably.

• Publish an Atom, RSS or XML feed.

If you are utilizing Blogger, you are able to activate the RSS feed by clicking the setting on found in your dashboard. Make sure that you choose the “yes” to activate the RSS feed.

• Choose subject titles carefully.

Consider what most of the internet users are looking for. You can use keywords in your subject title.

• Participate in making comments about the blogs of others.

You can achieve a reliable readership by just giving feedbacks to others bloggers. The comment feature will let you add a link back to your blog too.

• Make sure that you put your blog address and your email signature in the forum signatures.

• There are directories available, submit your blog there.

Submit the URL of your blog to Blogdex, Daypop, Popdex and Technorati.

• Make articles.

Make a resource box in your articles. You can also submit your finished articles to any directories available on the internet.

• If you are using the Blogger software, there is an option wherein you can inform the update services of the central blog. This is good especially if you are making a new entry to your blog. You must ensure that the option is activated.

• Link to other blogs.

Use the service of blogrolling to do this. This will let you maintain an updated list of your preferred blogs.

Be patient, traffic is not possible in just a day. The way to improve your traffic is by letting the people know about your blog. During your free time, spend it by reading blogs of others, making feedbacks, and creating friendships.

Do not be shy to make comments about the blogs that you once visited. While you are waiting for traffic to happen, enjoy the world of blogging. You will not realize it but you are improving your writing in the entire process.
 

Khieng ‘Ken‘ Chho is author and owner of Online Blogging Resources. For related articles and other resources, visit Ken’s website: http://blogging.1w3b.net

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Khieng_Chho