There are two additional things to think about when you consider search engines. Well actually, there are many more things to talk about when it comes to search engines, but I'm only going to talk about two more: mis-spellings, and smaller search engines.

Taking advantage of mis-spellings can be a great way to boost your search engine traffic. People frequently type too fast, and submit their search before they realize that they have mis-typed word that they were searching for. As a webmaster, this can be quite good, as far fewer sites actually try to focus on incorrect keywords. Of course total number of searches made on mis-spelled keywords is much fewer than on correctly spelled keywords, but they can still generate a large amount of traffic with FAR less competition. Just as a quick example, as I write this, "web hosting" produces nearly 3.9 MILLION results, while "wbe hosting" produces 10,000!

GoodKeywords from http://www.softnik.com/ is a great tool that allows you to quickly and easily find out how many searches are done on any keywords you like (including mis-spellings). It's free, and an invaluable resource!

Lastly on search engines, is importance of smaller search engines. There are many benefits to smaller search engines, but most significant are that you get indexed more quickly, have fewer competitors, and can generate a solid amount of traffic for you. The huge engines (google, Lycos, inktomi) and indices (yahoo, DMOZ) can take weeks to add your site, if ever, and always put your site against 1000's of others.

While there is no guarantee that you will be included in a smaller search engine, you will be 'spidered' much more quickly. And while they may not have millions of searches a day, there is no difference between 1000 visitors coming from 1 source (say google) and 1000 visitors coming from 5 sources (200 from each of several smaller engines). An additional benefit of smaller search engines is that some (not all) have agreements with main engines so that their content is spidered by main engines - in essence giving webmaster a 'backdoor' into main engines.

I hope that this gives you a bit of direction and hope as far as search engines are concerned. As I mentioned earlier, based on my own experience using information, I highly recommend Stephan Peirce's book on traffic generation. He WILL make a difference in your website's success.

--------------------------- Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide useful tips and guidance for those who are new to personal online marketing. Learn more about programs, techniques, and software that can help you reach your online marketing goals. Come on by and have a look. http://www.newbie-guides.com/?aa Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com

One of extra benefits of having an affiliate program is that you gain access to all of your affiliates, and are then able to make additional offers to them, either to sell them products directly, or offer new affiliate opportunities as you create them.

Clickbank offers a great system for managing any affiliate program that is based on a digitally delivered product or service (ebooks, auto-responders etc.) For a low fee of $49, they take care of EVERYTHING from credit card processing, to real-time tracking, to affiliate payouts. Clickbank also has a HUGE and active body of affiliates ready to take on your products. The only problem is that you don't have direct access to contact information of these affiliates. However, it is quite possible to get this information from them by simply making your 'join my affiliate program' web page behind an email collection form.

What you do is make potential affiliate request affiliate sign-up page location from an autoresponder. This does two things, it filters out people who simply want a discount off your product, and gives you contact information of serious affiliates.

Another rising star is payloadz. They are based on paypal, which has almost 20,000,000 active users. The great thing about payloadz is that they have entire system secured against link theft, a common problem with paypal links. Unlike many systems that claim to protect your links by encrypting link (e.g. Linkcloaker), payloadz puts all information into a database and creates a completely new link that is 100% secure. I'm not knocking link cloakers, they are very valuable, and can save you thousands in lost commissions - they are simply not 100% foolproof (and most good ones like affiliate link cloaker will admit that).

The entire process of setting up a product for sale with payloadz takes about 3 minutes. Once this is done, you can use link anywhere. They also have a very robust affiliate program manager that lets you build your affiliate selling force quickly and easily. Finally, because they are based on paypal, you benefit from a well known name, and a huge user base.

Regardless of what kind of business you manage on web, you should seriously consider developing viral traffic strategies as part of your overall marketing strategy. Once they are in place, properly developed viral tools will continue to drive free traffic to your site for years. A little investment of your time in beginning will result in great value in long term.

Recommended reading: Jimmy D. Brown

How to write an ebook in 7 days

Brandable ebook compiler

How to sell what you already know!

--------------------------- Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide useful tips and guidance for those who are new to personal online marketing. Learn more about programs, techniques, and software that can help you reach your online marketing goals. Come on by and have a look. http://www.newbie-guides.com/?aa Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com