PROMOTE OR DIE

Written by Elena Fawkner


"Whew! Thank heavens THAT's finally done", you contentedly think to yourself as you sit back in your chair after checkingrepparttar final link inrepparttar 125264 brand new website you've been laboring over day and night forrepparttar 125265 past three months and have just uploaded to your webhost's server. "Now I can relax."

That's just so CUTE! Actually ... I have a confession to make. That's what I thought when I finished my first website too. I naively assumed that allrepparttar 125266 search engines indexed every single site onrepparttar 125267 web automatically and that all I had to do was upload my site and ... voila! Instant traffic. I wish!

It doesn't work like that, sorry. "Build it and they will come", you thought? Uh uh. No. They won't. You and your webhost arerepparttar 125268 only ones who know your site exists and, let's face it, your webhost doesn't really care so long as you pay your hosting fees every month.

So, now that your website is officially "out there",repparttar 125269 real work of making its presence known can start. And, as you will see, this is a never-ending process so you need a plan and a strategy.

To begin with, you need to do your initial submission work. Once that's done, you need to have a systematic, organized method of ensuring your site continues to draw traffic. Here's how to do it:

CREATE A PROMOTION TOOLKIT

Before you do anything else, create a text file and call it "Promotion Toolkit" or something like that. Enter into this file a list of all of your webpages and set up columns for: Engine/ Directory Submitted To, Date Last Submitted, Next Submission Date. Inrepparttar 125270 same file, create descriptions of varying lengths for your site. I suggest word lengths of 10, 15, 25, 35, 50, 75 and 100. Dorepparttar 125271 same forrepparttar 125272 purpose of your site. Later, when you start publishing your own ezine, create descriptions for that too. Also write a website announcement and keep a record of keywords that you think site visitors will enter intorepparttar 125273 search engine when looking for sites similar to yours.

You will find your Promotion Toolkit to be invaluable when submitting your site to search engines, directories, announcement lists and allrepparttar 125274 various other places you will be listing your site. By takingrepparttar 125275 time to create powerful, effective descriptions and announcements, you will save an enormous amount of time when actually submitting your site because you can just copy and pasterepparttar 125276 information from your Promotion Toolkit.

INITIAL SUBMISSION WORK

There are two major things you need to do initially: submit your site torepparttar 125277 major search engines and list it with allrepparttar 125278 online directories you can find.

=> Submitting torepparttar 125279 Search Engines

Your very first task after creating your Promotion Toolkit is to submit your site to allrepparttar 125280 major search engines. Now, when creating your website you did, of course, first learn about principles of webdesign andrepparttar 125281 importance of meta tags andrepparttar 125282 like for search engine positioning, right? If not, I suggest you do this now BEFORE submitting your site. Perhapsrepparttar 125283 best resource currently available is Ken Evoy's "Make Your Site Sell". If you don't have it, get it.*

There are hundreds of so-called "search engines". In reality, only a handful are worthrepparttar 125284 effort of securing a decent ranking.

These are:

Alta Vista - http://www.altavista.com Excite - http://www.excite.com Hotbot - http://www.hotbot.com Infoseek - http://www.infoseek.go.com Lycos - http://www.lycos.com Northern Light - http://www.northernlight.com Web Crawler - http://www.webcrawler.com Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com

There are a few other major players out there but these arerepparttar 125285 "big 8".

=> Submitting torepparttar 125286 Directories

In addition to search engines, there are hundreds of directories where you should list your site. Space does not permit listing them here so I recommend you visit Virtual Promote, a brilliant site with links to virtually every promotion point onrepparttar 125287 web today. It will take you a long time to submit to allrepparttar 125288 directories listed there but just work at it and eventually you'll get there. It's at http://www.virtualpromote.com . It was this site that advised setting up a Promotional Toolkit. One ofrepparttar 125289 best pieces of advice I ever took.

ONGOING PROMOTION AND MAINTENANCE

OK, so you've taken care of your initial submission work. Let's turn now to what you need to do on an ongoing basis to get and keep traffic flowing to your site. Again, space doesn't permit a detailed treatment of all of these strategies. They're intended just as thought starters.

=> Ezine

The single most important thing you can do forrepparttar 125290 long-term viability of your website is create an ezine. This keeps your site uppermost in your readers' minds, reminds them it and you exist, who you are and why they should do business with you. You don't have to make your ezinerepparttar 125291 central plank of your business as I do. You can, instead, just use it as an adjunct to your website; a way of staying in touch with your site visitors. For a really great site to help you get started, visit Kate Schultz' EzineZ.com - http://www.e-zinez.com .

=> Write Articles

This is an amazingly effective way of generating traffic to your website and subscribers to your ezine. Every time you write an article for your ezine, submit it torepparttar 125292 various article databases that exist for this purpose. Other ezine publishers are always onrepparttar 125293 lookout for good content and if they publish your article (complete with your byline and site details) you will enjoy traffic and subscribers as a result. Some good starting points for article submissions include:

7 Tips for Testing Your Sales and Marketing

Written by Angela Wu


One marketing technique may work wonders for someone, but that doesn't guarantee that it'll dorepparttar same for you. The only way to really know what works for YOUR products and YOUR target audience is to experiment. Testing and experimentation are crucial to increasing your profits.

1. Try usingrepparttar 125263 occasional pop-up window to get more subscribers to your newsletter. Some people *really* hate these, so use them sparingly. For example, you could have a window pop up onlyrepparttar 125264 first time someone visits your site ... or you could have one appear whenever someone leaves your site. Try different scenarios to see what works best.

2. Changerepparttar 125265 price of your product and see what impact it has on sales. Even if your sales drop, you may still come out ahead when it comes to profits. Note: your sales may not drop at all; I increasedrepparttar 125266 price of my own booklet from $12.95 to $19.95 and sales stayedrepparttar 125267 same. You never know until you try.

3. Test different sales copy on your website and in your autoresponder. Should you come on strong, be subtle, be extremely detailed? Does long sales copy do better than short copy, or vice versa? Do you get more sales by spreading your sales copy on multiple pages, or by putting it all on one page? Be sure to make backups of your previous work; if you findrepparttar 125268 new copy kills sales, you can always restorerepparttar 125269 previous version.

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