31 Ways to Market Your Site

I’m going to start this section with a CAUTION about trying to rely only on free traffic.

There is an approach to affiliate marketing that focuses almost exclusively on search engine marketing as its primary method of driving traffic. The approach involves building scores of little sites, each of which may make a paltry $20 to $100 per month… for a little while.

The content on these sites is typically written according to a keyword density formula that involves repetitive use of chosen keywords and keyword phrases throughout the article.

Besides the fact that this method of writing usually results in dull, uninformative drivel that contributes to “web clutter,” and does little or nothing to actually inform the site’s visitors… this method has repeatedly proven to be unsustainable.

Many affiliates who use this technique have their sites de-ranked and/or de-listed by search engines such as Google, which does its best to keep ‘formulaic’ web sites out of search engine results. Many of these affiliates had to return to day jobs when their sites were de-listed and their traffic dried up completely.

Don’t let that happen to you!

By all means, do your best to attract free search engine traffic to your sites, but hedge your bets and use a diverse array of marketing methods, including paid advertising.

1. Get Free Search Engine Traffic

Although I caution against relying only on search engine traffic, getting your site found and listed by the major search engines is important. Fortunately, this is easier to do now than ever before, when you build your site on a blog platform such as Wordpress.

Blogs are the best way to reap traffic from Google and other search engines quickly because they are real-time, dynamic and posts can be chock full of search-engine-friendly keywords without being spammy.

There are however a number of techniques that you can use to improve your Google search engine rankings and Page Rank. I’ve listed 8 of them below.

In other words – don’t waste your money!

2. Article Distribution

Article distribution is one of the most effective ways to get free traffic to your sites as it costs you nothing more than time.

When your articles are published on article directories, people interested in your subject matter will read them and visit your site through your author resource box or byline. A typical byline is 3 to 4 lines long. One of the bylines that I use when I publish articles for the Roamsters site looks like this:
Article directories generally have submission pages on which you simply fill out a form that includes fields for your name, email address, URL, title of the article, the article body and your byline.

Different directories have different formatting requirements. Some require straight text insertions, while others want the article in HTML format. A few directory webmasters will ask you to provide an autoresponder address through which their visitors can have the article sent to them via email.

Although some article submission sites will ask for your specific terms of use or author’s guidelines, articles placed on most directories are freely available to other webmasters for use on their sites according to the rules of that particular directory.

For example, Rozey Gean of Marketing-Seek.com attaches this note to the end of every article:
Here is a list of 15 article directories to get you started:




Article Distribution Software

Submitting your articles to individual directories can be time consuming.

To speed up the process considerably and gain even more exposure, I use Jason Potash’s “Article Announcer” software. When I first bought Article Announcer, I used an already popular article to see if the program could effectively increase circulation.

Here is what happened.

On September 19th, I searched for my
article "Broke, Desperate and at the End of Your Tether?" and discovered that there were 149 instances published around the 'Net. The ARTICLE SUBMISSION TEST 1 screenshot to the right is a graphic image of that result.

After taking 45 minutes to learn how to use the “Article Announcer” software, I chose to submit the article only to article directories, and not to announcement lists or ezine editors.

The ‘Article Submission Test 2’ screenshot shows what I discovered just 4 days later, on September 23rd.

An additional 101 occurrences of the article had appeared in only 4 days! That’s HUGE!

Just imagine the phenomenal traffic you’ll drive to your site if you did that once a week or even twice a month.

In addition to a huge selection of editors, directories and lists to which you can submit, you can add your own resources to the Article Announcer software as you find them.

3. Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Advertising

Blogs are great at attracting free search engine traffic, but nothing drives highly targeted traffic to your site FASTER than paid advertising on the pay per click search engines.

There are now well over 500 pay-per-click search engines. I recommend that you start with accounts at the following PPC’s (and in the following order) at:

• Google Adwords
• Microsoft Ad Center
• Yahoo! Search Marketing


Will PPC Advertising be Profitable in YOUR Niche?

Determining whether pay-per-click advertising will prove profitable for certain categories with your niche is an inexact science, yet the following method gives me an indication of whether the topic has profit potential before I do any more work.

So, let’s say you are interested in promoting online dating services for single parents.

The first thing you would do is build a list of relevant keywords using either the Google keywords tool or Wordtracker. Note how the “Use Synonyms” box is checked to generate related keywords and some filtering has been applied, e.g. we don’t want to see the words ‘free’ or ‘books’ in the results.

Shown below are the results of the search for single parents dating.


Rather than add individual keywords within the keyword tool, I opt to download and work with a .csv file.



Irrelevant keywords are eliminated by deleting entire rows.

Results are sorted according to estimated average cost per click and the highest cost keywords are also deleted.

The remaining keywords are copied from the .csv file and entered into Google’s Traffic Estimator at

adwords.google.com/select/TrafficEstimatorSandbox


A maximum CPC of $1.00 is set along with other parameters such as countries to which you’d like to show your ads, e.g. U.S., U.K. and Canada.

The traffic estimator returns estimate clicks of 96 – 142 per day at an an average CPC of 74 cents per click and a daily cost of up to $130.00.

As $130.00 is over budget, the Maximum CPC is reset to 25 cents per click which then returns estimated traffic at 41 – 71 clicks per day at an average CPC of 19 cents and an average daily spend of $13.49.


Now it’s time to do some math to figure out whether you can generate a profit.

Let’s assume you receive all 71 clicks per day at a cost of $13.49 and that all those clicks go

to your merchant because your endorsement is so good. Let’s also work with the average
conversion rate of 1% and assume that the commission per sale is $12.50.

Here’s the calculation:
.71 (buyers) X 12.50 (per sale) = $8.875 (commission earned).

You’ve spent $13.49, so you’re down $4.65 on the day.

Stop right there. Are you really?

If the merchant pays recurring commissions and the average customer retention period is 5

months, the results look quite different -Now your potential commissions are $60.00, not
just $12.50. So, let’s recalculate.
.71 (buyers) X 60.00 (per sale potential) = $42.60 (commission earned).
$42.60 (commissions) - $13.49 (advertising spend) = $29.11 (potential profit)
In other words, spend a buck, make three.

Now, if you double your conversion rate, things look even rosier.

1.42 (buyers) X 60.00 (per sale potential) = $85.20 (commission earned).

Let’s look at another example. The following screenshot shows results for a search for ‘mail order brides’ that resulted in up to 550 clicks per day at 11 cents per click and a daily budget of $90.00.


Working with a 1% conversion rate, we’d get:
5.5 (buyers) X 60.00 (per sale potential) = $330.00 (potential commissions).
$330.00 - $90.00 = $240.00 (profit potential per day) or $7320.00 per month.

Oh, but it can get even better than that --- because some of the foreign bride services offer tours to St. Petersburg and Kiev on which you earn commissions of $500.00 per sale. If only 1% of those 167.75 monthly buyers signs up for a trip, you’ll add another $835 to your monthly earnings for a grand total of $8155.00 per month… in ONE niche.

Remember that we are considering only profit POTENTIAL. There are no guarantees that your actual results will be as successful. They may in fact be MORE successful. Only real-world testing will prove if your projections are realistic.
“Limes are Greener” Google Adwords Keyword Strategy
Unlike Yahoo! Search Marketing, Google Adwords allows advertisers to bid on keywords for products that they don’t sell.

For example, the ‘How Surfers are Misled’ screenshot shows the Google Sponsored Link results for the term “eHarmony.”
Notice how both PerfectMatch.com and AdultFriendFinder.com are at the top of the Sponsored Links. As a matter of fact, eHarmony.com wasn’t listed in the Sponsored Links at all!

Here is another example.



The results shown in ‘More Misleading Ads on Google’ screenshot were returned by a search for “FriendFinder.”
Although AdultFriendFinder.com, one of the “Friendfinder” services shows up in the Sponsored Links, it is linked to PerfectMatch.com. More importantly, notice how PerfectMatch.com uses the term “Friendfinder” in its ad title.

Although this tactic contravenes Google’s editorial guidelines, repeated efforts by many advertisers have been unsuccessful in having this type of advertising changed or removed.

The following section cites Google’s editorial guidelines for advertisers as they apply to relevant keywords and ad text.

Your keywords and ad text must be relevant to your site, products, or services.

Write Accurate Ad Text
Your ad