Category Archives: Online Business Ideas for Web Traffic

25 Jun

Online Business Ideas for Avoiding 5 Figure Mistakes

Online Business Ideas for Avoiding 5 Figure Mistakes

Notice how everyone in the world tries to tell you how “smart” they are when it comes to marketing online? Well only the REAL people are going to reveal how smart they are NOT. So enters good ole Darren (laughing). I am glad I can honestly laugh about this now. Many of you may have heard my long version of this story. The truth everyone is that successful people learn more from their mistakes than anyone else.

That’s simply because we FAIL the most. See successful people don’t succeed the most. They FAIL the most. And despite that failure they just kept going. Think about it like this. Babe Ruth failed the MOST. YES he hit over 700 home runs but also stuck out almost twice as much.

The idea is that in order to be successful you must discover what doesn’t work quickly and then move on. It is called Fail Fast Forward. You take massive action and then massive detailed assessment of your results. And if it didn’t work you move forward. But you NEVER give up!

OK I avoided my mistake long enough (laughing).

Short version is I built popular sites that showed little returns. Some of my sites had hundreds of thousands of visitors every month. Yet little sale conversions. So a few years back I started a little site and discovered by accident what I was doing wrong. As I say in my profits vs popularity article “the profitable stay small and don’t worry about being popular.”

Do’h

The little site was making more money with way less traffic. Why? because people wanted the items I was selling of course but it is much deeper than that.

Another  problem I had was I couldn’t figure out exactly “how” to repeat my little sites success. I more than understand that online it isn’t about doing 5000 things one time but doing 5 things 1000 times. In fact I coined that phrase. But I wasn’t sure exactly “what” to repeat 1000 times.

Oh and quick note as I explain in Why Niche Markets NEVER Show Their Sites I wont tell you what the little site was because it would increase added competition. I am still making money with from that site.

So one day a business partner and another blogger introduced me to Niche Profit Classroom. What Adam the creator at NPC confirmed for me was how to develop a method to repeat my first little sites accidental success.

So hear is what I learned from all of the money I lost in previous years. Not to mention the time and work.

Online Business Ideas for Avoiding 5 Figure Mistakes

  • To Hell with popular bring on the profits: Your readers are nice and great people. But in order to be in business you need customers.
  • KNOW if you you are going to make money BEFORE you set the site up: 98% of my sites make money and through research I knew they would. In niche marketing 70-80% involves research.
  • Shut up and Sell: as I say in 7 Reasons to Shut up and Sell you didn’t come this far to get your butt kicked did you?  Don’t worry about those non buying readers who say they “love” you for sharing FREE info for their benefit yet have the audacity to criticize you for offering premium things to sell. FOCUS on your customers.
  • Solve to Sell: I said it best ion another article. Solve a problem and I almost guarantee you it will lead to a customer.
  • FOCUS on people who “desperately” need problems solved: That makes the difference between a customer today and a customer a month from now or never.
  • Small is the NEW Big online (BELIEVE IT): STOP trying to kill yourself over traffic when it is not a question of traffic it is a question of targeted soon to be converted visitors.
  • Get a good foundational program: I already told you earlier what worked for me (NPC). that was a way for me to establish a base of thinking that changed the way my company did business.

WHY would I tell you about this if I am doing so well?

Simple: instead of giving you the cliche “I care about helping people” comment I thought I get RAW and REAL with you. Don’t get it wrong I do care about helping people but here are some equally real answers:

First of course is that all of the links to Niche Profit Classroom are affiliate links. Who better to offer it than me? after all I actually DO This.

But I am sure your wondering WHY I would promote NPC. Well I kept it to myself for 6-7 months actually LOL until I realized the following…

  1. 600,000 niches and sub niches is more than enough for everyone.
  2. Unfortunately even if I tell you and you follow through the odds are on my side. See many of you will signup to programs like NPC and a) do nothing or b) not followup with your initial actions. I explain this truth in detail in “How GURUs make money online. Very sad but true.
  3. In the next 2 years there will still be less than 10,000 out of millions that understand how to do this. Also even fewer will grasp  what this article really means and how to turn it into money. So the door is wide open for all who “get it”.

So there you have it real answers and online business ideas from a more than real person. I have a saying: “There are those who get it and those who don’t be the one that gets it and work with the ones that do.”

27 Apr

Code Cracking Online Business Ideas for Exploding Your Traffic

Code Cracking Online Business Ideas for Exploding Your Traffic

After setting up your content development strategy on your blog you need a solidified yet creative way to get free traffic. OK this isn’t one of those typical “crack the code” blog posts that has the same old rehashed crap. I stand by my words here. There really is a code. But not the code you think it is because good old Darren is NOT following the freakin rules man (or woman)! Nothing illegal but definitely not the norm. Following the rules and being “normal” will cement your grave on the internet.

There are 2 different (yet not so different) schools of thought. Seems like on one side you have Social Media and the other Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Each sides bloggers have some not so nice words for the other.

And then there is me. I use both. SEO is not nearly as hard as bloggers make it out to be. I actually have some funny stories about SEO. I also have some amazing stories about Social Media as well.

Both have tremendous opportunities and challenges.

Social Media is a quick and easy way to draw FREE traffic if done correctly. The challenge for social media is that today’s MySpace is tomorrow Twitter. You have to keep going at it and stay ahead of the trend. I am explaining to thousands of online business around the world that as I write this Twitter is plateauing. I am also explaining the fabulous opportunity for document marketing with Scribd. But the downside to social media is that even with automation you have to work it everyday no real shortcuts. I will say that again “no shortcuts” don’t let people fool you into thinking that they exist. That is how you get your profiles banned.

SEO or Search Engine Optimization is an excellent long term way to get FREE traffic from Google and other search engines. There is a learning curve because it is not as simple as 123. However where it trumps Social Media is that your traffic is highly targeted. The challenging side is that like Social Media sites Google can decide to BAN you if they want for no reason. I know a guy who’s site was labeled as a adult site (even though it wasn’t) and it went downhill from there. Another downside is that it does take time for natural organic traffic to happen with SEO.

The truth about Social Media and SEO is that there is a CODE to both

Break the code in Social Media and you look like a immature high school student at a strip club. Or even worst that obnoxious ass at a social gathering trying to glad hand you and sell something every 15 minutes.

Break the code in SEO and your going to be one lonely internet puppy. You will hear echos in your blog (laughing). Hello hello hello?? Anyone there there there?

I am not saying you should be a Social Media compliant or an SEO writing bot. I am saying that you should focus on being authentically you. That means that you write how you normally write but it wouldn’t hurt to use a non heavily competitive 3 keyword phrase every now and then. I am also saying it wouldn’t hurt to just help someone without twittering BUY MY THIS OR THAT 24/7.

So what do we do? How do we Crack the Code?

I don’t want to publish a generic boring list of suggestions. You know the type that most of you have probably seen. The yawners like “treat people right on Social Media” or the classic “use good key phrases.” Well DUH (laughing).

Instead throw on your interesting hat (not the black one LOL) and come with me. Lets really use what is already across the internet to produce some really great online business ideas. So don’t worry I won’t be doing that GURU stuff where I play like this is such a highly guarded secret.

The only real and honest no lie secret is embedded in application and aggregation.Meaning that the information out there isn’t a secret. The way in which the information is aggregated and applied is the REAL secret. Now lets get to the code breaking!

What I am going to do here is similar to what you read in my  Miraculous Web Business Ideas in Minutes and How to Remix Your Online Business Ideas Seth Godin Style articles. In other words what we are going to do is use the strengths of Social Media and SEO to develop explosive traffic. Are you with me? Great lets get started!

This strategy involves both long term (SEO) and short term (Social Media) traffic.

There are 3 modules to focus on daily, weekly, and monthly. But before I go into details here I want you to understand that it is simplicity that wins the game. Don’t try to do everything. Focus on 3-5 social medias and that’s it. Also focus on 3-5 key word phrases. keyword phrases not one keywords are one of the SEO keys to you getting ranking. The other keys are listed in the modules below.

Module 1 Foundation: you need to be focusing on building both your SEO in your website and your Social Media network. You must begin to understand that using Twitter and Scribd and other networks are great ways to do link building. Link building is gaining links to your site from other highly popular sites. It is how Google determines rank (well one of the ways anyway). Understand that Keyword phrases (2 -3 word phrases) and some authoritative links are key to getting you to the top of Google. Also understand that Social Media can help you build those links while building your relationships and brand.

Module 2 Growth: This means both growing your Social Media following and SEO keyword density. Basically I am saying that the larger you build your Social Network (within your niche) and keep using target keyword phrases. The better you will expand your online presence.

Module 3 Consistency: consistently doing modules 1 and 2. The more consistent you are the better. Also  this increases your chances of developing relationships through Social Media and establishing authority through SEO.

In each module you are using both Social Media and SEO to benefit each other.  There is a limitless amount of things you can do to build your online presence.

But here is the last key ingredient. Have no systematic way of building your keywords, links, and social media communication. Why? because Google sniffs a system and your SEO end is in trouble. If both your Social Media following and the owners of those Social medias sense something then your also in trouble.

Martial Arts Legend and Philosopher Bruce Lee said he didn’t have a style. Hey used all styles as needed. He was the water not the glass that held the water. Water forms to the shape of it’s environment.

Cracking the code to explosive traffic involves knowing the codes of both SEO and Social Media. Then Then systematically not using a system.

Online Business Ideas for Exploding Your Traffic

Now that you know the REAL code. Below are 3 online business ideas to use them with.

  1. Create a contest targeting keywords and spread across your social media profiles
  2. Create a series for both your blog and for social medias. Create a series on each social media (I have done a million of them on titter like 24 Twitter thoughts and linked back to my blog.
  3. Create a keyword phrase that has connected to your social media following. I did #twitterhug a hash tag for twitter. By the way it was like 100 something retweets BEFORE I changed my permalinks and tweetmeme zeroed out thousands of my retweet records,  bummer right?

There are tons of online business ideas you can develop with this method.

24 Jul

Web Development for Business

web-development-for-businessWeb Development for Business: The Real balance between web optimization and business

Most times when I see people writing about web development they are doing so from a web perspective more than from a business development perspective. There has to be a balance. You can have the most optimized site on the Internet and still be in a studio efficiency with only one window facing a brick wall. My point here people is that if you continue to rely on one web development optimization tactic then your doomed.

In business it”s not about the visitors but the buyers.

You must integrate monetization techniques from the very beginning.  Which would you rather have 100,000 visitors and 5 buyers? Or 1000 visitors and 50 buyers? The more you use the optimization to pinpoint your searching buyers the better. In business the reason you are trying to get traffic is the first place is NOT for visitors. You are focusing (or should be) on customers.

There needs to be a partnership between the two

When a business owner decides to bring their business to the web, generally the last thing that they think about is search engine optimization. But the flip side is true also. When a SEO or web development expert adds a site you need to think before you start about monetize options for your website. On the business side business people often assume that whomever they hire to do their web design will put up a site and then submit it to the search engines and the traffic will magically pour in. And many SEO experts (clients of mine) think that you can optimize a site and just throw an affiliate link and their income is assured. Both are incorrect.

Here are two key SEO tactics I use

But first let me warn you that like two fingers on a hand this is far from complete. I just wanted to share some examples.

Use proper tags for headings, bold text, italic text, and lists – HTML has heading tags, bold tags, italic tags, and ordered and unordered lists for a reason and you should use them. Using CSS you can practically style them however you like, but actually using a heading tag for your headings, and bold tags for important text, will help allow search engines understand what text on a page is a heading or what is more important than the surrounding text. Simply applying a CSS style that makes text larger or bold doesn’t do that.

Now I have been told to optimize your images – search engine spiders can’t read text within an image. Adding ALT text to your image tag helps. And that ideally you should remove all wording from the image and style it using CSS, adding the remaining portion of the image as a background image to the text.

However images that I name seem to get some serious traffic to me.  Especially when I combine them with great titles and content.

Now at this point you may be asking:

“OK Darren I need to align both Web Development and Business to create more business so how do I do this?”

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Listen to my FREE Audio about Web Development for Business


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This may seem simple be the idea is simplicity without tricks:

  1. Map out HOW you will make money before you build a website.
  2. Focus on your titles and make the name your images similar if not the same as your titled articles.
  3. Write to interest your readers (future buyers/customers and clients). PS think about how you ended up reading this.
  4. Develop more than one way to bring traffic.
19 Jul

Email Marketing Gets 100's of Visitors Daily

Note: experienced email marketers YES I know this is basic for us but many  people have no idea about this. Lets not assume that because we know everyone else does.

email marketing: Do you have a list? And by that question I mean a professional list used by a professional company? I personally recommend Aweber. They are the only service that provides a ton of education about their service.

You can also cross promote such as marketing a specific eBook for FREE and offering a opportunity to learn more. Also you can set links in the book to gain traffic.

Here are 3 things you can do to get more traffic.

  1. Promote your daily blogs.
  2. Promote your giveaways (A free ebook with links back to your site is invaluable).
  3. Promote something that would be viral. A video of instructions that you offered to a specific group with a request to to forward.

See This Cool Video!


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