What are the BASICS you feel is needed in a successful site today?

TRAFFIC you need traffic without it it's nothing. You can pay for it or use free means. Free traffic is just as good as paid only free.

To generate this you can use forums post responses to peoples questions and provide a link to your site. always give good answers/advice if it's good they may click on your link.

eBay forums are good for this, if the site is based on an niche or hobby just find the relevant forum answer a few questions. With out links to your site. Then after a while start adding links to your site, Just don't spam the forum with your links...

Link exchanges also work not good targeted traffic but it is traffic. Try Posting on blogs as well just like forum posting provide good comments and a link back to your site.

Use articles to generate traffic, i've only ever wrote one so far but it has been published in 2 ezines so far.

I'm with Pete. You need useful content and an opt-in form for the people who want more. Content, content, content.

Thanks guys, basically I am planning on a product which is totally "back to basics" to make it easier for anyone to start an Internet business without all the bells and whistles which detract from the core product or service. Something easy to follow so they can start sooner rather than having a long learning curve.

If anyone has any further ideas to add for how someone can create their own site, simply & without all the jazz, please let me know, or post here. In return I'll make sure you are one of the first to get a copy of the product I am producing

Regards

James

The easiest way i think for site creation is the wordpress blog self hosted not the .com

It comes with a simple 5 min install, requires a mysql database but they are simple enough to set up. Lots of free theme to choose from, plug ins that do all sorts of amazing things.

Just realized James your from Pompey, spent many a year there when i was in the Navy Good Times...

It all depends on what site you are promoting...

If you have a membership based website then in order to keep your subscribers, you need to provide daily (or at least as frequently as you can) and ORIGINAL content. You can't just put some stuff into the members area and then hope they stay subscribed for months on end.

If your site is just a sales page with a product, you don't need to add content, but whatever you are marketing, you will need to drive traffic to your sales page.

Here are 5 ways to do this...

1. Make sure your website is optimized for search engines as far as possible. Any traffic you achieve from search engines is always free. To have your website optimized, ensure that the website contains articles with a lot of keywords. When you write articles for your website, about 400-900 words, you can generate a lot of visits more often. Be sure to include catchy titles to entice visitors to read them. However, this may not likely generate the traffic you have always wanted, this could be your first step in making your website successful. In addition, you could always submit all your articles to article directories and contact publishers if they wish to use your articles on either their mailing list or website. Have your articles contain heavy keywords so that they may also appear on top of most search engine results.

2. Join link exchange programs. Nowadays, there are a lot of webmasters who invite other webmasters to take part in link exchange programs. When someone's website is linked to yours, you'll have the chance of being visited by people who visit those websites. To do this, you can look out for websites that are similarly related to yours and allow the owners of these websites to exchange links. Make use of an anchor text for the link as it will aid your search engine rankings.

3. Allow joint ventures. Joint ventures could be very powerful if done in the right way. Give your partners some really good reasons why they should promote your site. By providing them with the right promotional tools such as e-mails, signatures, articles, etc., he/she would no doubt accept your request. To ensure that your website gets better results, look for website owners that have the capability of sending a lot of traffic to you.

4. Join online groups, forums, etc. that could help you with promoting your website. For example, you may post your sites URL in your signature file for the users to see. So you can be a known member by the discussion groups you join, simply participate in discussions that interest you and contribute your knowledge and expertise to the rest of the members.

5. Get a free blog. Blogging is another free method that generates traffic to your website. Post some high-quality information regularly and don't forget to ping all your posts as it can help in driving traffic to your website.

- Lead Capture
- Good Salescopy
- Testimonials
- Backend
- Affiliate Support
- Customer Support
- Articles/Resources
- Blog
- SEO optimized (!!!)

Some great ideas here.

Does anyone have the most simplest of ways to pull articles/news reports/etc. from blogs (based on keywords/phrases/etc) automatically post on another blog?

Regards

James