n00b pulling his hair out

Well put. Yes, it does take time.

Hi Brian,

I can suggest a few things if you'd like to boost your site's traffic and help your business grow:

1) Join the chatter. Find out where you're markets hang out. Forum's, blog's, video sites. Show up and interact with them, without trying to sell. And make sure you are building up your subscriber list -- by offering some killer free info.

2) Share some videos. There are video sharing sites online that are very powerful ways in which you can share your story.

3) Article marketing is starting to lose it's strength. Since the Google Panda update, articles no longer hold the same strength they once did to get you ranked. Its a good idea to use the main directories anyway, but get diversified.

4) Use: search.twitter.com to see what your audience is speaking about, and begin to interact with them.

5) Networking. Make some partnerships with people already in your niche offering something unique to their visitors. Think about creating a valuable free webinar or teleseminar.

All the best!

hey it takes some time, to get a good flow of traffic to your site... im guessing you have pinged your site so that google know that your site exists.

forum marketing is quite powerful and underestimated, if done correctly you can have good number of traffic.

your content has got to be valuable and provides solutions to problems within your market. Solutions that your market are looking for in order to buy from you. So your content is very important. Dont expect miracles but give it at least anywhere between 3-4 months at least to start seeing results ...

but dont expect large results, reasonable results but once you understand the process from then on its a rinse and repeat method.

As the saying goes, " you have to crawl before you can walk" we all start from there .... excellent though you aint giving up thats a sign that your willing to go thru the pain, and heartache ... this forum is excellent for help and advice

birdi

Brian, I'm a step ahead of you. I completely believe in helping people to your level, so they can move beyond it. I am small beans, but I get 4000+ visitors per month. On average 150 per day. It's quite by accident, really.

Here's my setup:
--WordPress -- it indexes quickly and tends to rank higher
--All in One SEO Pack plugin for WordPress -- this is an easy way to add metadata to your pages and posts.
--Frequent updates...and by frequent, I mean about once a week for right now

I don't even pay attention to where I am in the search engines or what page. All I know is I get traffic from them based on search terms. My analytics tell me so. Make sure you use an analytics system that is NOT Javascript based like Google Analytics. You can still use Google, just use a backup in addition, so you catch the traffic that is blocked by users who disable Java on their browsers. I use a PHP based plugin for WordPress in addition to Google Analytics.

That's it, and my traffic is on a steady incline. November 2011, I hit 3000 visitors...now I'm at just over 4000. You can do this. It ain't gonna be easy. Get out your stick-toativeness. Do your research. Prepare to be up all hours. You can do this and it will be worth it in the end! Good luck!!!

Brian,

You've made a classic mistake made by most people hoping to make money in IM.

1. Although it SEEMS logical, putting up different sites in different niches to "test", it's a horrible idea.

Most niches (unless they're really obscure) are good niches. People tend to shy away from competition and instead waste their time searching for "untapped" niches. An untapped niche is an illusion, period.

There's nothing new under the sun, so forget about "discovering" an "untapped" niche. Well-populated niches are populated for a reason. And there's room for everyone.

2. IM is time-intensive. Building multiple sites in multiple niches only dilutes your time and effort. Also, don't make the mistake a lot of Warriors make: don't think in terms of a site. You're building A BUSINESS. Pick ONE niche, ONE target market and ONE business model and become an authority in that niche! (See below.)

3. Don't focus on Google for all (or even the majority) of your traffic! There are DOZENS AND DOZENS of ways to get traffic without any help from Google. Google is very fickle. If you build your business based on what Google gives you, you're in a world of hurt the second they change their algorithm.

Personally, my goal is to be as independent of Google as possible. I look at Google as the icing on the cake and nothing more.

Clarity is a HUGE part of IM success.

IM is actually pretty simple: you can sell only one of two things:

1. Products
2. Services

That's it!

And selling products or services online happens in the same basic way for everyone, no matter what they're selling:

Traffic > Opt-in page > Autoresponder series (or e-zine) > Sales page

That's it! It's just that simple. (We IMers tend to overcomplicate things.)

But no matter what your niche is, or whether you're selling a product or a service, do you know what your business model is?

A business model is the framework or skeleton of your business. Essentially there are three types of online business models:

1. Membership-based model

A membership-based business model allows you to build a community of people (your members) who are as passionate about your subject as you are. Your membership fees can be monthly or annual, but either way, you're building recurring, passive income.

There are a lot of resources and information out there to help you build a membership-based business if you're interested in doing this.

2. Product-based model

Selling products allows you to maximize your time and effort by selling items over and over again. This can be hard goods or it can be information products. Information marketing is it's own business model under the product-based model. Information marketing allows you to take your brain to the bank by creating a product ONCE based on what you know and selling it over and over again.

Affiliate marketing falls under both models. You can choose to market either products or services as an affiliate.

3. Service-based model

Selling services can be great for 1) generating quick cash (as in the case of article writing or video producing) and 2) establishing your expertise and getting testimonials.

However, in the long run, your goal should be to offer services at a PREMIUM. The biggest advantage of IM is LEVERAGE. You're able to leverage your time, money and expertise exponentially online. We all have just 24 hours each day. Time to get ruthless about what you expect for those hours you spend in IM each day. Expect more of yourself and more from your business friends, clients, partners, etc.

What results are you getting for those hours you spend online each day? Ultimately, your services should be at the bottom of your funnel and cost the most since they involve your time and personal attention. (We all have a limited amount of time each day.)

The fun (and confusion) comes in with all of the endless mix-and-match possibilities of the above models. If you're just starting or still struggling to make money, keep it simple:

Pick just ONE!

1. Pick ONE niche. (Something you're interested in and know something about.)

2. Pick ONE target market for your product or service. (Who will buy what you're offering? The more specific you are, the more you narrow it down, the more successful you'll be.)

3. Pick ONE business model.

Now that you're clear about what business you're in, FOCUS! (And stop buying any info not related to your niche and target market, period!)

F -- Follow
O -- One
C -- Course
U -- Until
S -- Successful

And remember: build a list, Build a List, BUILD A LIST!

In IM, it's easy to put the cart before the horse. Take a deep breath, step back and consider what type of business you're REALLY want. Don't worry about getting traffic or buying that expensive traffic product until you know 1) what your business model is, 2) what niche you're in and 3) WHO your target market is!

Successful business people will tell you that MARKETING is more than half the effort that's needed for success anyway. So pick a niche, target market and business model. Then spend most of your time and effort marketing it.

If you DON'T have a solid plan or system, THAT'S when it's hard. A good system will shave YEARS (and save you big $$$) off of your learning curve

That's why I recommend investing in at least one good, comprehensive IM course (or mentor who will give you such a system) instead of jumping from one $37 e-book to the next. A lot of people here complain about not being able to make any money. But neither are they willing to invest in their business. (Buying a random bunch of $37 e-books doesn't count.)

The best thing I ever did was invest in a comprehensive IM course aimed at REAL business owners, not just other IM wannabes. Yes it was $1500. (It's no longer available.) But it was truly some of the best A-Z IM info I ever bought. Everything else I've learned (from the $37 e-books) since has simply been plugged into this system.

Get a solid plan or system and then work the plan!

Hope this helps!

Michelle

You're very welcome!

It's so simple -- but so complicated when you don't know it. It was my mentors OFF the WF that pointed out these models to me.

There will always be scammers. But believe me, not everyone is a scammer. Problem is, the worst thing scammers do to you isn't taking your money. It's killing your dreams and belief in yourself and your dreams.

Stealing my money is forgiveable. Stealing my dreams and belief in them isn't.

I've been there. I truly "get it." So my heart breaks when I see Warriors who are honestly trying and want to make it it work feeling disullusioned.

Pssssttt! IM DOES work! And you really CAN make a good living doing what you love while creating positive change in others' lives through what you do.

But at the end of the day, it's still a BUSINESS and you need to be smart about it and TREAT IT LIKE A BUSINESS.

It's not a hobby or a lottery ticket. It's a BUSINESS.

I'm glad I could help! This random Internet stranger believes in you and I look forward to seeing your success and clapping for you at your parade.

Wishing for your success,
Michelle

I started with Google Sniper 2.0 after which i ranked 3rd on google 2nd page with my initial site. This was just a pure test to see if one can get ranked fairly high in the amount of time they promise and behold, i could.

Next step for me was to see if the traffic would come, and no it didnt The traffic that did land on the site did not click through to clickbank but i guess this was a content-quality question.

After that i got One Week Marketing by Jennifer Ledbetter and even though her strategy does make sense, article writing is something that i am planning to outsource since it can be done for a fairly small amount of money.

The second site is doing better with visitors But is no where to be seen on google (?) Also here no clickthroughs to clickbank and although i am offering free material, the list remains empty. I guess tweaking and persistence is key here as well.

P.S. Is it allowed to post links to your own website here without being considered a spammer?

Having done SEO for several years, I would actually recommend you stay away from trying to pull organic traffic to your site for now.

I'm guessing that even with a well executed plan you're still only going to get a slow trickle of traffic from search engines which will not be a good enough test pool to examine conversions.

I highly recommend using youtube since it works for almost any market/niche. Make a couple dozen videos and you'll see traffic coming to your site.

Additionally, I recommend you collect the leads coming to your site to market to them over time.

You're not likely to make direct sales, as even with targeted traffic you might only pull in a sale every 100+ clicks/visits. But once you collect their emails you can slowly persuade them to buy your offer.

From what you've written so far, it sounds like you have taken the hard route. SEO isn't nearly as easy as it once was. Youtube is a monster for traffic and with enough videos you can pull in targeted traffic pretty easily, and it only grows over time.