Basically, the idea is that you record media, be it audio, graphic or video, upload it on a site, and direct the traffic to your site. The trick is, as always, to find a niche market that is small enough to compete in initially and eventually dominate. Obviously, there are some types of media entertainment and/or instruction hosting that is so extremely crowded that you would have to find a niche that’s extremely revolutionary or shocking to get even a blip on the radar. No, the best option is to start out somewhere that isn’t so well-trodden. Thorough niche research is obviously essential to get this ball rolling.

After the Niche Research, the Fun Begins

Okay, so now you’ve done your niche research. You’ve started recording media. Now you need to upload it to your website. While certain media forms, such as pictures and texts, are a piece of cake to upload by normal means, some audio files and nearly all videos are going to take seemingly months to upload, especially if you have to break them into smaller chunks.  Luckily, technology exists to make this go much faster.

The benefits of this technology are immediately obvious. For one thing, the faster you can upload your media, the more media you will host immediately. That way, you can start reaping your harvest earlier. Also, the faster you can upload your content, the fresher it will be. Depending on your content, doing so has the added bonus of keeping your content more relevant and up with the times. This has the net result of keeping your clients interested and continuing to go where you want them to.

Content is King with a Media Site Account

In summary, a key to success in operating a media site account is keeping the content rolling in as fast as possible. The competitiveness of such sites depends on the owners’ ability to keep up with or ahead of the others. If this is your gig, don’t get left behind. Stay on top of the quickest uploading software.

First of all, what is a Blog Carnival? Simply put, it’s a collection of blogs grouped by different subject matter. Different blog authors write the content of each post and submit them to the Blog Carnival’s host. They are then posted together on a host blog in groups of related subjects. The owner of the blog does the posting and provides links to each blog on his site.

Expanding Beyond Your Current Web Space

As said before, this is a great way to expand your influence beyond the confines of your claimed web space. Not only will you draw more traffic to your site this way, but posting to Blog Carnivals also provides quality backlinks, which are vital in drawing in clients. Backlinks are also an important consideration to keep up with in regard to your ranking with Google and other search engines.

Another benefit you get from posting on Blog Carnivals is that you can interact with other bloggers. This can be beneficial in that you can forge new alliances, get new marketing campaign ideas, and draw in more clientele. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth.

Finding the Blog Communities

“Great, so how do I do it?” you might ask. That’s pretty simple. Do a Google Search on “Blog Carnival” or “Blog Communities Publishing Magazines.” You can search for Blog Carnivals yourself and do all the leg work on your own. Depending on just how many Blog Carnivals you intend on using, it can get pretty tedious doing it this way.

You can also subscribe to a Blog Carnival Submission Service, which will do your Blog Carnival posting for you with an incredibly large number of Blog Carnivals, all for a monthly price. Depending on just how much you’re willing to pay, you can outsource nearly every aspect of this process from the blog writing to the actual posting of blogs. That’s all up to you.

As you can see, Blog Carnivals are an easy addition to your internet marketing campaign. It is so easy, in fact, that many marketers overlook it and forget to keep up with their Blog Carnivals. This is where you can get ahead of your competition. Just by investing about 30 minutes a day, you can post on about 20 Blog Carnivals, and be that much ahead of everyone else. That, or have someone else do it for a scheduled price, and get you in even more Blog Carnivals.

First, you don’t really NEED to submit to any search engines to wind up on their indices. Of course, you’ll most likely be there faster if you do. You’ll be working on your schedule, not theirs. This also gets around another problem. The thing about waiting for the search engines to find you is that they have to find you by an inbound link. In many cases, getting an inbound link involves being on the search engine indices anyway.

Web 2.0 Marketing—Free Inbound Links and Traffic

There are, of course, exceptions to this. If you’re familiar with Web 2.0 marketing, you know that you don’t have to wait for inbound links. You can build them yourself in certain social media properties. In this case, the search engines will find you without you submitting the site to the search engines.  So will your targeted traffic.

Which Search Engines Actually Matter

Now, about this talk of submitting to 15,000 or 20,000 or a million search engines. There are only three search engines that really matter to the average user. These are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. Although Yahoo is losing its importance to the almighty Google, it’s still important enough to go ahead and submit your site to it.  Bing is giving Google some stiff competition, so you’ll definitely want to get on that one.

The large bulk of the rest of the search engines don’t really matter to the average user (read customer). Besides that, there’s a little secret that these SEO guys who are selling this astronomical submission concept aren’t telling you. Want to know what it is?
The large majority of the other search engines have this little graphic on them that says “Powered by Google” or “Powered by Yahoo” or “Powered by Bing.” There may be one or two other search engine providers that power other search engines, but by and large, it’s the big three. Now, what could that possibly mean?

What “Powered by Google” Means

It means that they draw their search engine results directly from Google, Yahoo, MSN, or whatever other search engine provider they’re “powered by.” You are, in effect, submitting to these sites by proxy when you submit to Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The only service they really provide is that they limit the scope of their searches to specific niches. That is, assuming that’s what they’re really doing. How are you to know, really?

The search engines that tend to be “outside the pale” of Google, Yahoo, and MSN are usually interlibrary and university search engines. Unless you’re conducting scientific experiments in marketing, do you really need to be on JSTOR?

The rationale here is that pretty much, if you designate certain keywords as “headers,” this will draw the attention of the spiders to those keywords. It kind of makes sense, except that it doesn’t work that way. Multiple testing of this idea has consistently proven it wrong.

There are several reasons why this couldn’t work out. First of all, let’s assume that keywords have the same monumental importance that they previously had. The algorithms that the spiders work by don’t include header tags. It’s pretty much the same thing as saying that bolded or italicized keywords help your rankings.

Meta Descriptions – The Exception to the Rule

There is this one exception: It may be more likely that your keywords will show up in the meta description. Again, this will not overtly help your rankings. The search engines don’t consider much about websites based on their meta descriptions, whether they are generated by the search engine or the developers. You might increase some human traffic by theoretically ensuring that your keywords are in the search engine generated meta description, but don’t hold your breath. The keywords tend to be in there anyway.

The second reason that header tags don’t work for rankings is simply that keywords don’t have that much importance anymore. They have importance, yes, but there isn’t a magical formula to use them to improve your rankings. However, you can still get banned for keyword stuffing, so make sure that you’re not doing that in your header tags any more than the rest of your site.

It’s All about the Content

Another reason that putting keywords in header tags doesn’t work is that if the spiders come to that page, they’re going to crawl enough of the content on it to determine what they need to know about the keywords. If header tags DID get special consideration and draw attention to certain keywords, then so what? They’ve seen enough of the rest of your content that the headers don’t matter when it comes down to it.

Keyword Stuffing in the Header Tags

Why is it that the spiders don’t really care about header tags? Call it a hunch, but it looks like an easily exploitable flaw that could be used as a black hat trick. If header tags got special attention, and you can pretty much put in however many you want, guess what? You could spam the crap out of your header tags. You would, of course, have to be careful about keyword stuffing, but you could stuff less and have more weight. Guess who would catch on and not like it?

In the final analysis, you can use header tags all you want, but you shouldn’t expect any big results out of them.

How to Keep Affiliate Websites on the Cutting Edge

Affiliate websites are some of the most difficult websites to update. They usually amount to only having a page or two, and the content is pretty well set from the word “go.” What you’re left with is tweaking different elements to stir things up.

Chances are that you worked hard to create the perfect pitch, and you don’t want to mess with that. So, let’s look at the other elements on your page. Do you have a video on your page? If not, put one up. If so, put up a different one or at least change the tag. The anchor text leading to your opt-in page can usually be changed pretty readily. You can put up new testimonials or change old ones out (quite a substantial change in the copy!), have an editable countdown for empty seats, and so on. The point is to change enough stuff on the page that the search engines notice. Then, ping it!

News Sites are Easy to Keep Up-to-Date

Among the easiest (and most essential) websites to regularly update content on are news sites. If you’re doing news on a particular niche, the easiest thing to do is get a news ticker script at a site like www.hscripts.com. This program makes it easier to write and post news-worthy events on your website without all the hassle of the add/edit/delete process. In fact, this kind of script could be useful for a variety of sites, not just news related sites.

Blog Sites are Easy to Update and Extremely Useful

Particularly if you’re an affiliate marketer, external blog sites are essential for your cause. They start right off with a high level of authority and trust for the search engines. You can even monetize them if you want to play the Adsense game. Some people, strangely, think that this is an unethical practice or that they would even rather join a revenue sharing site like suite101.

The real money, though, is how your affiliate sites can gain page ranking by being linked to it. Most affiliate sites are temporary and don’t have time to get seasoned by Google’s PageRank. The promotion will often end at some point. You may decide that there are greener pastures out there and neglect an affiliate site. That’s all just peachy keen since they have the weight of your blog supporting them.

Your blog, on the other hand, is eternal. The longer you keep it going, the more authority it gets, and the greater a workhorse it is for your affiliate promotions. If you don’t have one, GET ONE!

Enter the Search Engines

After a phase of mass-mailing to get traffic, a new technology called “search engines” emerged.  No longer were users limited to what AOL advertised.  Yahoo Mail and Hotmail came along, as well, and the game seriously changed for marketers.

The first thing we wanted to know was how to win rank on the search engines.  Was it a matter of page design?  Was it a matter of content?  What exactly drove the search engines’ ranking systems?  Someone discovered that “keywords” were how web pages were ranked, and so everyone tried to jam as many of these keywords on their pages as possible.

Google Dubbed Keyword Stuffing “Black Hat”

Eventually, keyword stuffing created a lot of problems in the Internet marketing biz.  Some people began posting pages that were nothing but keywords.  Google decided to put an end to that, coined the term “black hat” for this kind of marketing, and began de-indexing these pages.

Seeking ways around this de-indexing, many marketers changed the ways that they stuffed keywords.  They would match the keyword text to the background.  When that quit working, they created doorway pages (pages that were stuffed with a keyword which disappeared almost as soon as you entered a page), and continued to keep stuffing keywords.

Google’s Black Hat War Necessitated Social Media Marketing

As time went on and the rules for ranking on Google and the other search engines got more complex, someone got the brilliant idea to start marketing on social media.  It had been known for awhile that backlinks, as well as keywords, were essential to boosting page rank.  Most people didn’t bother too much with backlinks, though, since they were so hard to get.

This is where social media marketing, aka Web 2.0, changed the rules.  Now you could generate almost as many backlinks to your website as you could muster and boost your page ranking that way.  Of course, this was subject to abuse, and many social media sites began implementing the nofollow tag when you put your website link up.  Ultimately, what this means is that the search engine spiders no longer count the link to your website.

And so, here we are now.  The latest hot topic in marketing is the microblogs like Twitter and Facebook.  Almost every day, there is something new in how to draw traffic to your website through these sources.  In fact, directing traffic from these sites has almost replaced vying for search engine ranking for many marketers.  After all, if it’s harder to drive traffic from Google than from Twitter, it almost seems natural to use Twitter and forget Google.

The First Thing You See In the Bing Search

Once you’ve done this Bing search, what’s the first thing you see?  You see Tweets given by Twitter.  What’s more, you may get to see mentions of other Twitter members and hyperlinks to Twitter Tools and exterior websites.

Interested yet?  Now do a Bing search on Ashton Kutcher.  Now you’re seeing pictures along with his Tweets.  Now, are you excited?  Hang on a minute, there’s one more thing you should do.  Bing search yourself and see what happens.

Wait…I’m not On Top of the Search Page

You’ll see one of two things.  Either your Tweets are at the top of the search page, or they aren’t.  More than likely right now, they aren’t.  I know mine aren’t.  So, what gives?

It’s a matter of three things.  First, it’s about your branding and your authority.  Secondly, it’s about your Twitter influence.  It’s also quite possible that since this technology is new that only a few Twitter users are in this elite club.

Beefing Up Branding and Twitter Influence

Now’s the time to act to gain top Twitter influence.  I’d start by beefing up my branding and authority.  Consider this point:  You have to be well-known enough for someone to plug your name in a search engine.  Without that, they aren’t going to think about finding out if you’re on Twitter, either.

Meanwhile, you should be hard at work on Twitter building your influence.  Let’s face it, Ashton Kutcher is the top Tweeter, so he gets a spot in the Twitter results.  We Internet marketers haven’t quite made it there, yet.  That’s right, I checked several top marketing gurus, and none of them have this lucrative position yet.

The Future of Twitter Results

As it would appear, Twitter Results is essentially in beta form.  Like so many beta runs, it’s limited to a select few people overall.  However, based on what we’re seeing with top Twitter users, its potential for marketing is something worth planning for.

By itself, it also doesn’t seem to account for topic searches.  This is why it’s essential to make your name well-known in your niche.  It may come about in the future that Twitter Results will be fully integrated into Bing by having topic searches, but it’s all about celebrities for now.

For now, I highly recommend vying for that top position on Twitter in your niche.  Without being sure about when it’s more commonly available, all I can say is do everything you can to make sure that you’re the first marketer to make the cut.

This is especially pertinent in social media like Facebook.  How many times do you think that people “like” something just because their friends do?  By and large, as social animals, many people just like the same things out of habit.

Great, but Does Conformity Do Anything for Converting Traffic?

Yes, in fact, it does.  If you play your cards right, the same reason people do what their friends do can apply to converting traffic.  You just have to convey somehow that these followers’ friends are clicking through to your sales page.

Let’s say, for instance, that you’ve put out a message on Facebook that “This website has the greatest stuff ever!” and provide the link.  People click on the link and see a phrase like “This is what they’re all talking about!” pointing to the link to your opt-in page.  A small little phrase like that will suck them into your list and sales page.

This Thinking Increases Upselling

One of the trickier parts of Internet marketing is upselling.  Most people don’t want to spend more than they absolutely have to for a product.  Sometimes, merely informing them of the benefits of buying the “platinum package” isn’t nearly enough.  A lot of people will just think, “That’s great, but the standard package does all I need.”

Now, try upselling to the platinum package by saying in so many words that “everyone is doing it!”  Even better, say, “Don’t miss out on the great stuff your friends (or competitors) are getting!”  Chances are, with a little bit of social pressuring, more people will cave in to the upsell than without it.

To a lot of people, 15 extra features simply aren’t worth the extra ten dollars to buy the larger packages.  Most people will simply settle for “good enough.”  However, with just a little peer pressure, the upsell is worth the extra 50 dollars as long as everyone else is doing it.

This is quite often how television ads work.  McDonald’s emphasizes that people all over the world are “lovin’ it” with the Big Mac.  7-Up shows how their soda makes a cranky celebrity “bubbly.”  You, too, can capitalize on this in 420 characters or less.

Having this quasi-humanitarian streak may seem refreshing, but it will never make you money. Customers, being what they are, will automatically make choices that aren’t in your best interest if given the chance. When you’re in business, the only place for humanitarian gestures is in the charities that you choose to give to.

Soft Selling Affiliate Marketers Let Money Go

The weaknesses that these soft affiliate marketers have are various. The most common one is that their webpages leave the viewers with too many options. When people shop, they’re looking for the cheapest options available. If the business owner gives too many choices between similar products, the customer will naturally choose the cheapest one. The business owner will lose money from this. It’s not that this principle is necessarily a bad idea, that having similar products with varying prices is non-profitable. However, varying the price too much without giving them a reason to buy the more expensive product will definitely decrease your profit.

Letting People Leave Your Affiliate Page—Bad Call

Another mistake that some new affiliates make is that they allow people to leave their affiliate page too easily. On one hand, this is fine if you’re not selling anything, but if you are selling something, it’s practically an invitation not to spend money at your site. The only links that should be on any page from seeing the products on to the confirmation page should only lead inevitably to the confirmation page. You should not have any other links, period. Keep their paths away from buying your product to a minimum. It’s all just a waste of time and bandwidth otherwise.

Be Careful Who You Do Affiliate Marketing With

Affiliate marketing can be a money waster, also, if you’re not careful. Some people don’t actually pay attention with whom they’re affiliating and advertising on their page. You may wind up advertising for your competition if you’re not careful. That, or you may wind up advertising for something that would actually be an embarrassment for you or make your viewers uneasy.

When all is said and done, it’s amazing how easily people just throw away money that could be theirs. It isn’t about being agreeable, just coming to an agreement. You want your way and they want theirs. Just don’t let them know that they could have what they actually want in this transaction.

Multiple Traffic Streams Increase Your Footprint

Think of multiple traffic streams this way:  Imagine your website being the hub at the center of a wheel.  Each traffic stream—that is, each link—is a spoke in this wheel.  The more spokes you have, the more it accurately resembles a wheel.

The more traffic streams you have, the more chances a surfer has of finding your website.  Outside of the search engine results page, wherever you have a presence is an opportunity for a viewer to find you by you placing a link there.  While it’s certainly great getting a backlink off of a “relevant” website, it’s much easier to put them up yourself on social networks.

Why Social Media Networks are Great for Backlinking

There are several opportunities for backlinking on social media networks.  You can make a link in your profile, you can post it in a blog entry, and you can create fan groups for your business.  The backlinking doesn’t end there, though.

You can create multiple profiles to backlink to your website.  You can also make links to your other social media accounts to generate more interest in your products.  Also, once you start getting a solid reputation, other members of the social media platform may start backlinking to your site.  That’s when you know you’ve hit a goldmine.

Getting Traffic This Way Increases Your Search Engine Ranking

The effect that multiple traffic streams have on your search engine ranking cannot be understated.  The simple fact of the backlinks to your website looks good to the search engines.  This alone has a positive effect on your search engine ranking.

Let’s also add that the increased traffic that you will get from the multiple traffic streams will dramatically increase your search engine ranking.  Search engines rank websites significantly based on how much traffic they get, as well as by how many backlinks they get.

This, in turn, will increase the traffic to your website.  The relationship between your website and the search engines takes on a feedback loop that will continue to increase the traffic to your website.

Ultimately, the more places that you can be found on the Internet or in the real world, there are more ways people can find your site.  The more people find your site, the more people will be able to find your site.  This ultimately is the goal of every marketer, to get the search engines to favor your site over the others.