Alternate ways to get more traffic - Part1

This is a list of alternate sources for traffic in addition to the usual promotion menthods. I will give a brief description of the resource and my experiences with them so you don’t have to waste your time.

digg.com – This is a community driven social content site meaning that the content is submitted by users such as you to be evaluated by other users. If you have something worth people to look at you can generate quite a buzz and get insane amounts of traffic in just a few minutes.

del.icio.us – This is a social bookmarking network where users will post their favourite websites into an online favourite section that is publicly accessible by other users. When other users se these bookmarks they can add them to their own list and generate a buzz and get you lots of traffic pretty quickly.

Blinklist.com – An other social bookmarking site, here you can save individual pages and they will show up with screenshots on other peoples lists. They provide an easy to use browser plugin so you can start adding pages.Furl.net – Similar to blinklist, so far this has been the most successful for me. The browser tool bar provided is a little to feature rich for me but I only need it for promotion, others might find it more helpful.

Newsvine.com – This site is a great news website where you can submit news worth articles in selected categories. Great source of traffic but you have to have something that is worth their while.

Rawsugar.com – Now this site is strange. It likes to crawl rss feeds and blogs and pick out keywords for categorization. I have gotten some traffic to this blog form it but it needs constant attention. If you have a few rss feeds, this one might be worth a while

I hope you will find these links helpful in your never ending quest for traffic. In the next part we will continue down the list of alternate traffic sources and post my experiences with them so you don’t have to waste your time.

Conquer the Webestate Market with ease

Please read our recent Press Release Anouncing WAH to the world.


Conquer the Webestate Market with ease

Website Auction Hub is a newly started on-stop-shop for webmasters seeking to buy or sell established and turnkey websites. Users will find a forum environment offering advice, combined with several appraisal tools, web server monitoring tools, and a directory of resources for flipping their website.

http://www.websiteauctionhub.com

Buying and selling websites has finally come to an age. Website action hub is a newly started website where webmasters are encouraged to sell or buy web property. The transactions can be done auction style or at fixed buy it now prices. Webmasters are also offered evaluation and appraisal services along with several other tools such as a server monitor tool.
Website auction hub offers a forum like environment where the transactions are conducted. This encourages users to discuss the bidding process, payment details, terms and conditions, and so on in a friendly conversation like environment. For safety reasons all these conversations are recorded and can be used to protect the buyers and sellers. Along with the escrow and website evaluation services offered, Website Auction Hub is an easy to use and safe environment for buying or selling a website.
The professional website appraisal service can be requested by buyers and sellers to get an idea of how much the site might be worth and to ensure others that the information stated is legitimate. Upon completion, the website owner will receive a seal with a starting price estimate that can be laced on their website, and official results will be posted on the WAH website for legitimacy.
Several automated website appraisal and web server monitoring tools are also available. These can be used to evaluate several assets of a website such as contents, revenue flow, SEO, with more to come. By homing in on a few vital details, these tolls will give users accurate estimates to what their websites might be worth. Webmasters will also have the opportunity to receive text messages and email alerts on their cell phones if their server goes down by using the server monitoring tool offered.
Eager webmasters will also find a resources directory filled with useful links to information on boosting their current websites value. The resources are divided into several categories such as SEO, Advertising and Affiliate Programs, Forums, Promotion and Marketing, Web Hosting, Tools and Software, and so on assuring easy navigation. These resources were hand picked by WAH to create a friendly one-stop-go place for webmasters.
With all these features combined, Website Auction Hub strives to offer a safe and easy to use environment for buying and selling of established or turn key websites at auction or buy it now prices. Armed with the WAH website appraisal tools, free expert advice, and resources directory webmasters will be ready to conquer the webestate market with ease.

http://www.websiteauctionhub.com

A company to remember

How do you target people who are not currently looking to buy, and why would you do such a thing? Today’s article is in response to these questions in our forum. We are going to deviate from our usual subjects and go beyond the site optimization, advertising campaigns, content update and such small scale operations and we will look at the big picture of building an image people remember.

First, let’s explore what differentiates small companies from big successful companies. This is a highly objective question but I think we can probably all agree that a good measure of success is how much business they do which is directly proportional to how many people know about the company. People all around the world will recognize the Coca-Cola logo or even the silhouette of the curvy bottle. How do they do it? How do they achieve such a status?

Successful companies don’t just sell stuff, they sell dreams. Their own dreams that is, to be precise. They all started small selling some product or some service, swimming with the competition lap after lap, but how do you get ahead of the race? You don’t. You get out of the water, walk up to the audience and start selling them. You sell them yourself, or even better, an image of yourself, fine tuned to your audiences liking. One key word in that sentence is fine tuned; it takes years to achieve recognition and lots of money.

Recognition happens through association. Companies that make it big all have an image they want to project that taps into their customers’ dreams. If I associate myself with this company I can become someone portrayed in this companies dream. Customers will adopt the companies dreams this way and make them their own. If a company can persuade people to think that way, they have made it. Most people are not looking to buy right a way but with this kind of approach they will remember when it comes to reach into their wallets. Impulse buyers represent only a small percentage of the profits so the jack pot is to engrave your company into people’s minds.
Engraving through advertisement is a long and very expensive effort but it will pay off in the end, look at any of the so called name brands out there. This kind of recognition takes a long time; you need a strong icon people will remember, strong one sentence slogans, strong advertisements that portray your potential customers achieving their goals through your companies’ products or services. The advertisement has to be tuned so customers can relate to it and it has to convey a strong message so your company will be remembered.

If you want to stand out of the crowd, you need to portray the company as an icon representing excellence in your area of business. You need develop campaigns that familiarize people with your icon and makes people feel like they can better them selves or their companies by choosing you. But the most important point is to start thinking big, start thinking beyond the products and services and start think of how you want people to remember your company.

http://www.websiteauctionhub.com
Website auction hub specializes in advice and resources for webmasters who want to make their online business successful.

Webmaster Tools: Text message sending web server monitor

If you follow this blog and use our advice, you will eventually end up with a very successful website. How ever, how successful can a website be if it is down? Today we will be talking about website auction hub’s latest home grown webmaster tool. We call it the web service monitoring tool.

http://www.websiteauctionhub.com/forum/servermonitor.php

The web service monitoring tool is free to use for all our members. You can configure it to monitor several ports, on several computers at the same time. This webmaster tool will send you email alerts and/or text messages to your cell phone when it detects a downtime in your service. Our custom script checks every few minutes for activity and sends you a warning immediately. It will send you an initial warning followed by verification a few minutes later. At this time you need to take the necessary steps to get your serer back up and stop yourself from loosing business due to your web server failure. The service will keep checking for connectivity and will send you a recovery alert as soon as it detects your computer being back up again.

Our web service monitoring tool can be used for several reasons; the most obvious one is if you own your own server, you are responsible for it being up. Some other uses are if you just like to be able to sleep well at night knowing that things are working well. Sometimes the web hosts are not quite accurate about their uptime-reports and this way you can find out easily if it is time to find a new host.

http://www.websiteauctionhub.com/forum/servermonitor.php

How can I monetize my forum and start making money with it?

New forums are popping up around the net all the time, adding to the thousands of forums on out there already. Many of them will never make it past a few months; some of them become pillars of the ever growing internet community. What makes the difference you ask? The following concepts will explore why some forums become successful and how to turn the success into cash.

Forums are a place for people to exchange ideas. There are two key elements in that simple sentence, people and ideas. You need people in your forum and you need them to be talking about things that matter, things that will get others to join in the fun. This gets you to the first problem, getting people and getting them to talk. People don’t like to join empty forums so you will need to get a few friends together and start posting topic others would be interested in talking about. When your forum is small, you really need to target a niche and get a good core group of regularly posting members. With many huge forums out there you are not likely to succeed with a broad forum. You can always expand later when your users ask you to. Start small with quality content, or if you already have a forum scale it down and find a target group.
If you are good with code or graphically inclined, you should spend some time customizing the forum so people feel like they are part of something special. You need to invest some time into making your forum look professional and inviting to people in your target niche. If you already have a forum maybe it is time for a makeover. Our visual sense is our strongest sense so a redesign will make a big difference.

Traffic, traffic, and more traffic. Every website needs traffic and everybody talks about how to get traffic so we won’t dwell on it too much. We will look at how to make that traffic into cash instead. Now that you have a core group of users and your forum is looking all pretty, let’s see if we can squeeze some ads in there. Affiliate banners such as Adsense probably won’t make you money unless you have massive amounts of traffic so you are better off finding your own sponsors. Since you are targeting a specific niche of people you will have an easier time to find individual sponsors. You can use something like Adbrite where individual sponsors will sign up for your site, commission junction where you can lick niche specific sponsors, or you can implement a custom php solution, what ever you think might work best.

An even better way to make money is if you can directly sell services or products to your members. For example a forum talking about web hosts can offer web hosting directly, a forum talking about travel can offer downloadable wall papers and so on. Also a great idea is to have something like a gift shop where people can order T-shirts, coffee mugs and so on with the forum logo on it. You could also look into maybe a good drop-shipping retailer deal for arts and crafts related forums. The possibilities are so broad that we will discuss it in the next article.
For now the you have lots of work to do, target your forum at a specific niche, get a core group together and start producing some valuable content. If start seeing increase in your traffic you can start looking for advertisers or establish services for sale or get a product line together.

http://www.websiteauctionhub.com

A great place to get advice on improving your forum!

What kind of established websites are considered good to buy?

One of our members at WAH asked a similar questions and I feel like this topic needs a little closer look. We will break away from our series this week and analyze what kind of established websites you should be looking for.

When shopping for a website you may consider buying a turn-key website or an established online business. Of course, turn-key sites are no more than a couple hundred dollars but all you are getting is the website. This is a good way to get yourself an online presence but you will have to do all the promotion your self. It takes lot of effort and time to create an influential website that gets recognized online so we are going to examine the established websites instead.
If you are buying an established online business, you are shopping for the website and what is even more valuable, the web presence that goes with it. There are two things you need to really look at as far as the business aspects go.

What kind of web presence does this site have? We can have two kinds, one is a steady flow of new traffic form search engines and other places, and two is an established return visitor count such as members or just people who have the site bookmarked. You want the kind of website that has a healthy share of both. Return visitors are great because they will keep your stats high and you can target them with specific services. Fresh traffic is good because they will be clicking your ads and signing up to be new members.

What kind of service does this site offer? Now that we know what kind of traffic this site gets, we need to know what this page actually does. The most desirable website is one that offers some kind of services you can directly sell to the users or it drop-ship sells items with a high commission value. These methods combined with high traffic will put lots of money in your pockets. Secondary income might be generated by affiliate networks and advertiser income. If the site sells directly ad space and has lots of original content, you are still looking and a nice setup. If the site relies entirely on ad revenue such as Adsense or some other network, you will need a lot of traffic to have decent income.

The bottom line is, when buying websites you need to consider two things as far as a good buy goes. The site needs to have a healthy flow of fresh traffic and return visitors and ideally it should directly sell services or drop-ship items. If you can find a site that has the beginnings of this for cheap, you are looking at a great opportunity.

Website Auction Hub
All the tools and resources
you need to buy or sell websites.

What kind of website is considered a good buy? Design

When buying an established website, you want to spend some time identifying the weak areas. One of the hardest areas to assess without bias is the design of the website. People have different tastes so coming up with a design that pleases everyone is very difficult. How ever we can establish a few basic guide lines to follow.

First of all, the page has to be easy to navigate. If your visitors can not find your buttons and can’t navigate, then I hope you have everything important on the front page. The basic menu is usually located on top of each page in the same spot and is clearly visible to the users. We also need to address a growing issue called ad placement. I see more and more WebPages who put ads everywhere they can. It doesn’t look good design wise and it doesn’t look good content vise. It might get you a few more clicks but it breaks up your page flow and it makes things much harder on the user who will end up leaving your site.

Second, do not use glaring contrasting colors such as a black page with bright yellow letters all over it. Getting headaches while reading will not get you many return visitors. A small accent for special sections is a great idea but not the whole page. Here is an other area where we need to talk about ad placement. More and more pages make their ads blend in with the page so it looks like content and it makes the page look confusing for the browser. Ads should have some border around them where the user can easily distinguish them form useful information.

Third, is the actual design and layout of your page. This is an area where you need to gather as many opinions as possible and fix the most common issues. A good place to start would be to look at some of the professional templates, or other successful WebPages and create something similar but unique to your website. Templates are easy to use but they will make your page look very generic so if you want something unique you will have to put in the hours. My advice is to start with something simple and change things according to what most of your users suggest.

Our visual sense is the strongest sense we rely on so having a good design is very important.