The process of driving traffic to a site never stops. There are several methods that we can still employ from free traffic sites and traffic exchanges to paid traffic. Personally, I am not in favor of paid traffic because the majority of the time it is not targeted to your specific niche. You need to get traffic that want what YOU are offering and not just “the lookers without action” types. What we are aiming for is getting traffic to build a list that we can foster a relationship with and sell our product to in the future.

Again this week, we have added to our original product that we have available. This time we have added a product for sale but it is more than one product – it is a series of videos with heaps of free bonuses to go with it. This week we had to create another aweber code and our paypal button to be upload to enable people to be able to get the videos. It is a very interesting process. My coach and mentor has provided the products for us this week and has helped us get them loaded on our site.

The next important part will be, when we have to create our own product. That will be interesting. Mark has suggested we see what questions are being frequently asked on forums and then we provide a product that will answer these questions. I have been on a few forums over the past few weeks and I would say the most frequently asked question -  apart from ” how do I make money fast” -all relate to traffic and list building.

We all know how important it is to get a quality list and build up a relationship with the people there. I think some marketers forget that there are “people”on that list  and not just an email address that you can bombard with product. Remember to treat every person on you list well, give them good quality products for free, and this is how you will succeed.

This is Sue McDonald and I will catch you soon…..

Hi there…

Well, I am still traveling looking for ways to build up my traffic. I have been vigilant in my quest to get more traffic this week and it is starting to pay off. I have been going to the Warrior Forum and yesterday I tried the Digital Point Forum but I can not use my signature block there for 7 days and have at least 10 posts. I have completed the 10 posts – in fact I think I have 12 today but now I will just have to mark time. While this is not there I can not get traffic from there.

The warrior forum is very informative and it is easy to be part of it. I read yesterday they are now going to charge to be a warrior member – but if you are a war room member then you do not have to pay again. You will still have to pay for WSO (Warrior Special Offer) but I am not that far advanced yet, so I will just keep that in mind. They are also changing some of their rules regarding signature blocks, mainly to do with the length, the size of the font used and the colors that some members have started using. I like the terms and conditions they have – it makes for a level playing field. In two weeks I have been thanked 10 times for my contributions and that made me feel pretty good. I have probably submitted 45 posts.

Forums are a very good place to learn, ask questions and get help but they are also a source of  traffic -  if you have your web site in your signature block. Google Analytics shows me that as of today’s date 16% of my traffic has come from the warrior forum.

I have also been working on increasing my twitter followers. There are some really interesting people on twitter but because tweets are posted at such a fast rate you often miss out on some good information. I am getting a lot of direct messages and  I am enjoying answering and responding to these people. I find it very time consuming and at this stage not getting the return for the effort I have put in. I have answered over 75% and that would be approximately 87 messages. My percentage of visitors from Twitter 6%.

So for me, at least, it appears more beneficial to spend time on the forum. The stats prove it – don’t you agree?

This is Sue saying … keep following me

Well it’s Sue again…

This week has been a little bit stressful I think. There is so much to do when you are trying to manage your normal everyday life and your Internet Marketing homework. We are still in the driving traffic to our blog phase and I know it is just a matter of time and persistence to get people to sign up for my free book. On the other hand, I know people from all around the world are visiting my site. I know this because of Google analytics. This is an absolute great tool and everyone should use it.

If you install it you have so much you can find out. If you go to Google analytics and “View report” and then “Map Overlay” you can view where your traffic is coming from. I really don’t know how some of these people have found me. I have people from over 14 countries as of this morning. The next interesting statistic is to go to Traffic – you will find out the source of your traffic.

I have cloaked my URL in my signature block on the warrior forum. I know you don’t have to cloak it but I just want to see how many people would want “to follow my journey in the IM world”. Again, I have been trying to be an active and participating member of the forum this week and I have managed to get 9 people to visit my site. I even managed to get thanked once. I thought that was worth the effort I had put in. So over the next few weeks, I shall have to keep going to the warrior forum every day. I’ll make it my number two priority because I always start my day by checking my emails.

This week on the webinar, we were given a few more ideas for driving traffic to our site. I intend to implement then and I let you all know how I get on. Till then, cheers…

This is Sue again – just finished another long session with Mark and my fellow students. These weekly sessions keep you motivated and on track. There is so much to learn and again homework this week will definitely take a lot of time. Again this week, we are still learning ways to drive traffic to our site. We all know that we need the traffic to get the list and in the end make some money. This week however, we have to install Google Analytics so we can actually monitor all of our visitors. One important part of signing up is to make sure you put in the time where you are because otherwise the information you get back will not be correct.

I love this tool. I especially love how you can tell where all your visitors come from and even what language they speak. Clever Google! If you are not sure how to do this, go to your dashboard on Google Analytics. Click on “Visitors”and you will get a drop down box and from here you can click on the map overlay and see a visual representation of where your visitors are coming from. You can also click on the Map Overlay in the Visitors Segmentation box also. This box is on the lower right hand side of the first page.

There is so much information that is available to you regarding your visitors. The map will give you a clear indication where your visitors are. You can also ascertain if you are getting a new visitor or a returning visitor. You can find out how many pages the visitor has looked at and what is the time they have spent on your site. You will be shown your bounce rate. This is the Wikipedia definition of “Bounce Rate”. “It essentially represents the percentage of initial visitors to a site who “bounce” away to a different site, rather than continue on to other pages within the same site.”

Traffic Sources provide us with more information on how the traffic arrived at our site whether it is direct traffic or referring sites – whether people arrive because they had click on an ad or used some of our keywords. This is all great information because you can monitor what words are being searched for.

When you have a site always include Google Analytics on it. This will eventually help you monetize your site.

Hope you found this interesting….catch you later


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Well – you can not imaging the trouble I had trying to load the image of the book and the optin box. I could get the optin to show by itself but when I tried to add the image hey presto – like magic, the whole thing disappeared. The text box did not exist in the side bar. I thought Houdini’s ghost must have come to reside in my computer. The great American magician always said he was going to come back and give a sign – he was here and I thought – not today, Harry!

I then thought, maybe it’s the theme. OK – let’s change the theme. Now, we all know the hours it can take to find the theme you like, it can be a truly frustrating task. So I did a bit of looking and came up with another one. Loaded it up and approved it and then proceeded to start the process again. You would not believe it – the same thing happened again. I must have tried about ten times on this new theme before I thought, this is no better, let’s go back to my original theme. Uploaded it again and retried the whole exercise again. Still a disappearing act. Now I am not a person who gives in easily – I like to work things out. But this disappearing text box was beyond me.

I finally emailed Mark. His answer was for me to skype him so he could help. I think he knew I had tried but it was not working for me. Well I skyped him this morning and with his help he said there was a coding problem in the side bar and he would have to fix it manually. Well, he did, and now I have my image and my optin box up showing on my site. Thanks Mark! Houdini wasn’t in there after all. These are the highs and lows of the learning Newbie.

So until next time …………..Sue

Well – just finished another session with Mark and my fellow students. I have done heaps of studying on internet marketing in the last few months but there is always something that you haven’t been shown or you haven’t been told. Tonight was about getting heaps of back links and it is so much easier than the way I was shown. Can’t wait till I see how many links I can get.

Now this week we are also going to upload a free book to our blog and start building our list.

Have you ever been to your inbox and it is full of the next best thing – the magic pill that will give you millions if you swallow it? I have followed Mark’s advice and not bought a single product. I have previously and my download box is full of unread ebooks that I thought I really needed. I have been unsubscribing from so many emails, I even had one cheeky marketer contact me and ask for a reason, we have now become friends.

I agree with Mark that, if you are on a marketer’s list, people should foster a relationship with you before they try and sell their products to you. With most of the ones I have hit unsubscribe, they are sending me an email through adswaps and just want you to buy the product. I can get 3 or 4 emails for the same product.

These marketers are certainly teaching me what NOT to do. As some marketers now realize that their emails are not being read and they are wondering why. You really have to stand out from the crowd and foster that relationship before you start selling your product. So tomorrow I am going to up load my book.

Come back then and have a look and let me know what you think………. Sue

Hi  it’s Sue here. Glad you came back.

Now here is the second thing I have to catch up on  continuing on with this blog.

I have done courses before but this looks good and goes right back to basics. This is where everyone should start  learning to blog. When I recently attended a weekend workshop in the UK for Internet Marketing with 50 people in attendance, there was at least 15-20% who did not know how to write a blog. By the way, I live in Australia so going to a workshop in the UK was a major thing but I was disappointed that I didn’t learn the advanced stuff that I believed would be taught.

So now Mark is going to teach me the missing bits. I am quite happy to do this blog and learn.  I will add to it as much as I can and tell you all about what I am learning. I have been blogging for about 6 months now but wherever you are at; you can still learn something that you didn’t know before. I have already.

By the end of the Newbie’s part of the course – which is 12 weeks – I know we will have learnt so much and progressed so far. But one step at a time just like any other journey.

What is a domain name? A domain name in simple terms is your address of your website.

Domain names are essential as they enable people to be able to find you. Having a domain name is a much easier to remember than if you had some type of code or numerals. We do however have a series of numbers and these numbers are known as your IP address (Internet Protocol address).

The IP address series of numbers is not always easy to remember while your domain name usually reflects your business in some way. Now as you are investing a lot of time in your business you want people to be able to find you very easily. Your domain name is the entrance door to your online business.

When you choose a domain you must register it and the last word or letters after the domain name is the domain extension. The most common extension is dot com (.com). Some people only want to be a local business so they may use the extension of .com followed by the letters that stand for their country. The extension is also preceded by a dot – for example you may register s name similar to this – http://beachrestaurant.com.fr. Fr are the letters for France.

Having your own domain name does not come free because when you register you must pay a fee. By registering your domain name, you get the exclusive right to use that domain name but only for a certain number of years depending on the policy of the company where you bought your domain name. When that period expires and you want to continue using the domain name then you can renew your contract.

When choosing your domain name, you can use a maximum of 67 characters made up of letters from A to Z or number from zero to nine or a mixture of both numbers and letters as well the hyphen. The maximum of 67 characters already includes both the sub domain name and the domain name extension. So if you want to have an easy-recall website then you better start thinking about your business and check that the name is available. The key is to make your domain name easy to remember.

However, you can already register a domain name even if you do not have a website. On the other hand, registration of a domain name does not carry with it a website. While some domain registering companies offer web hosting, you can register your domain name with them and choose from the various web hosting companies.

Never attempt to register a domain name which contains a trademark because that could cause you some legal problems.

You have finished making your own website. You have introduced your company and presented your products and services. You have added propositions and promos to catch your target audience’s attention. You have achieved the dos and don’ts of building a company web site. But why isn’t your website a major success?

Maybe you’re not planning the key to the best promotion of your web site. Here are some guidelines on how to acquire free web site promotions for your company’s success.

If you have started to promote your web site, keep it constant. If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your audience’s attention.

Be patient. Try each method in promotion until you acquire the best, free promotion there is. You have to accept trial and error for your web site to reach the top.

There are many ways for your web site to be seen. Here are some free web site promotions you could try until you find the most effective.

*Free promotions such as search engines and directories would give your web site the deserved traffic you always wanted. Make sure to check your web site’s ranking to know whether or not this type of free promotion is right for you.

*Make a deal with other web sites on trading links which could help both web sites. Make sure to use words that could easily interest the audience.

*Find free classified ads that could boost the promotion of your web site. These ads could be seen by other people who you are not targeting for, but may as well be interested in your services.

*Free and low-cost internet banners are spread all through out the World Wide Web. Banners that pop-up at the top of a page or in a separate window would automatically catch your target audience’s attention.

If your web site and its free promotion did not work even after accomplishing these methods, analyze your web site. Track down all visitors, advertisements, and transactions. Then locate errors in your web site. Upload new files to your web site continuously for audience to return for new products and services. Monitor your own web site if it’s up in the market or down.

Then be ready to try the methods again and surely it will work.

It has always been said that the best things in life are free. Yes they are. And as soon as your free web site promotion proves to the audience its worth, then you’ll believe it’s true.

If you want to know more about internet marketing watch this now. Join the university and be a success withing a few short months.

Join us now and interact in the forum – a great place to meet friends and learn.

To YOUR success

Sue McDonald