Have you purchased a website from a company who promised you that ‘your website will make you money while you sleep‘. Now while this is true in some cases, for others, this statement makes a cold chill run down their spine because, even after parting with hundreds (even thousands) of pounds on a new shiney website, they are still yet to generate one web based sale.

Before I discuss this further, I want you to bear with me for a minute or two as I invite you into my private world. I count myself to be very lucky as I run Foxley Marketing Solutions and my many other websites from my home office. This allows me to spend much more time with my family, and with a six-year old daughter, I want to be on hand and actively involved in her day-to-day life.

The summer holiday is coming to an end but in the last few week I’ve been able spend more time on with my family on the many day trips and fun days out while my automated systems work for me.

In the last week alone we went to the cinema to watch a new kid’s film, Shorts. We followed this with a day trip to Matlock Bath, The National Forest Maize Maze in Burton Upon Trent, Staffordshire and, yesterday, we went to the Monkey Forest in Trentham, Staffordshire.

We had some great times and you can see some of our photos below. If you get the chance to visit the places mentioned then I recommend that you do!

We are sharing the LOVE! This is just a quick update to say that we have taken the decision to reward all commentators by installing the NoFollow Free WordPress plugin. The NoFollow attribute is built into WordPress comments by default but can be overridden using certain plugins.

For a detailed explanation of the ‘nofollow’ attritube then read this post by the Blog Bloke.

We were originally using Lucia’s Link Love plugin that allowed us to stipulate a particular number of comments someone would have to leave before their links had the nofollow attribute removed.

We’ll, we’ve gone one step further and are now rewarding anyone who leaves a comment with a search engine friendly link.

So what do you have to do to get some love from us?

Simply leave a comment and remember to include your URL where it says ‘website’.

That’s it! Be sure to read our comment policy before posting. All we do ask is that you provide value and that you use your real name (and not ‘viagra pills’ or ‘free adult movies’ – you know who you are )

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. If you are interested in starting your own self-hosted WordPress Blog and was wondering how to get started then I highly recommend you check out Dave’s Online Videos. The monthly membership fee is incredibly low for the information that you gain access to and you can cancel at anytime, no questions asked! You can find out more here.

photo credit: Sabrina Campagna

Link masking is a great way to protect your affiliate commissions from being hijacked. In today’s post I want to share with you a really cool WordPress Plugin that will allow you to mask your links in no time at all, and right within your WordPress admin area.

Before we get to the good stuff I just want to quickly say that masking your links is what is often referred to as cloaking but they are two different things. Masking is preventing people from viewing your affiliate link to help decrease affiliate link hijacking and to also increase click-through rates, some people really don’t like to click on those affiliate links.

Cloaking your links is a way of gaming the search engines by presenting the search robots with one page while showing people a different page. You can read more about link cloacking and what Google have to say by reading this article.

You’ll want to head on over and grab the GoCodes Redirection WordPress plugin. Then use your FTP client to upload the plugin to your plugins directory and then return to your admin area to activate GoCodes.

To mask your first link you will need to click on the GoCodes link under tools (in your admin area).

Now you’ll want to decide on the name of the redirection.

1. Your custom redirect will be www.yourdomain.com/go/. By choosing your redirection key, in this case, Keyword Elite, my masked link is now

http://www.foxleymarketingsolutions.com/go/KeywordElite.

2. Now you will need input the URL you are masking. In this example I am using a ClickBank affiliate link for a product by Brad Callen called Keyword Elite. If keyword research is your thing then this a serious piece of software. You can also grab a free keyword research report by visiting here.

3. Lastly you will want to select whether or not you want GoCodes to track your clicks, I enable this for a quick reference point.

Now click the ‘Add Redirect‘ button to create your first masked link.

That’s it, you’ve created your first redirect and masked your link. If you would like to change the redirection folder from /go/ to something that you would prefer then you will need to click on the GoCodes button under the ‘settings‘ tab in your WordPress Admin area.

The most common file name people use is ‘recommends‘ but you can use whatever word you like.

GoCodes is a great plugin and I have had no issues since I started using it. The guys who created the plugin do mention one known issue:

There seems to be a conflict with the WP Super Cache plugin where a redirect will only work once before the cache is cleared. There is a workaround, though. All you have to do is add “index.php” on a new line in the “Rejected URLs” field of the WP Super Cache options page. This will disable cacheing of the page yourdomain.com/index.php. Generally, this shouldn’t be too big of an issue, as visitors will rarely add the /index.php when they visit your blog.

As you can see, this work around makes the problem a very minor issue. What are you waiting for, go and check out GoCodes now!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. Be sure to check out Keyword Elite version 2.0 and put your keyword research on steroids.

P.s.s. An alternative plugin to GoCodes Redirect is Affiliate Mask I haven’t used this one myself so you will have to test it for yourself.

Link Masking Software: PHP Link Cloaker, Powerlink Generator, Easy Link Manager

photo credit: Gret@Lorenz

I’ve decided to start blogging regularly about link-building and traffic generation. Instead of writing a 30 tips to more traffic etc, I’m going to share each one individually as I come across them, test them and get a decent result.

I am going to qualify each tip I share as a successful traffic generation tactic if it generates, at least, a few visitors to my website per week.

Although only a few visitors to my website a week isn’t heaps of traffic by any stretch of the imagination, the cumulative affect of having lots of links all sending a handful of visitors each week will turn out (over time) to be a good sized piece of traffic that’s not to be sniffed at.

The tips will cover:

• Link building for traffic generation.
• Link building for search engine optimisation.
• Link building for local search (great for businesses operating in a particular region).
• Traffic generation best suited for squeeze pages (lead capture pages).
• Traffic generation through search engine placement from alternative websites (those that you do not own).
• New places to share your RSS feed.
• What ever I consider to be ethical, whitehat and to the benefit of your website and business.

So, what should you do now!

The first tip is going to go live tomorrow so I recommend you grab our RSS feed and stay-up-to-date with our latest posts as they go live.

If you have any traffic generation methods and link building tips you want me to trial, test and share then use the contact form or leave a comment; no affiliate links please.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for the first post!

To your success,

Karl Foxley

P.s. I’m giving every page that is related to this topic the tag [lbtt] so you’ll be be able to pull them all up together when you do an on-site search.

It was through using this that I discovered a cool article directory. For those of you that are using article marketing in your online marketing strategy then you’ll now have an additional place to upload your articles, increasing your exposure and search engine love. If you aren’t using articles in your online marketing campaigns the I recommend you get started ASAP.

The article directory I found is called iSnare (you may not be as slow as me on this one and already be familiar with the service) and not only is it a typical article directory, it also features a very low cost article distribution service.

The price starts from as little as $10 for 5 article distribution credits ($2 each), making this something that is very affordable.

Be sure to bookmark iSnare and add it to your article marketing campaigns.

To your success,

Karl

If you want to know more about the benefits of article marketing then you should sign-up to our 7-day Mini-Course, Website Promotion Success!

photo credit: TheAlieness GiselaGiardino²³

Adding a variety of online marketing strategies can help you to diversify visitor streams and below you will discover a list of alternative ways you can do this.

I recommend you only us the traffic generation methods that you feel comfortable using. Below you will find some of the usual suspects and maybe a few that you hadn’t heard of or thought of using. Enjoy!

You Tube

Create videos that you can upload and share on YouTube and other video sharing sites. You can use free screencast software, Jing, or the more powerful Camtasia. You can use the popular FlipMono to make videos of yourself and others.

You Tube

Also try:

Revver

Blip.TV

Daily Motion

Scribd

Scribd is the You Tube for PDFs. You can create quality looking PDFs for free with Open Office Writer. Open Office is every bit as good as Microsoft’s offerings but will cost you nothing.

Make sure you complete your profile and add a link to your website.

Also try:

DocStoc

SlideShare

Not only can you create PowerPoint presentations and record them using the screencast software above allowing you to share them over the video sharing sites, you can also add them to SlideShare. SlideShare is a powerpoint presentation sharing site. Be sure to include your website link in your profile and within your presentations.

Also try:

Author Share

Slide Boom

You can create presentations online with 280 Slides.

Facebook

Join Facebook, complete your profile, add your website and then connect with people. Create groups and fan pages for extra exposure. You can upload your images and videos to share with the people you are connecting with.

You can find me on Facebook with my own easy to remember link: www.facebook.com/karlfoxley.

Also try:

MySpace

Bebo

Hi5

Friendster

Flickr

Create images to share with the world using Flickr. Upload free graphic packages for people to share and download. Create a profile and include your website URL. Have a complete package on your website and point your shared images to the full package. You can share also share photos.

To create your own graphics or eye-catching images you can use the free GIMP software or Adobe’s Photoshop.

Also try:

Photobucket

Write Articles

You can write articles and share them on popular article directories. You can get more info by signing-up to our 7-day Mini-Course where article marketing is covered or read the document on Scribd by clicking here. I recommend starting with Ezine Articles, be sure to complete your profile and include a link to your website.

Also try:

Go Articles

Helium

Join Forums

Find and join forums in your niche. If you are into online marketing then I recommend your join the Warrior Forum and Conquer Your Niche. Read more about how to use forums for marketing by visiting here.

Twitter

Join the ever popular micro-blogging community and start Tweeting. Twitter has a profile section that you can use to include some info about yourself and your website and include a link. Start following people and you’ll soon start gaining followers yourself. Connect with me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/karlfoxley.

To learn how to create your very own custom background then I recommend the video series that Dave Guindon has inside his membership site. Take a look at all the video series that Dave has uploaded over at Daves Online Videos.

Further reading: Micro-blogging for business.

Also try:

Tumblr

Plurk

Linked In

Linked In is the Facebook for professionals. Join, complete your profile and add your website links. Now join some relevant groups and be an active member.

Killer Startups

Killer Startups is a review site for new websites released on the web. List your website on here and you will get a lot of free exposure.

Pimp This Blog

Pimp This Blog is a place for bloggers to share their best articles and blog posts. Pimp This Blog will share the content over many other networks such as Twitter.

Join Freelance Services

If you are a service provider such as a writer, coder, SEO consultant etc you can join the many freelance services and use them for extra exposure of you and your company.

Take a look at:

Hire My Mom

Project 4 Hire

Guru

Advertising Directories

Add your services or products to the popular advertising directories such as Craigslist. You can read more about this by visiting here.

Also try:

INetGiant

1 Stop Classifieds

Ebay

Join eBay and sell your products on the popular auction site for extra exposure. You can also create an About Me page where you can promote your website or send people to a profile page that then links to your websites and product pages. Always include details about your website in your products packaging.

Amazon

Similar to eBay, sell your items on Amazon and make sure you include your website information where ever possible and certainly in your product packaging.

Kindle

Read documents on a wireless reading device; introducing the Kindle. Sell your documents to Kindle readers through Amazon’s eBook program. Make sure you include a bio and links to your website.

Podcasts

Take your content, articles and blog posts, and turn them into podcasts. You can use a simple USB Microphone to record your voice and download the free Audacity for editing. You can learn a lot more about podcasting over at Geek News Central. You can submit your podcast to popular podcast directories such as Podcast Alley. To see what you can do with a great podcast take a look at Blog Talk Radio (you can even register to start your very own show).

Groups

Groups are a bit like forums in that you become a meber of a community and establish yourself as an expert, sharing advice and tips. Point to relevant documents on your website / blog that answer peoples questions.

Try:

Google Groups

Yahoo Groups

Answer Questions

Answering questions and helping people to solve their problems can be a great source of traffic. Join Yahoo Answers and answer questions in your chosen field of expertise. Great a profile and include a link to your website.

Shopping Comparison Sites

This is a great way of generating a lot of exposure to your products. Simply register with the popular shopping comparison sites and list sign-up for a merchant account. Get started with Shopzilla (BizRate), scroll down to where it says ‘merchant listings and advertising’.

Write A Press Release

Write a press release about your latest website or service. The benefit of doing this is that you will get lots of search engine optimised links (if you do it properly) spread across the web on authority sites pointing back to your website. Do you have anything news worthy to write about? I recommend you use PR Web for handling your press releases. Submitting a press release is well worth the fee.

Also try:

1888 Press Release

PR Leap

Employ An Affiliate Workforce

Do you have a product or service? Why not recruit an army of affiliate marketers to go out and promote your product / service for you! This can method of traffic generation can see you get masses of traffic.

If you have a digital product then list it on:

Clickbank

Pay Dot Com

E-Junkie

If you sell a service or tangible products then try:

Affiliate Announcer - get your affiliate programme in front of thousands of affiliates every day.

Joint Ventures

Joint ventures are one of the best traffic generation methods around. I’ve written the Guru Traffic Secret Report that covers this method further. You can find JV partners from dedicated websites such as JV Network. Alternatively, find website and product owners that are a good fit for your business and contact them regarding a link, ad or email swap.

Advertising Browser Ads

Free Traffic Bar sites on your browser and displays ads for every page you surf. For each page that you surf you earn credits that can be used to show your ad on other peoples browsers who have the Free Traffic Bar installed. This means that you will earn credits for surfing the web as you would normally. Works with Internet Explorer and Firefox browsers.

Also try:

Instant Buzz

Further reading:

Free Traffic Bar Advertising

Instant Buzz and Instant Buzz Mastery

Traffic Exchanges

Not everyone likes these websites so using them is at your discretion. Register with the sites below, add your website details and then manually surf other peoples websites. You’ll earn credits so that you can send a number of visitors to your website. The best way to use these is to create a splash page (has a headline, an eye-catching graphic and a call to action that encourages surfers to click through to your actual website) For more details on this method and a list of the best exchange then click here to read Top Traffic Exchanges.

Safelists

Safelists are another controversial traffic method but if you know what you are doing then this is a great traffic generation method. A safelist is not spamming, people opt-in to receive your email. I recommend you create a squeeze page (look at Guru Traffic Secret for an example of a squeeze page) and use AWeber or iContact to capture leads that you can then engage with using email marketing.

I recommend Blast Your Ad.

Resource: Online Selling For Newbies

List Builders

Build your mailing list by joining list-builder sites. To really benefit from these types of websites you need to upgrade your accounts from free to paid membership. For example, if you upgrade at Downline Builder Direct you will be able to email 20,000 random members every two days. This method of traffic generation is not for everyone so only use it if you feel comfortable in doing so. I recommend sending people straight to a squeeze mail and getting them onto your email list.

Also try:

List Dot Com

Build My Downlines

List Auction

Software

Have you developed software  or widgets that you would like to give away for free. Maybe you have a trial version. Then you can get a serious amount of traffic from adding your software to Download.com.

Also try:

Brothersoft

Free Download Center

Website Directories

Add your website to dedicated website directories. Only submit your site or blog to directories that are what they say they are and not link farms. I recommend DMOZ, Best of the Web (they also have a blog directory) and Yahoo’s Directory.

Pay Per Click Advertising

Pay per click advertising allows you to advertise across content networks and in the search engines sponsored results driving you lots of targeted traffic. You will need to understand how PPC works to fully capitalise on this marketing method but, when you do, the payoff can be huge.

Recommended networks:

Adwords

Bidvertiser

Adbrite

Yahoo

Ask

Hub Pages

Hub Pages allows you to create Hubs on particular topics you wish to write about. Your hubs can receive trememdous amounts of traffic and you should create a complete profile pointing back to your website.

Squidoo

Very similar to Hub Pages except you create lens. Visit Squidoo and create your first lens. For both Hub Pages and Squidoo you want to create each Hub / Lens about an individual topic.

Ezine Advetising

Ezines are newsletters that people have signed up to in their area of interest. What this means to you as an advertiser is that you can pay a small fee to advertise in an Ezine that is sent to your target market. To learn more about this form of marketing you need to take a look at The Directory of Ezines. Visit The Ezine Directory to find Ezines in your niche.

Posterous

If you want a bit more Twitter but not as much as a blog then Posterous is the perfect middle ground for you. If you have short blog posts that you question are right for your blog then post them on Posterous. You can get a good amount of traffic from using the site.

Blogging

Creating a blog is a great way to drive traffic to your main website or products. Blogs are loved by the search engines and are readily indexed. You can set up a blog on dedicated sights like Blogger or WordPress. However, I recommend you host your own blog using either WordPress.org‘s self hosted blogging platform or Blog i360.

WordPress Plugins To Make Your Blog A Traffic Generating Machine

Feedburner – let Feedburner handle your RSS feed making grabbing your feed a breeze.

FD Feedburner Plugin – seemlessly manages your Feedburner RSS for you without you having to mess with the theme.

All In One SEO Pack – helps you optimise your blog for the search engines for better search rankings.

Tweet My Blog – sends a Tweet to Twitter to let your followers know you have a new blog post.

Sociable – allow your readers to share you content easily with just one click of a button.

Referrer Detector - give your visitors a welcome message and an opportunity to sign-up to your RSS feed. The message is customised to match the referring website.

Google XML Sitemaps – creates a Google friendly sitemap (plus Yahoo, MSN and Ask).

Subscribe To Comments - allows your readers to receive an email each time another comment is added to a post they have commented on.

No Ping Wait - alert many other sites that you have updated your blog. No ping wait does this instantly!

No Self Ping - prevents WordPress from sending pings to your own site.

Minor Edit – this plugin allows you to make small changes to a post without resending a ping (and possibly getting you listed as a spammer).

Blog Networks

The following sites are places you can list your blog, join communities and earn lots of traffic. You can also add widgets onto your blog like the community widget from MyBlogLog on the right sidebar.

MyBlogLog

BlogCatalog

Technorati

Pijoo

Blogarama

Best of The Web Blogs

Blogging Traffic Tactics

Blog Commenting – visit top blogs in your niche or business sector and comment on the blog posts. Add value and provide a solid contribution to each site and you will be rewarded with visitors to your website who want to learn more about you. Most blogs will allow you to add your website URL so make sure that you do.

Become A Guest Blogger - like a blog in your niche? Why not submit a guest post with the only requirement is that you are allowed to link out to your website.

Share Your Posts - let your readers and other blog owners know that they can use your content as long as they link back to your website.

Conclusion

Getting visitors to your website can be easy when you know how! I hope you’ve enjoyed this post. If you thing there is anything I’ve missed then drop me a line and I’ll add it in there somewhere.

To your success,

Karl Foxley

Website usability analysis is an important element that must be factored into your business monitoring. You can use Google Analytics and other visitor tracking software to get statistical data that can draw up a clearer picture of how your users are finding your site, interacting with your site and leaving your site.

You should have some form of tracking in place but to really test usability it is better to watch someone navigate your website. One way of testing your website for ease of navigation is to conduct sessions with a variety of users; always use people who computer savvy and those that hardly ever use a computer. This will ensure you get a broader picture of how easy your site is to use.

You’ll want to watch people use your site with no object in mind but, more importantly, you’ll want to give people specific tasks to see how easy they are to complete. For example, you could give the following instructions:

Find an item, add it to the shopping basket and proceed to the checkout page.

Find the contact page and submit a question.

Find product x add to basket, continue shopping and add item z, now empty basket.

Along with your observations it is wise to ask each person to complete a questionnaire where you ask for their feedback regarding ease of use. You can always use friends and family to do this but be aware that they may lean on giving you feedback that is more positive due to your relationship (you’ll be best to judge this).

An additional tool that can really help with your website usability analysis is to record visitor sessions on your website. Clixpy is free to register with and they give you a number of credits to get you started. You will be able to play-back visitor sessions and see exactly what your prospects and customers are doing on your site.

You’ll be able to see exactly what people do. Let’s say the sessions you record show that people are consistantly adding items to your shopping cart software and then not completing the checkout process. You may be able to deduce that the checkout button is not visible on certain pages, or is not clear enough, or the page you thought was live is actually returning a 404 page not found message.

Clixpy is a great service and purchasing additional credits is very cost-effective. You can find a setup tutorial on my personal blog by clicking here. You can get 100 captures for as little as $5 and they accept PayPal payments. Register for you free account with Clixpy by clicking on the link below:

www.clixpy.com

To your success,

Karl Foxley