Social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit started off as niche services that only tech savvy internet users used, but over the past couple of years, they’ve grown into some of the largest sites on the internet with millions of users spanning every niche you can think of. With such a diverse user base, it’s no wonder social bookmarking has become a central part of most online marketing strategies. Social bookmarking can provide a wide variety of benefits to your, your company, and your website.

The biggest and most apparent benefit of social bookmarking is traffic. If you put a link on a social bookmarking site, and that link gets popular, and eventually makes its way to the homepage of that social bookmarking site, you can be sure that the link will receive a great deal of traffic. With so many people visiting social bookmarking sites on a daily basis, it’s no surprise that popular links on said sites will receive enormous spikes in traffic.

One of the less obvious benefits of social bookmarking is that it allows you to build strong links to your site, and boost your search ranking. When you submit a link to a social bookmarking site, you get to choose the text that link displays. So, in essence, you’re creating a link to your site on a highly popular site with anchor text of your choosing. Because of the high quality of the linking systems used by social bookmarking sites, it’s common for a link on a site like Digg or Reddit to show up ahead of the site it links to in search results, and there’s nothing wrong with that. As long as your content is showing up near the top of search results, it doesn’t really matter whether it’s your actual site, or a social bookmarking site – you still get traffic from it either way.

As long as you’re pushing high quality content, social bookmarking sites are a great way to drive traffic to your site, and boost your search rank. As your link becomes popular across the internet, you’ll begin to see an increase in traffic, and in your search rank in no time. Just be sure to use keyword rich anchor text for your links, and make sure your content is high quality, and you’ll see results in no time.

If you’ve ever sold an ebook, or other digital product, you know that maximizing your profits can be a tricky task. If you take the time to take a look at your products and figure out how they can work better for you, you can increase your revenue significantly.

If you have one digital product, you might be able to convert it into another format to generate more profits. Let’s say you have an ebook that’s getting some sales. Have you considered taking your content, and making an audio, or video product out of it? A video that helps to illustrate the points you make in your ebook could be a great addition to your product catalog. As for an audio product, an audio version of your ebook would do well. Many people enjoy listening to audio books at the gym, in the car, or even when they’re just out for a walk. By converting your existing product into other formats, you can sell it to a wide variety of customers. In fact, you may even wind up selling it to the same customer multiple times.

If your product is a multi-step instructional guide of any sort, you may want to consider breaking it down into weekly lessons, and switching business models. By starting a membership site, you can generate more revenue over time. Let’s say you are currently selling an ebook for $30 a piece. If you convert that ebook into a six month online course, and charge $10 a month, you can double your profits. The downside here is that you run the risk of having a customer unsubscribe before the course is over. This method isn’t going to work for every product, but if you have a good step by step guide, you might just be able to make a membership site work.

Whether you’re running a membership site, or selling digital products, you can always up your sales by offering bonuses to your customers. If your customers are getting something for free when they purchase your product or sign up for your membership site, you will generate more sales. People love free stuff, and by offering them a bonus item, you’re increasing the overall appeal of your product.

Digital products can be highly profitable if you play your cards right. Sell your content in multiple formats, and consider a membership site, either in place of, or alongside your existing products. Throw in a few bonus items, and you’ll see a significant boost in sales in no time.

Many people start new websites in the hopes of bringing in massive amounts of money through advertising. You can actually bring in a great deal of money through internet ads, but it’s not a simple process. You can’t just start a site, throw some ads on it, and get rich. You have to do some research and pick an advertising plan that suits your site.

Pay per click advertising programs like Google Adsense have some serious potential to bring in revenue. Google Adsense in particular, can be very effective, because it presents your visitors with ads based on the content on your site. If someone’s reading your site, chances are they are interested in your niche. The ads on your site will be directly relevant to that niche and as such, your visitors will be more likely to click them. The major drawback to services like Adsense is the payout. Each click might only bring in a few cents. By placing these ads in prominent positions on your site, you can increase the number of clicks each ad will get.

Amazon’s affiliate program is another great source of ads for your site. Amazon sells just about everything you could want from cookware to video games, and there’s sure to be a product somewhere in their catalog that suits your audience. Take the time do do a little research about your audience, and your niche. Try to figure out what products they would be most interested, and post ads for them on your site. It helps if you can find unique products that your visitors may not have heard of before. They’ll be a little more inclined to click the ad if it’s for something they are interested in, and haven’t seen before.

If your site has an e-mail list, or an RSS feed, don’t forget to include them in your advertising strategy. It’s important to remember that your website isn’t the only place your visitors absorb your content. If your users are getting your content through any other method, then they should also be getting your ads that way too.

By carefully considering your audience, and the ways they get your content, you can put together an effective advertising strategy that will be sure to increase your total revenue significantly over time.

Many people hear about other people that make money online without spending a single penny, and jump right into it with no preparation, and then wonder why they fail.  Then, they also proceed to tell the lie that making money online without spending anything first is impossible.  Well, they are dead wrong.  You can definitely make money online without spending anything, and it all starts with a simple plan.

Your plan doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it must include goals.  Your goals must be designed to help you spend your limited time in the most effective and efficient ways possible.  90 day plans are the most common, and seem to have the most success.  They allow for enough time for you to accomplish what you need to, without giving you too much time, or rushing you.

In order to obtain your goals effectively and efficiently, you should work backwards from them, and form a checklist of what needs to happen in order for you to reach your goals.  This checklist can be as long and as detailed as you need it, or as short and vague as you need it.  It depends on what you need to be successful.  Remember, the amount o detail someone puts into their plans may not be right for you, and vice versa.  This checklist is going to be the strategy for your plan, so make sure you do a good job on it, otherwise your plans with fall through, and your goal will become unattainable.

After creating your checklist, be sure to analyze each step, and how long it will take, and give yourself a fair amount of time for everything.  Giving yourself too long will result in you probably becoming distracted, while giving yourself too short of a window will cause you to miss deadlines and become discouraged.  Once you know how long it will take, create a schedule, and get started.

There are many free programs out there, and free services, which, if taken advantage of properly, can result in you making money without spending anything.  It all relies on you sticking to your plan, though.  If you cannot stay on a schedule you created yourself, how can you make money doing anything? Let alone on the internet.  All you have to do is complete your tasks on time, and treat yourself like your own employee, not your own boss.  This way, you will be under pressure to reach your deadlines, and everything will work out, resulting in free money.

Photo credit: emdot

I want to share with you top 25 ways to market your website

#1 – Article Marketing

Many people ignore this first method to increase website traffic. It’s as simple as article marketing. It is a simple method of creating, writing and submitting articles to various directories online such as:

* EzineArticles.com
* GoArticles.com
* SearchWarp.com
* ArticleDashboard.com
* ArticleCity.com

When you post articles to these websites you soon start to see that your website start to see some traffic from the articles you write. It will then start to increase and eventually you get more and more backlinks from more and more articles, which results in higher search engine rankings.

Simply write and submit as many high quality articles as possible and be sure to link back to the website you want to drive traffic to! The articles will drive you traffic immediately, as well as build quality incoming backlinks. The article might sometimes rank on its own in the search results and drive you some simple traffic! Try it out!

#2 – Social Bookmarking

Another way to get some immediate traffic and have this be free, is to use social bookmarking. It’s one of the most popular methods, but also one of the most underused methods of increasing the backlinks you get to your website, but also the instant traffic from the social bookmarking site itself.

Here are some of the sites I use with this method:

* Digg.com
* Del.Icio.us
* Reddit
* Fark
* Mixx
* Propeller
* Netvouz
* And many more.

You want to try to include your websites keyword in order to help boost the websites searhc engine rankings. Try it by signing up for these services and promoting your website’s pages. Try to only bookmark valuable pages of your websites. Nothing spammy or sales will get any attention on these sites!

#3 – Yahoo Answers

If you are not aware of Yahoo Answers it’s a website that allows people to post questions and you will simply answer these questions with a good response. Then when you gain enough credibility to answer questions in the best way possible you can link back to resource pages on your website and get some immediate traffic from answering questions of targeted prospects!

#4 – Blog Commenting

Blog commenting is an effective strategy for getting more visitors. You can find high traffic blogs in your marketplace and post valuable comments, adding to the value of the post and include a link back to your website, usually in the name of your post.

Do not spam and link to your website in the actual post, but write a compelling and good answer and people will click your name anyway!

#5 – Using Blog Platforms

If you are not currently owning a blog you are putting a lot of free targeted traffic on the table. A blog is so loved by Google that you might get thousands of free visitors just by having the right blog on the internet at the right time.

This blog can then funnel traffic to your website or whatever else it is that you want more traffic to, maybe a Hub that you have? Who knows? Either way, you can use blogs on these platforms.

* Blogger.com
* Wordpress.com
* Wordpress.com
* Livejournal

I highly recommend starting at least a free blog at blogger.com with your targeted keywords in them! This method has gotten me thousands of free visitors.

#6 – Squidoo Marketing

A site similar to HubPages is Squidoo. This website will allow you to create what is called a “lens” and not a “hub”. This site is very similar to hub pages in the way it operates and the ease of use, as well as the ability to rank high in Google for your target keywords.

I’ve got tons of free squidoo lenses on the internet that get free targeted traffic, which then funnels that traffic to my websites. I highly suggest you create a couple of lenses and start promoting your website with Squidoo, as well as HubPages right now!

#7 – Hub Pages

Hubpages (the website you are no right now) has over 100,000 people in its community ready to visit your hub, if it’s valuable enough to the visitor. So create a couple of hubs that help promote yourself or your website. Since the community doesn’t like spammy hubs, make sure you create a hub with genuine value, such as this hub. It has a list of resources and methods for going about getting traffic to your website.

These types of hubs seems to do incredibly well, so it’s time to start building your hubpage empire too!

#8 – Propeller

Propeller is a very high trafficed website that will allow you to post a link to your website, on which other people can vote. This means that if your content is good and targeted, odds are people will vote on your content. The more votes you get, the more traffic you will get so take advantage of this service and post only really good content!

Share your bookmarks on this site, make a few omments on other people’s content and link back to your own conent. Thousands of people have the opportunity to see your site and visit it for their needs!

#9 – Keyword Research

The most important thing when driving traffic is keyword research! If your keywords are not targeted to people who want what you offer it’s not going to be a match anyway. There are a few rules to think about when it comes to keyword research, some of the things include the amount of searches per month, and the competing pages in search engines.

Try to find keywords with 2,000 searches or more per month, obviously, and less than 25,000 competing pages in Google, where few are authority sites on the first page of the search engine you are targeting.

So let’s say you have 5,300 searches per month for a keyword, that might get you 0 visitors, unless you are ranked high in Google for that term, so the competition might be “100,000″ in quotes.

That is too much, but if the same keyword had 5,300 searches and only 8,241 competing pages in Google you will more likely rank for that keyword! Understand? Great!

#10 – Press Release Distribution

Press Releases are free to submit on many websites. They can turn out to be a good promotional tool if you have something worthy of a news announcement. Got a new website? Release a press release about your new website, that’s simple enough! Try to target your press release to your keywords and submit it to.

* PrWeb.com
* Free-Press-Releases.com
* PrLog.net

And many more!

#11 – Us Free Ads

UsFreeAds is a website that will allow you to post an ad for your website. It is like a short classified ad to help promote your website. Try it out and see that you can get some really cool results from it!

#12 – Content Is King

No matter which traffic method you are using, always remember that content is king! Content moves the internet and the person with the best and the most content for a keyword will have the most opportunity to get traffic so create a lot of it and place it on your website, other websites and link back to your website.

Here are some of the criteria for good content:

* Valuable
* Helpful
* Interesting
* Funny
* Crazy
* Cool

And many more!

#13 – Video Marketing Sites

You don’t always have to write in order to spread your content to gain attention and visitors online! You can also use video marketing sites to get the same message across, and sometimes better than with articles or text. I use video a lot to help increase the traffic to my sites in various markets. I like to do it and it’s a lot of fun.

Here are some of the sites to submit your videos to:

* YouTube
* Google Video
* Yahoo Video
* Facebook Video
* Dailymotion
* MetaCafé
* Revver

And many more. Please keep your videos short, valuable and to the point as well. This will help people like your videos and go visit your website.

#14 – Use Facebook

Facebook is a great place to share your website. Get active in the community and talk to a lot of people in the community! Share links that are interesting, videos and photos. Join groups and create your own fanpages to help increase the visibility of your website.

I use this method a lot and have only recently started to use facebook as a serious business tool to drive traffic to my sites and it’s working wonders! Try it, you will not be disappointed!

#15 – Forum Marketing

Get active in forums and start posting good answers to people questions. Share links to your other resources that you created, articles, videos etc. Share some photos of yourself too! Join in the many discussions going on and try to establish a sense of authority and credibility in the forum as somebody who is a good valuable resource.

#16 – Create An Affiliate Program

If you have your own product that you are selling, why not start an affiliate program and have other people promote your website for you? So instead of building traffic yourself, share your methods and allow affiliates to promote your product for you. It’s a great way to get some traffic without paying a single dime!

#17 – Join Twitter

If you haven’t noticed lately, Twitter is one of the fastest growing phenomena out there right now. You will find that millions of people are sharing their messages and getting very simple things to become very viral on Twitter, so if you are not currently on Twitter you are missing a huge portion of the marketplace. So join now and start posting valuable resources and links to interesting things you find online. Sometimes you want to mention your own website and get visitors to come over and take a look. Share a lot of content and engage in conversation.

#18 – Search Engine Optimization

SEO or search engine optimization is one of the best ways to get free targeted traffic for a long time. Pick 20 or so keywords and start creating content for those keywords, build links to your website and optimize it the best for your keywords.

Some things to think about with SEO is to have your keyword in each of these elements of your page:

* Title Tags
* Header Tags
* Underlining, Bolding, Italic
* Anchor texts for links
* Backlinks

When your site is optimized in the best way possible it will start to gain some attention in the search engines and start getting free traffic on autopilot! Neat, huh?

#19 – Submit Your RSS Feeds

A great way to increase your traffic is to distribute your RSS feed to RSS distribution sites. It will help you spread your message faster and more people will find your RSS feed if it’s out there in more places than just your own website.

Some of the feeds to submit are:

* Your Blog Feed
* Squidoo Feed
* HubPages Feed
* Article Account Feeds
* etc

#20 – Directory Submission

You can go ahead and submit your website to various directories online that have resources and links to websites. This will help increase the amount of backlinks you get to your website and thus increase your SEO. It will be hard to get too much traffic from these on their own, but you do get some SEO benefit!

Here are some directories:

* DMOZ
* JoeAnt
* WebWorldIndex

#21 – Networking With Others

One of the best ways to drive more traffic is by aligning yourself in strategic alliances with other successful webmasters in your niche. You can exchange links, email lists and a lot more. This will allow you to have access to a lot of leads, say you know 10 people with 10,000 people on their lists… It would open you up to 100,000 new prospects immediately!

See how powerful these relationships can be!

#22 – Use Digg.com

Another site you might want to consider networking on and driving traffic with is Digg.com. It will allow you to post news for your niche and people can come vote on your content. Your content will then get seen by others in the Digg.com community and you will get more diggs that will lead to more traffic. It can get really viral if you have something of good value and post it to Digg.com!

#23 – Be Bold And Daring

In order to attract people you will need to be a little bold and daring. The more over the top you are, but deliver good valuable stuff the more people will feel attraction towards you. Some of the most successful people are very bold and daring. They speak their mind so don’t be afraid to be a little animated when you go about your content or whatever!

#24 – Encourage Interaction With Your Visitors

When you post a blog post for example. Ask people to interact with you and leave comments. Have them interact, engage and help you improve your site. This helps show that you care about your visitors and will attract more of them!

Help make it easy for your visitors to share your content by providing “share this buttons” and other “sharing abilities” on your site.. Make it easy for them to share your stuff!

#25 – Join And Get BUSY In The Warrior Forum & Digital Point

When you are honestly active in a forum you are always providing great information and you continously build your credibility to become one of the authorities in your niche.

I’ve use these methods and this forum to drive thousands of visitors, how? It’s because it’s full of targeted people, then I place good valuable content in front of them.

The best part is that you don’t have to pay a single penny for the visitors you attract. You’ll become an internet marketing magnet that immidiately catches the attention of your prospects and sends server crushing traffic for free!