Do you remember the lingo you used back in High School?

If you have any kids or younger siblings then you probably noticed that slang you used in the past is kind of obsolete, with the exception of a few words here and there. If you step into a high school hallway and you try to use words that were “hip” back in the day, you’ll notice no one will really pay attention. You’ll come off as the unpopular, nerdy, attention craving teen that does not have a clue. Oh and don’t feel bad,most of us have been there.

It’s important that you keep that idea in mind so that you could extract the ultimate value of this post.

In order to capture the interest of your prospects, readers, or users you need to know who they are, how old they are, where they are from, what interest them and how you should speak to them. As you may already know all of this information falls under the category of demographics. Without prior knowledge of the demographics of your online audience you don’t really have a chance at capturing their attention or interest, unless you’re lucky.

Let’s take a look a the important factors in online demographics but first let’s set up the scenario for an offline setting in an effort to help you understand it a bit more.

In an offline store setting these are a few examples of  demographics related questions business owners consider:

• Is the site a great location for the business?
• Are the goods or services I offer needed in that particular area?
• Who are my existing customers or existing customers within the target market?
• Where are they (customers)?
• Where can I find more of them (customers)?
• Who’s my competition in regards to the site location?
• What’s their yearly income(the customers)?
• Race, Religion? Education?

Guess what?
The questions above don’t really change when you translate the scenario to an online business, so make sure to keep them in mind as they are vital and crucial elements of your online marketing campaigns.

Let’s look at this example:

If you’re launching a site that targets the Irish community, then you probably need to consider using colors like emerald green or colors that symbolize the Irish culture during the design phase of the site. If there is room for music,you may want to include music that pertains to the culture. Understanding this may help you to attract their attention, however, be careful not to overdo it or not to involve stereotypes as you may offend the very audience you’re trying to capture.

If I’m starting a site, how do I research demographics?

There are several ways to do so, but I’ll share a free resource with you today.
Have you heard of Quantcast?

Here’s a bit about them, directly from the source:

What is Quantcast?

Quantcast is a team of web analytics experts building powerful statistical technology to understand digital media audiences. Quantcast helps publishers of all sizes understand the composition of their audiences and attract higher advertising rates, and helps marketers and agencies find elusive online audiences wherever they might be. This web site allows anyone to view audience reports on millions of digital media properties.

That’s how they describe their service. I describe their service in a similar but less complicated way - Quantcast is a FREE demographics research service that can help you to improve your online business.

How do you use Quantcast if you just started a site or are just starting your research?

The best way that new bloggers or website owners can find the demographics of your prospect audience is by learning who your competition is and who their readers or customers are. If you’re into making money online then you need to drop in websites that pertain to that market.

Here is an example of demographics that pertain to a website offering ways to make money online:

Demographics Data

Below is a screen shot of traffic coming into one of the sites scanned by Quantcast.

Quantcast Traffic Image

It’s important that when researching your market based on another sites traffic you look at the summary, traffic and demographics information that Quantcast will provide in regards to that competition.  Odds are that they already have  the traffic your aiming for. This data can prove useful in determining how you are going to attract that particular audience, if it’s a profitable market or one you would like to go into.

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One of the biggest challenges for beginning bloggers is creating a following of readers and the reasons are quite obvious; no one knows you, you haven’t developed a good ranking in the search engines, you don’t have established credibility in your niche as of yet, therefore you have to work a bit harder at finding your audience.

If your just starting out or are pretty new at blogging one of your main roles should be to find resources that will allow you to deliver your content to an audience.

A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from a company called “BloggersBase” and they personally invited me to come on board and try them out. What I’ve found within the realm of this young company has impressed me. These guys are focusing on both bloggers and readers, they help bloggers to get discovered while allowing them the opportunity to bank on their knowledge and talents. They allow readers to find high quality content that peaks their interest and the readers control the content that gets exposed.

This is the opportunity of a lifetime to gain that audience by pumping out good quality content - good stuff that sells, this is the moment you have been waiting for but it’s all on you - you have to make sure you stand out and you have to make sure that you excel, that’s the only way to do it.

Here’s a bit of background on the company that I pulled directly from their “About” section of their site:

BloggersBase is a young start-up company, whose members share a dream of making the Internet a better place. Headed by CEO and Co-Founder Dan Barak, the team boasts very strong academic backgrounds, as well as many years of software development & project management experience in large software companies - Cisco, Applied Materials, Ethrix and Siemens\UGS\Technomatix. This experience spans multiple IT and programming topics, including web based applications, networking, databases, and multiuser environments.

About BloggersBase - “The service”

BloggersBase provides a discovery platform for bloggers, user-generate-content and readers alike. This platform takes the form of an online magazine spanning various topics, each implemented as a multi-authored blog, moderated by algorithm-enhanced crowd wisdom. Our magazine introduces a brand new concept of citizen-journalism, using powerful analytics and unique algorithms.

Bloggers - your audience is here!
Get discovered & monetize on your talent on BloggersBase!
Compete and become a part of an exclusive club of elite professional bloggers!

Readers - Find high quality content that interests YOU to read and watch!
Make a difference by ranking and controlling the content that gets exposed!
Earn recognition for your expertise and gain social status!

Technorati Tags: bloggersbase, bloggersbase.com, blogs news, quality content, make money in blogging, make money for blogging, how make money blogging, you make money blogging, make money blogs, bloggers, blogging to the bank, blogging for dollars, blog audience, blogs audience, blogging audience

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I really want success for you and I don’t care how you define it or what it is you’re trying to accomplish but If what your trying to do requires getting the attention of people on the web then I want to be a part of that success. I want to share with you what I know has worked for me. I don’t have time to sell you stories about theories and concepts that worked for the biggest marketers on the web; I’m going to tell you my story and hopefully you listen carefully so that you apply these methods to your own business model.

For those of you that have been following my writing then its very likely that you already have an understanding of the concept behind Article Marketing along with all of its benefits. As some of you may already know these benefits are hard earned because of the time spent on submitting articles manually but if you want to cut back on the time your spending on this I’ll suggest an Article Submitter software like the one I’ve used “Find it Here“. There are two ways to accomplish the task: the hard way (Manual Submission) , and the easy way (Automatic Submission), I’ll let you decide which path you want to take.

As web publishers we write articles on the web for various reasons. Maybe we are trying to improve our search engine ranking or perhaps we’re looking to increase direct traffic. The goal remains the same; Its all about exposure. The more articles you submit the more back links and traffic you can expect to have and by the nature of these back links your ranking will automatically improve in the search engines. You dont need any special emphasis on the actual “SERP” ranking but as your rank improves so will your organic traffic.

Another great reason to submit articles, more so if you’re building a list, is that subscribers who visit your page after reading one of your articles on a particular directory tends to purchase more than subscribers who follow you from any other traffic sources. Normally, when a reader subscribes to your mailing list after reading one of your articles, they have already begun to trust you and in return may buy from you sooner than the reader that needs to get a feel for who you are and what you are providing.

Article writing provides a unique opportunity to attract readers that will become subscribers because they have a pre-qualified interest in what you are talking about and as they follow your writing they will establish trust in you. Writing articles can get you all of the above but it requires patience from your part because when you first get started you will notice that things will move rather slowly for you but if your consistent it will without a doubt pick up.

One of the things that occurs with Article Marketing is the exponential effect - when you only have 2 or 3 articles out there its quite evident that you are not going to have a flood of readers or buyers coming to your site. If this is what you want you will need to submit a few articles a day for several weeks and perhaps months until you begin to feel the powerful and amazing effects. [Trust me it will be worth while].

Lastly, its important that you remember that you will continue to feel the effects of those articles you submitted for as long as they are published on the web - Its basic math, when you have 10 articles out there you will have ten times the visitors, if you have 50 articles out there you will have 50 times the amount of visitors; I’ll let you do the math.

I’ll give you this solid piece of advice: Getting discouraged and quitting is very easy to do when you have submitted just a few articles out there and you notice that the revenue is not very consisten but with hard work, dedication and consistent submissions you will reap the benefits. ($$$Ching Ching!$$$)

Get Your Article Submitter Software Here

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing, Automatic Article Submitter, Article Writing, Why Publish Articles, Articles and Exponential Traffic, Articles and Traffic, Article Writing traffic, Article Directories, Best way to write articles, best way to submit articles, how to submit articles

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Website traffic is the lifeblood to web owners.  It’s what anybody who is serious online wants. I get questions all the time about what simple ways to get traffic to a website are.

Here’s a list of areas you might want to look into. Some of these you can start yourself. (The list is not categorized or organized in any order of importance.)

It certainly is not all-inclusive, and it does not include any special instructions, but please post your questions here and I’ll try to answer you.

It’s impossible to post all the detailed step-by-step actions you must take to do this. But, it should get your thinking started.

Important before starting: When looking at these traffic options, make sure that you do your keyword research first. Find the top performing keywords and phrases for your niche. Find keywords that have less competition at first, and work within your budget. Use inventory.overture.com to start. (sometimes very slow). Use your findings as key phrases in headlines, links and body content, including filenames and www domains.

Top ways to generate relevant website traffic:
1. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – the art & science of bringing your site to the top of search engines, and staying there. Get more information here

2. Blogs – Create your blog using wordpress and submit to technorati to start. Use blogsearch.google.com to discover more information about your niche and get design ideas from others.

3. Contextual – programs that allow you to place related ads & content on other websites. Search for ‘contextual advertising’ in Google.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) – Paid search – Google Adwords is a great place to start, get some traffic, analyze the data and see if others like Yahoo, MSN, Miva might work for you.

5. Text Ad Networks – adbrite.com, adster.com.

6. Directory Submissions.

7. Social Bookmarking – growing in popularity, and if done right – can get huge elevations of traffic. Get an account with del.icio.us to start.

8. Social Networking – join the growing list of social networks and write your own comments and ideas with a link back to your site. Don’t fish for links, contribute something! A strong linking strategy should be part of your program. Start with digg.com as an example.

9. Article Submissions – look at ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com and isnare.com (automates the process).

10. Newsletters – build and promote newsletters. Start with a monthly newsletter, and build your list (important!). Go to elance.com or guru.com and have somebody write them for you.

11. Article Trading – you can trade articles and swap contents on your site and / or blogs, and is a great way to build partnerships if not done in a spammy way.

12. Signature Linking – make sure that you provide a keyword rich link in the signatures of your articles, your emails and any site that allows for this.

13. Forum Posting – related to your field – not spam – add constructive, intelligent posts in forums with back links.

14. Press Releases – use prweb.com to start. Fantastic way to generate traffic, news exposure and claim a little authority a long the way.

15. Video Submissions – pull out your webcam or handy-cam and create a video and upload to youtube and google video to start. Then, search for other video submissions sites and start promoting using existing email lists, purchased lists and other techniques as shown in this blog post.

16. Reciprocal Linking – not completely out of the picture for some of the engines, just tread lightly with Google here.

17. Affiliate Marketing – If I market and sell something for you for $20 dollars, you give me $10 dollars back. That’s affiliate marketing. Sign up with clickbank.com to start for information products where you typically find very good profit margins. Sell somebody else’s product, make money, and generate traffic back to your website.

18. Joint Ventures (JV) – Partner up with a site or company in your space. If you have something to offer, or you are the gatekeeper of lists yourself, expand quickly by creating joint promotions.

19. Viral Campaigns or “Jungle Telegraph” – this is where your humorous or controversial video, audio, blog or website takes a life of it’s own. A good example is the first viral “Narnia  (Saturday Night Live) on YouTube in 2005. (this was a breakthrough moment for them).

20. CPA Networks – generate traffic and leads, but based on performance (when a lead closes or is sold).

21. Hub Sites/links – hubpages.com can be great place to start. Also, there’s linkhounds.com/hub-finder, to compare and research several URL’s and find out where you should be linking to/from – start creating authority in your thinking.

22. Craigslist – can generate traffic quickly, is available in search – and I know some who post regularly to get a boost in traffic on daily & weekly basis, but you have to pay. You can pay to post in different locations throughout the USA.

23. Feedback Groups – answer sites like answers.yahoo.com to find what people are asking, but also providing expertise and links back to your site. Don’t forget groups.google.com and groups.yahoo.com.

24. LinkedIn – create a profile, add text and keywords supporting your theme.

25. Paid Links – Once again, not as spam but used as paid advertising for traffic, not PageRank.

26. Trusted Networks – Try Searchenginetrust.com and build links and comments within a high trust blog network. They charge a monthly subscription, but can move your site and traffic up fairly quickly.

27. EBay – from stores (cost) to posting of your products to ebooks and more. Do your keyword research. Submit to products sites like google.com/products if you are in the ecommerce space.

28. Myspace – create a profile, keep it active and get some help with ‘adder’ software like addnewfriends.com and manage messages with requests for friends. Remember to use ‘viral’ thinking where you can: podcasts, videos, etc.

29. Stumble – Stumbleupon.com generated over 200% increase in traffic in a test that I did. You can get lots of traffic for 5c per ‘impression’. Make sure to create profiles and pages that support your theme + keywords, from TITLE to content.

30. Pay Per Click – (more detail) Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, MSN Ad Center – good places to start using paid advertising. Create segmented groups with your preferred keywords, and watch your server logs in the last 3-6 months for patterns of search terms you may have missed, to be included in your campaigns. Test on the contextual and site targeted networks, including expanding beyond text ads into image ads, video ads as well.

31. Wikipedia – write an entry and see if it sticks! Don’t forget the Wiki’s.

What other ways have you found to work? I am interested to hear from you. I’ll keep updating this list, and provide another level of organization by categories when I have more time….

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