A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a web log (blog)

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

PPC stands for Pay Per Click – a popular advertising technique on the Internet.

Found on websites, advertising networks, and especially on search engines, PPC advertising involves sponsored links that are typically in the form of text ads. These are usually placed close to search results, where an advertiser pays a particular amount to visitors who click on these links or banners and land on the advertiser’s web page.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services – the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it “keyword auctioning”). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations: Read the rest of this entry »

If, like me, you’ve tried – and failed – in the past to achieve success online with internet marketing, then rest assured that help is finally at hand.

I certainly wish I had had access to such knowledge when I started out three years ago, and perhaps I wouldn’t have been so overwhelmed with the practicalities of website design, using autoresponders, joining affiliate programs, writing sales letters, and how to get traffic to my site. I know better now, but more of this in a moment. . . .

The simple fact of the matter is, that to enter the world of internet marketing, you need something to promote and sell (well you want to make money at it don’t you?), whether a physical item, or – information. The very nature of the internet – where knowledge can be shared and exchanged at the click of a button – lends itself perfectly to  . . . the <b>eBook</b>!

The advantages of the eBook over selling physical items is that there is no need to buy or store stock, no time and effort incurred in packing anything up and shipping it off in the post – and your customer can pay their money for your product and get immediate access to it from a download page. In an age where demand is for instant gratification, an eBook is ideal – easy and effective! And once written, you can sell unlimited copies of it without having to produce each item – so it’s both time and cost-effective too.

When thinking of a subject to write about for your eBook, the secret to greater success, and finding your ‘niche market’, is very simple. Like they tell all first-time budding authors – write about what you know. Whether it’s a few chapters on ‘How to Stop Smoking’ (if you’ve been successful at this), on the mechanics of owning a motorcycle, how to earn money online, or even ‘Tips on Flower Arranging’, you can bet that someone out there in ‘cyberspace’ wants to know about it. If the subject of your eBook is also your hobby, so much the better. If you’ve got passion for your subject, you’re going to convey that enthusiasm in what you write, and make that eBook even more interesting and useful.

Of course, if you have knowledge or practical experience on a popular subject in which there is a large potential market to sell your eBook, perhaps health and fitness, or food and drink, you could be more likely of success, but remember you’ll also be competing with many others. So choose your subject carefully!

However, in writing your eBook, don’t forget to <i><b>give your customer value</i></b> – and they could become customers for your future eBooks too! Make the content and quality of your eBook meaningful – whatever its length, it has to be good, or you’ll leave your customers feeling disenchanted. Give away a few free bonuses – an extra report perhaps, or some free training that they would have to pay for elsewhere. Aim for customer satisfaction!

If you don’t know how to go about creating an eBook (you could always write an eBook explaining how to do it!), then it brings me to the ‘more of this in a moment . . .’ that I mentioned above – the launch of a FREE course in all aspects of internet marketing, including creating eBooks. Visit the website below for what you need to get started online. Good luck!