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We strongly recommend you surf to our reliable web site for Micro Niche Finder user comments tips…

This type of marketing is a lot like e-bay. Your web site pushes various items and for all your effort, you receive a cut from each lead. There’s less work, fewer operating costs, it sells 24/7, and even better, it’s relatively easy to learn.

To start with, you must decide precisely which niche market best suits your business style. To do this, you need to find out what a certain customer profile is looking for, and then discover how you can help them. One of the most effective ways to determine this is finding specific narrow keywords; broadly speaking customers look for these less, but more of these convert. These essential keywords can be found by using Micro Niche Finder or or a a similar program. The data gathered from this computer program or other applications and services compiles related terminology in an extensive list format providing worthwhile targets to get a good listing in the search engines and generate traffic.

Further info is supplied from Micro Niche Finder, for example how many searches each word or phrase gets, precisely how many different internet sites use those keywords, even competitor details. Ultimately, the information returned can identify suitable domains, subject matter for your internet site, and reveal the best sales opportunities.

Construction of a website is next; however you still have some fundamental things to do. Having the top ranking on web based search engines needs the fine tuning of your web site. Applications such as SEO Elite should make this easy. This application automatically examines the web sites of the competition and can advise you exactly what you should do to have good rankings in the search engine results. With programs such as SEO Elite, data generated by the program tells you where to get links, the most profitable keywords, and even information on where and how to upload articles. In short, the data created are much like to the suggestions that an SEO professional may offer. Once you settle on your niche, have your product advertisements, and your website has been constructed, then you are ready to get your website up in the search results. You will collect a regular pay check and question why you doubted that affiliate marketing would work for you!

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Fort Worth home inspector and inspection company TexInspec is the premier home inspection company in the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. TexInspec Is The Place For The 200% Satisfaction Guaranteed TexInspec is dedicated to providing you “peace of mind” by helping you to understand the condition of your home. TexInspec offers Dallas home inspection services to not only Dallas but to over 100 surrounding communities. We understand the stress that is involved in Buying, Selling, and Moving…That is why when your TexInspec Inspection is complete, you will have..
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How to begin investing is something that everyone needs to know. Especially with companies doing away with pension and retirement plans, as well as the devaluation of the stock market over the past few years, finantial security is something that is of utmost concern to all. Learn how to begin investing today.

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When it comes to marketing, do you ever feel like you are at the mercy of the tides - following up on a referral here, chasing a lead there and more often than not ending up battered and bruised by the rocks along the shoreline? There is a simple solution. It is a solution that will put you in control of your marketing efforts and help assure a steady flow of prospective clients: develop and use a contact management database.

Now what could be simpler? And if you invest in developing your database, like an investment in a great stock or mutual fund, your return will be many times the initial investment. As with most things knowing what needs to be done is simple. Actually doing them or doing them successfully is a little bit more complicated. That is why so many of us have contact management databases like ACT! or Goldmine installed on our computers with nary a name entered in while we continue to be tossed about helplessly like a seashell in the marketing tide.

Gain control of your marketing efforts now!

Set-up a contact management database - Pick a program - ACT! and Goldmine are popular contact management databases. Outlook may even work if you’re just getting started. And coaches should definitely explore Client Compass www.clientcompass.com, a customized business management software including a client and prospect database, developed for coaches by coaches. Talk to other people in your line of business to see what they are using and what they like and dislike about the program. Give some thought to how you might use the database and what types of information you want to collect.

Here are some general things to consider as you start this process:

• Have one list. Setting up multiple lists for example one with everyone you met at one networking event, another with names from a second networking event and a third from a mailing list you purchased leads to duplicates that at best needlessly increases costs and at worst irritates your prospective clients with duplicate mailings. Be especially careful of this when doing mass e-mailing.

• Set-up fields so contacts can be sorted in multiple ways. For example, you would want to include fields for the source of the name; the type of business the individual is in; which of your products/services they are most likely to be interested in; and whether they are a suspect, prospect, potential referral source, current client, past client, etc.

• Determine other purposes for which you may want to use the database. Client Compass for example has a multitude of functions helpful to managing a coaching practice including client and prospect information tracking, coaching call summaries, administration, marketing and invoicing. There’s even a credit card billing option. Goldmine can be used to track both opportunities (proposals that you might have out and the status of the proposals) as well as active projects - especially helpful for consulting projects where multiple people may be involved.

• Be sure you can easily use the names for direct mail and e-mail purposes. The database program should have the capability to do merge mailings and e-mails to selected groups or the ability to export to other programs such as Excel so mail merges can be accomplished.

Invest in the technology and the assistance necessary to set-up a functional database system because this is one of the most valuable tools in constructing an effective marketing program.

Feed the database on a regular basis. The best designed database with all the latest technological bells and whistles is useless if it doesn’t have any names in it. The primary objective of much of your promotional efforts should be obtaining contact information for individuals who fit the profile of your target customer. You can then enter this information into your database and begin the relationship development process with these individuals.

So how can you feed your database?

• Networking. When you are networking be sure to ask for the cards of the people you meet who could be prospective customers. In fact, it is much more important to obtain their card than it is to give them your card.

• Speaking. When you speak or do presentations be sure you have a mechanism for obtaining the names of the people in attendance. A door prize is one good way to do this.

• Writing. If you write articles be sure to invite readers to your website to sign-up for your regular newsletter or a free guide.

• Direct mail and advertising. With a few exceptions, the goal of direct mail or advertising should not be to make a sale. It should be to obtain contact information so you can continue to market to those individuals who have shown an interest in your services. Therefore your promotional pieces should be designed to get a maximum number of people with even a slight interest in your services to provide you their contact information. Giving away a free guide is one excellent way to accomplish this.

Obviously once you have contact information it must be entered into the database. The 500 cards you collected through networking activities last year aren’t doing much good wrapped in a rubber band lying in desk drawer. If you get even a few business cards a week that need to be entered into the database it is well worth an investment in a card scanning program such as CardScan. Be sure the program you select allows export of the contact information to the contact database program you will be using. In fact, a program like CardScan could serve as the primary contact management system if you are just getting started. If adding names to your database is something you just never seem to get done the investment in some administrative support to accomplish this task can pay off handsomely.

Consistently nurture the names in the database. A great database with hundreds or even thousands of names in it is useless unless you actually have contact with the names in the database. This is a topic for another article or even a whole book. At a minimum there should be follow-up with every contact shortly after you receive their contact information (i.e. a note or e-mail to someone you met at a networking event within a few days of meeting them) and regular, planned contact with them at least monthly going forward. With today’s technology much of this can be automated.

Protect this valuable asset. Your contact database is one of your most valuable assets. Be sure you protect it. Do regular back-ups and store these back-ups off site. For about the cost of a week’s worth of Starbuck’s coffee you can have all of your files backed up automatically each night and stored on a remote server. What would be the cost of replacing your contact database?

Get your feet planted solidly in the sand. Invest in developing, maintaining and using a contact management database to harness the power of the marketing tides and generate the leads you need to grow the business of your dreams.

© 2005 STRATEGIES-BY-DESIGN.

Julie Chance is president of Strategies-by-Design, a Dallas-based marketing consulting firm specializing in marketing programs for professional service firms and specialty retailers. If you are interested in finding out more about how to gain control of your marketing efforts and assure a steady flow of prospective clients, Julie invites you to sign-up for their free marketing tips newsletter at http://www.strategies-by-design.com

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I am completely at the mercy of my car mechanic. I don’t know the first thing about car engines, so it would be very easy for a mechanic to charge me for services I don’t actually need. In fact, it has happened. After being burned more times than I want to think about, these days I rely on trusted friends who know cars to refer me to someone who will take good and ethical care of my vehicle.

Like my car care, the buyer of any kind of service must take the provider’s word that they know what they are doing. Even more nervous-making, the buyer usually must pay for at least part of a service (i.e., a deposit) before it is delivered. Being invisible and intangible, services are only as good as the market’s perception of them, and service businesses rely heavily on the endorsements made by satisfied customers to their friends, families, and colleagues.

Word of mouth–WOM–has been the marketing mainstay of service firms since…well, since caveman days, when Ogg did something for Erg and Erg told Yagg about it. WOM and its subset, referrals, differ from other marketing activities because they depend entirely on someone voluntarily endorsing your services to someone else.

Key word: voluntarily. This isn’t something that you as a service provider have direct control over. You can ask, invite, encourage–even offer to pay them for referrals–but when it gets right down to it, the only way WOM will make a big impact on a service business’s growth is if clients are so excited and thrilled about it that they proactively endorse it to their own networks.

The best strategy to maximize WOM, therefore, is to pursue activities that will create excited and thrilled clients. But not all your clients; that will simply waste resources on little or no return. Focus instead on your key clients–that 20% that Pareto’s Principle says represents 80% of your revenues–and thrill them to bits. Doing this will:

– Keep you “top of mind” with your best client advocates, which will prompt them to pass your name along.

– Motivate them to include you in opportunities, events, or activities that they might otherwise have left you out of.

– Provide you with prospects who are similar to your key clients, because people tend to connect to others like themselves.

– Make upselling and cross-selling to your key clients much easier.

There are all kinds of ways to thrill your key clients–the only limitation is your imagination. Here are some general suggestions that can be customized to fit your company’s style and the personalities of your clients:

– Create a VIP mailing list for key clients and send them offers that no one else is receiving.

– Make sure your staff gives key clients priority attention at all times.

– Refer key clients to other key clients’ businesses.

– Spotlight key clients in your newsletter by writing stories about them that relate to your own services.

– Conduct a live event (such as an executive breakfast) that brings your key clients together to discuss shared concerns or issues.

– Send handwritten notes or cards to key clients (and family members if appropriate) for birthdays, anniversaries, congratulations, or just to say thanks.

– Poll your key clients from time to time to solicit their feedback and suggestions, and make sure they know you’ve heard them and are taking action.

There are many other ways to thrill your most important clients that will motivate them to endorse your company. Weaving several tactics into a formal program that becomes “business as usual” for you will help maximize WOM and drive lots of new prospect to your door.

Trish Lambert (http://www.trishlambert.com), principal of 4-R Marketing LLC, is an experienced marketing consultant and creator of the 4-R Marketing Model for service businesses. Very much a “non-conformist” in the marketing world, Trish produces measurable results with marketing that drives revenues for her customers.

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Last year was the year of search engine marketing and the experts predict the saga is going to continue full swing until at least in 2010. When you set out to work on your site’s visibility, it is useful to know what the professionals that you cannot afford to outsource the whole headache to are up to and beat them at the game. Scanning SEO news, it’s pretty obvious that high search engine rankings still are the be-all-and-end-all of online marketing, but things are beginning to move on from here. The new buzzwords that stand out are accessibility and usability and renewed energy is poured in what are believed to be new opportunities in areas like local marketing. But how much bang for your buck will you get this time?

‘Accessibility!’. ‘Usability!’ Apparently that is what the professional SEO community is focusing on to get traffic numbers up for their clients. Evidence the popularity of these words themselves. A keyword tracking tool like wordtracker shows this in a matter of seconds. Over the last two months ‘accessibility’ has been scoring a count of 158 and usability more than double that number, 308. Not a lot of queries perhaps compared to a word like ’shoes’ or ‘digital cameras’ or any tangible product you might be selling, but then -luckily- there are not as many SEO businesses out there as shoe shops.

So how do accessibility and usability factor in SEO strategies? Is it again more of the same or are you missing out on vital elements if you simply improve on your existing optimising strategies? As your strategy for online marketing is on its way and you are getting the hang of having the right keywords to describe your business, it’s time to integrate everything yet again and focus on your site’s usability and accessibility.

Usability

What is meant by usability is generally how well a site can be navigated through links, graphics and text. All your optimising efforts should have one goal in mind: attracting customers. Does your site still provide valuable information to your human visitors now that the spiders and robots can read it? This is key, say the guys at doubleclick.com, who have got good insights on what’s going on in online marketing in a broad sense. “Personalization is the hot term for relevancy, with the goal being to intertwine search with a consumer’s daily activity. As clients become more sophisticated with increased demands, the marketplace will yield more efficient results. Technology will continue to be created to facilitate the massive amounts of data currently sorted by the engines”, they report. Perhaps it is totally obvious, but you would be surprised how many strategies fail simply on wording and text writing.

It’s no use optimising for search engines if the visitors to your site are not going to be impressed by what they read. Overly-complex phrasing will have to become a thing of the past and using common sense, neutral language will open up the content to a wider audience of search terms. It is best to get a copywriter to do this for you. If you are not sure whether your site needs a professional writer’s touch, there are some tools you can run over it to see if your linked terms actually make sense in the wider context. Throw your pages through this tool (free trial of seven days) and consider contacting a freelance copywriter for a quote if it appears your content is hampered; http://www.ezapplications.com/samples.htm.

There are millions of similar tools out there that can give you quite a good insight into your content. If you think your content is a mess, consider hiring a freelance copywriter to match content and keywords.

Accessibility Accessibility of sites is way more of a technological issue. You will have what is generally considered an ‘accessible’ website if it can be read by all browsers. Providing as much ‘access’ to your site/content as possible perhaps has a number of added dimensions that you are not aware of and it is good to pay notice to every aspect of the matching between your content and the search engines. The various limitations of browsers other than Internet Explorer and Netscape are quite distinct and need paying attention to during this stage of your optimisation efforts. For instance, the Lynx browser is a text-only browser with no support for tables, CSS, images, JavaScript, Flash or audio and video content. There are various tools that replace images in the form of ALT text, JavaScript through the <noscript> tag to counter these kinds of problems. It is generally also advised to run flash sites in HTML equivalents to work on your accessibility. You can also link to sites providing plug ins for different programmes your pages run on, such as Adobe reader and gaming programmes.</p> <p>There are two good ways you can check how accessible your website is. Simply download the Lynx browser to see if you can successfully access all your pages and download the Opera browser and follow their instructions to enhanced accessibility. Good SEOs focus on a few standard setting organisations’ guidelines, which are complex systems of rules on unifying coding. What SEOs make sure of is that users from other languages and cultures, and users of differing age groups are not excluded from your site because of some silly technical hiccups. Where an SEO says he’s making all the difference for his clients is that he has numerous checklists to make sure your business in whatever location or segment it is, is optimised. He likely will market his services saying that he will make your site more localised than your competition.</p> <p>There is a lot of scepticism on the strategies in use here and it remains to be seen whether better accessible local business site optimisation will actually translate into tangible higher Return on Investment numbers. Local search appears to be performing well for national advertisers seeking to segment markets. The local dry cleaner however doesn’t have (or probably need) a Web site so the lead is not accurately tracked, and the value remains doubtful. Don’t buy into it until you see results from comparable segments to the one you are in!</p> <p>All lists SEO’s use to make sure your site is technically kosher are likely variations in one form or another of the lengthy, prioritised in-depth checkpoints published by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a forum for information, commerce, communication, and collective understanding of the web. It can be found here: <a href=”http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/.” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG10/.</a> It is not deemed 100% fool proof, but it’s said to be Google-proof. The checklist consists of general, common-sense priorities that designers and programmers must take heed of. The bulk of the checkpoints are likely issues you’ve comply with for years already, but it’s always good to see if there’s anything new. It could give you that edge over the competition you need!</p> <p>Search engines increasingly take their lead from Google and use hyper linked text for relevancy so checking that your links make sense all the time is not a luxury but incremental for your business. Some SEOs will run software that check that if a hyperlink is removed from the text -something that easily happens in forms- and determine whether it still makes sense in the general context of your site. An SEO would replace a simple hyperlinked word like ‘more’, with a more descriptive term such as ‘more news and events’, or similar. You get the idea here.</p> <p>Source code in general is also quite important. Again, w3 sets the standard and you can run your site through their validator tool (<a href=”http://validator.w3.org/)” mce_href=”http://validator.w3.org/)” rel=”nofollow”>http://validator.w3.org/)</a> to get it analysed to see if search engine spiders/robots have any problems splitting your content/page into sections before indexing it - e.g. header, metadata tags, headings, normal text, etc. If the spider has difficulty in calculating the structure of your code, some of the text could be misclassified or omitted. Find out and optimise!</p>

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About 3 months, I came to the conclusion that I needed a little bit more cash to supplement my income. I am currently a father of 2 and my wife is a stay-at-home mother. I started surfing the web for “make money online” types of keywords and came across a few things:

1) Plenty of bogus offers guaranteeing me millions within a month

2) Affiliating Marketing offering that I will be making $500 per day almost immediately

3) Paid Surveys that are calculating: If I do 5 surveys per day at $20 each, I will make $100/day!

After reading plenty about it (through forums and articles), I chose to try affiliate marketing. At first, I went after it with the instruction of these forums and articles: I signed up for an affiliate website (Commission Junction), set myself up a GoogleAds account and went for it!…

…And lost my shirt! I spent about $200 in about 1 week on advertising and got ZERO sales. My first realization was that I really did not have a clue on what I was doing. One thing that I continued to see on many of the forums was PERSEVERANCE! My story is not a new one and the right mentality and focus are the key! At this point, I chose to get a bit of formal help through an eBook. (I chose the Life Empowered System because I like how it focused on your mental frame of mind, the technical aspects of setting up affiliate marketing campaigns, and the online email support) This helped, a lot! I solved many of my initial problems from reading the eBook alone. BUT!, it takes more than an eBook to make this work!

At this point, I dropped all of my campaigns and started again from scratch. I followed the eBook fairly closely and…
…not a single sale! Again PERSEVERANCE is the key! I continued to research what I was doing wrong and revisited the eBook many times. For every single failure so far, I know an exact reason why it did not work! Affiliate marketing IS A SKILL and it requires study and understanding to make it work! Below are some of my biggest mistakes I had made:

1) Finding AND researching your product!

The product you choose may be the MOST IMPORTANT part about this venture! Understanding your product and its market is the second most important!

2) Understanding HOW to promote your product!

The psychology behind ad-copy is quite interesting, fun and a requirement! Learning how to write an ad that people notice that makes you stand above and beyond the rest is not trivial. It requires thought and research!

3) Understanding WHERE to promote your product!

At first, I bombed with GoogleAds (for a lot of reasons, and none of them are GoogleAds fault!). Then, I even more stupidly started to SPAM people. That just made people hate me. Placing your ads in cost-effective, targeted locations is critical! If you are trying to sell acne medication and you are promoting it on American Idol websites, you will get plenty of costly clickers, but no buyers.

These are things that you learn from experience, read in online forums and articles, and explained in great depth in some of the available eBooks. If you are planning to get into this internet marketing game, be prepared for an initial upward battle, but once you reach the top, things become easier and money will ultimately start to flow! Remember PERSEVERANCE and education (on both affiliate marketing and the products you are promoting) are the keys to a successful and prosperous online money making program.

Matt is a 31 year entrepreneur from San Diego, CA. View my diary of affiliate internet blogging at:
http://Affiliate-Diary.TheWebReviewer.com

INTERNET MONEY MARKETING OPPORTUNITIES REVIEWED
— Our top three affiliate money making sites proven to work!

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Hooey! Horse Pucky! This has to be the most asinine statement to ever come out of anyone’s mouth. If you believe this nonsense then please just start writing us checks for a hefty part of your profits, because that’s what you are essentially doing.

Do you have a “George Costanza” wallet that’s obscenely thick because it’s stuffed with fifties? Do you use hundred dollar bills as fire fodder? Are you in the business of giving people ridiculous deals because you have more money than you know what to do with?

If the answer to these questions is yes then stop reading. This doesn’t apply to you.

Ahhh…still here? Figured that much - keep reading!

Let’s debunk this Tall Tale in stages.

Why can’t this be true?

If this were a true statement it would mean that people made buying decisions based on price.

BUZZZZ, wrong answer.

Never has any living human being ever made a buying decision based on price alone.

So, it’s a combination of things right?

Like price and advertising? You have the lowest price and you’ve gotten it out in front on as many people as possible, right? We think you can guess where this is going.

BUZZZZZZ, wrong again!

People don’t buy because of price and they don’t buy because of advertising. They buy because they are emotionally attached to the product, service or company.

They buy because you or your offering promises to affect them at some level of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This statement is so significant that it bears repeating. People make buying decision solely based on their emotions and Hierarchy of Needs! Yell that from the highest mountain top.

There’s a rather academic book by a gentlemen named S.I. Hayakawa entitled “Language in Thought and Action.” In this text, old S.I. discusses this concept in detail. Specifically, how language is most effective when geared toward these needs.

Survival, safety, belonging, esteem and self actualization. These are the needs I’m talking about.

Emotion in the sales process comes in many forms: emotionally committed to the product, emotionally committed to the benefits the product will deliver, emotionally committed to the sales person, the brand, the store.

There are lots of different avenues, but they all are emotionally driven. Not reason, not logic, not price, not advertising, not size, shape, color or smell. All of these things can contribute to the sales process, but they do not end with a buying decision.

People want products, services, or information that make them safer, better liked, better people, live longer, look prettier, feel better or live better.

If your offering can somehow be related to these needs, you can forget about the price - because your customer will.

Your Competition Doesn’t Have a Clue

Your competition likely doesn’t know this. By virtue of acknowledging and applying this concept, you will be scendsational.

Ever wonder how Starbucks can get $4 for a cup of coffee? As Larry David said in a “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode, “What is this, coffee and milk? Who would have thought?”

Starbucks doesn’t sell coffee. Folgers sells coffee. Starbucks sells an experience and a feeling. Because of that, they can get the same amount for a cup of coffee as Folgers does for a six pound bucket of the stuff.

Find an Emotional Attachment

Finding a strong enough emotional attachment to your product will make customers buy at any price, regardless of the competition. You also can make them emotionally committed to you.

Impossible, you say? No not really. You know the old saying “The right tool for the job” or “He’s the best person for the job?” These are clichés for a reason. They are rooted in truth.

If someone feels, without a shadow of a doubt, that you have the right “tool” or that you are the right “man for the job,” they will become emotionally committed to you and they will pay your price.

Everyone will pay a little more for the resident expert. Did you hear that? I said, pay a little more. Not pay a little less than your competitor charges. I said pay more than your competitor.

You need to be the expert. You need to establish yourself as an expert in your field…the end all, be all, of your market segment…”The Go to Guy.” People will gravitate around you and they will pay a premium just to have YOU!

How Do I Become an Expert?

So you want to be the expert? It’s not really as hard as it sounds. Jeffrey Gitomer calls it “the hard work that makes selling easy.” Pat Williams implores people to read if they want power. Even though it’s not that hard to do, 99% of the people don’t do it. Most people are lazy. All you have to do is make a commitment to combat laziness and do the simple things required to be an expert.

Read. They say if you read a book a week for 6 months you will be an expert. If you read a book a week for a year, you will be a national expert. If you read a book a week for 2 years, you will be a global expert. Of course, the books all have to be on a related topic.

When is the last time you read a book in a week? When’s the last time you read a book? Most people will not be able to answer this.

Beware! Harriet Martineau poignantly said, “Readers are plentiful, thinkers are rare.” Reading alone is not enough. You must process the information, tear it apart, and rework it into ideas of your own.

Write. Write articles, write a book, write an e-book, or write a white paper. When you write something, people start to think of you differently.

Do your competitors write? Probably not. Do they read? Not most of them. These things are the things that you can do to become an expert and blow the pants off your competition.

Do You Still Want to Sell Low Price?

Low price is for the slackers who refuse to be interested enough in their target to develop an offering that will affect them at an emotional, needs-based level. It’s for those too lazy to do the hard work (come on, it’s really not that hard) it takes to become an expert.

If you’re stuck in the price game after reading this, you may want to reread and rethink your operation.

It’s plagued you for years. The age old tale is finally set straight.

Size matters - Bigger is better. You don’t want to miss this one! It all happens in the next installment.

Jimmy Vee and Travis Miller are the authors of “The Ten Tall Tales Of Traditional Advertising That Cost You Tons” and their newest release, “The Small Business Owner’s Guide To The Galaxy: Jim & Travis’s Super-Stellar, Out Of This World, Step-By-Step Guide To Generating Leads, Attracting Customers and Making Sales.” Get FREE small business marketing tips, shortcuts and secrets - RIGHT NOW - at The Small Business Marketing Resource Site!

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Webmasters often ask if paid directory submissions worth the money? Of course the answer depends on the directory and the money.

There are two things you can get from a directory: link popularity and traffic. I don’t know of any directories that really deliver much traffic. Listings in Dmoz, and the Yahoo directory don’t even get me much traffic. Still if you’re buying a permanent listing, getting a few visits a year for 20 years isn’t so bad. There’s little doubt that this is targeted traffic.

Then you want backlinks or link popularity. This depends on the directory and the category where your listing will be placed. The structure of the directory categories will determine if your site will get a top-level listing (one or two clicks away from the homepage) or a deep listing (3 or more clicks removed from the homepage). Then it depends on the number of links on that page. Many paid inclusion directories are selling everypage links, but these are a serious link popularity drain.

So the two main problems with web directories are where your listing will be placed and how much link popularity gets passed on to your site. My solution is to submit to 300 free non-reciprocal directories (with new sites I do 100 submissions a week for three weeks) and choose several paid directories that will place my new site in a top-level category or on a page that has only a few links.

A recent case study revealed that these 300 free directory submissions, combined with one listing in a top-level category of jtrotta.com web directory and one homepage link from a related site produced, in just over a month, over 130 backlinks (according to Yahoo) and led to my site being fully indexed by Google. Search engine traffic has been good, due to high rankings in Google and MSN search results. All this would cost the average webmaster 30.00 for the 300 directory submissions, 69.90 for the top-level jtrotta.com listing, and 45.00/month for the homepage link. The best part is that it required so little of my time.

About the author: James Trotta runs the jtrotta.com web directory and a blog about buying and selling text link ads. He has been designing and marketing web sites since taking a course in educational web design in 2003.

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