In the recent past years Social Media Marketing and Social Media have dominated and defined Internet marketing. The popularity of social sites like MySpace and social bookmarking sites like Digg has caused this push. Social media has two main components, user generated content and the networking capability allowing you to form groups of friends and others that you can share content with.
Sites like MySpace, Zubby, and Facebook allow users to create profiles using text, videos and pictures to design their pages. These can then be shared with a selected group of other people in a special "friends" network and if the user wishes these pages can be shared over the whole social network.
Sites like Digg, Flickr, Associated Content and YouTube allow users to submit links to their favorite news articles online, pictures, articles, and videos then vote on the content that others have submitted. The most popular content is displayed on the front page of the site and the other pages are available to the general public to browse through. These drive traffic to the site and to the pages that are bookmarked.
There are many different ways to use these types of sites, either together or alone.
The use of these types of sites to promote your products and services is what is known as social media marketing. The types of traffic you get once your content is discovered and becomes well known in social media are primary traffic and secondary traffic.
Primary traffic is the direct traffic from the site that you used to make your site popular. If you are using a site that has fairly heavy traffic like Digg to promote your site you could get a large amount of traffic in a short amount of time so you need to make sure your site can handle the traffic, otherwise it may crash.
Once a site becomes popular on a social media site it gets talked about. When people talk about these sites they post links to the site which draws more traffic to the content. This indirect traffic is the secondary traffic. It is the secondary traffic that continues to flow to your site after the initial surge of direct traffic slows.
The benefits of primary and secondary traffic coming from social media sites include exposure to your site initially. Once your site is known by the general public then organic traffic will begin and repeat visitors start to show up, as long as you have something to entice them to come back.
Natural links to your site are beneficial because they are given by people or companies who have nothing to gain from your business venture. These are generally from relevant sites increasing the likelihood that visitors are going to be genuinely interested in your products and services. These links improve your search engine rankings and improve organic traffic.
Social media marketing allows your site to get exposure in a larger site and to a larger group of people. If your traffic levels off you can use social media marketing to jump start your traffic and work on taking your search engine traffic to the next level.
The alternative for increasing your search engine traffic is using pay per click advertisement. Using pay per click campaigns can help you to sustain increased traffic from the search engines but this traffic comes with a price tag.
Using social media marketing is free and can increase your traffic and your ratings in the search engines. Getting your site notices a couple times a year in the social media arena can make your site popular enough to bring in traffic throughout the year.
Don't be alarmed by the tittle of this article, it makes a good keyword with not much competition and a very good subject to talk about. A lot of people are very eager to start a business online, but they lack the product or service. Not everyone is able to create a product off of thin air. Thats why affiliate marketing hit the internet by storm. The reason why I love affiliate marketing so much is because of the training and knowledge you gain while doing it. If I ever fail in this, then it's no problem. Yes, I loose some money in advertising but think of the person who owns this product. Think of the time and effort it took him/her to start the business. Think of all the money that was spent creating it. Now think of all the money this person would loose if they were to fail. All we had to do was jump in after the business was established and advertise the heck out of it to make a sale, but how do we advertise someone elses business?
Thats why this article called affiliate marketing for dummies was created. It will be a good place to start. You won't find all the answers in here but you will gain some knowledge and I hope I give you a good direction on where to go. As you started reading this article I explained to you that "affiliate marketing for dummies" was a good keyword and I will explain to you why choosing good keywords is very important but first we will talk about finding a good business to advertise. Some of the important things I look for is how well the sales copy is written. If its written good enough to make you buy the product then you know its good. You will also want to look at the website and make sure that it looks very professional and not something that was just thrown together. You want to make sure that the company pays a good commission and that they pay ontime. Think about what they are selling and if they are onto something big, how many people need this product? Show it to some one that shares the interest as you and see if they would even purchase the product, but never base your whole decision on what this person thinks.
Once you picked the perfect product/service start thinking about how you will advertise it. I will tell you right now one of the best ways to advertise any affiliate marketing program is payper click advertising. This way you will only pay for visitors that are coming into your website, so if you don't know anything about payper click you better start learning. Once you get that down you will want to start choosing your keywords correctly. Now, this is where it gets tricky. Most people will naturally pay for broad clicks that get clicks for an entire mass audience. You are smarter than that and you know that paying for keywords such as "Internet marketing", "MLM", "affiliate marketing" "make money" will cause you to fail tremendously. There is just too much competition with those keywords and they get clicks for broad audience. You might get some people that are interested in what you have to offer but these people are also interested on what your competition is offering as well. Most of the people that search for these keywords are just curious and most of the time not serious. Then we got people who know a little bit more about choosing keywords and these type of people usually will pick keywords such as "Work from home", "healthy diet", "money from home", "fishing". These keywords are a bit more specific so it narrows it down a bit more and targets the interested party more than the others. Then we have the smart marketer that knows exactly type of people he/she wants to reach. This person will usually pick keywords that are carefully choosen to attract only those interested on what they have to offer. For example "trout fishing books", "low fat diet", "How to make money from home", "MLM vitamin business", "affiliate marketing for dummies". Now can you see why I choose the keyword affiliate marketing for dummies? These keywords don't have a lot of competition and they are very targeted. When you do a search online do you ever only type in "make money" and hit the search button? NO, you might type "how to make money from home" right? Well I know I do, I know when I'm doing a search online, I want my searches to be well related to what I type on my search box.
Well my friend, I hope this article has at least lit up some light bulbs in your head and they lead you on the path to success. Affiliate Marketing is a very tough business but don't give up. Success is right around the corner, you just have to know in what corner to look. I know you are not a dummy so get out there and make some money!
Both Kevin Sinclair & Cesar Sabillon are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
Kevin Sinclair has sinced written about articles on various topics from self improvement and motivation, Personal Development Plan and Ezines And Newsletters. Kevin Sinclair is the publisher and editor of , a site that provides information and articles on how to succeed in your own home or small business.. Kevin Sinclair's top article generates over 450000 views. to your Favourites.
Cesar Sabillon has sinced written about articles on various topics from Advertising Guide, Online Marketing and Marketing Strategies. Cesar Sabillon is in the new wave of Internet Marketers and always provides useful marketing strategies for you to use. He is now taking affiliate marketing to a whole new level so you will never make a sale for anyone but yourself. For more info visit:. Cesar Sabillon's top article generates over 1600 views. to your Favourites.