How to Setup a Winning Autoresponder Series — How to Start an Email List #4

Autoresponders are a great way to increase traffic to your site but here are some pitfalls to watch out for.  Are you making these mistakes?  Read on and let me know what you think of this article with a comment below.

Golden Rules For the Use of Autoresponders

By: Morris Clopton

Autoresponders are a perfect way to increase traffic to your site. They can save many valuable hours by automatically answering emails concerning frequently asked questions about a service or product or by sending a welcome letter to new members of your program. There are many ways that autoresponders can help your business. One of the most important is their ability to track the effectiveness of your promotions. Since autoresponders are one of the most popular marketing tools available today, they are being used by a lot of different kinds of business and websites. Some of these take advantage of the system to use the autoresponders in a negative manner. You should be aware of some of the "Golden Rules" when using autoresponders.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder Address When Submitting to Search Engines.

Since you will most likely submit your site to search engines such as Google or Yahoo!, directories, classifieds, and free for all sites, you should be made aware of the fact that these sites commonly use an autoresponder as well. If you were to use your autoresponder to contact these companies, their autoresponder will reply to yours and so on and so on. Thus creating a cycle of autoresponses that will flood your email box and theirs as well.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Subscribe to Ezines or Discussion Forums.

Since most of the time an Ezine will send you updates and new information regularly, your auto responder will send them a message each time. In a discussion forum, every person in the discussion forum will receive your auto response. This can be irritating and most of the time you will be unsubscribed. It is often hard for the administrators of the forum or ezine to determine who is using the autoresponse and therefore it is simply common courtesy to never use an autoresponer in this manner.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Take Advantage Of Unsuspecting Individuals.

Some very unprofessional companies will use autoresponders to respond to an automated message when this is done the address in the "from" field will be automatically subscribed to their mailing list. This is a extremely un ethical use of autoresponders and those who do it are in jeopardy of creating a very negative image of themselves and their company. Rather than promote their service or business, this usually leads to people becoming very upset and spreading a negative word about your company rather than a good one.

The Internet can be a great place to do business and autoresponders can be an excellent way to save time, however when used in an unprofessional way, they can lead to frustration and aggravation for others. Your company will suffer the loss of much business if you choose to participate in these abusive practices. The appropriate use of auto responders can generate a large amount of business, while inappropriate use can drive away that business.

Author Bio
Morris Clopton can help YOU start your own profitable business on the Internet within the next 24 hours... To learn more, visit: www.AchieveWealth.com/pips.html

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com - Free Website Content

Source:  By Morris Clopton

http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/website_traffic/autoresponders_golden_rules.htm

7 Steps To Running a Killer Link Exchanging Campaign – Part 1

If you want to know how to increase your traffic online by trading links with other related websites read on.  This article is in two parts.  Read steps 1 – 3 today and come back tomorrow for steps 4-7Follow these steps to avoid the pitfalls and let me know what you think of this article with a comment below.

7 Steps To Running a Killer Link Exchanging Campaign – Part 1

By: Anik Singal

It's no secret that one of the best ways to get traffic online is to trade links with other related websites. Not only does this help you get targeted traffic, but it helps with your search engine optimization as well.

Well, there's a right way to link exchange and a wrong way, if you want the most out of your linking, then be sure to follow these 7 steps:

1. Develop a spreadsheet file (in Excel) and create the following columns:

Website URL

E-mail

Contact Name

Website PR (we'll talk about how to figure this out in a minute)

Contact 1

Response to Contact 1

Contact 2

Response to Contact 2

Contact 3

Response to Contact 3

2. Finding a Website's PR.

Go to Google and download the free toolbar. This toolbar has a feature on it that will tell you the PR for any website you visit. If you plan on optimizing your website for search engines, this tool is a MUST. 

3. Choosing websites to link to.

Go to any search engine and start typing in keywords for which you'd like to rank highly. Visit each website and add them to your excel file. Once you hit 50 websites, spend some time contacting them. We recommend contacting each website personally and not using any automated software (it's very easy to see when someone uses software).

There are many programs out there that will do a mass link exchange mailing, but we strongly advise you NOT to use them (at least in the beginning). These programs can get you in a lot of trouble with SPAM laws. Also, if each email is personal, you are MUCH more likely to get a link back.

Author Bio

This article has been authored by Anik Singal, an extremely successful and young internet entrepreneur and affiliate marketing consultant. Anik has developed his own affiliate marketing system that helped him earn over $10,466 in 60 days – Enroll in his FREE course today... www.AffiliateClassroom.com/free-course.html

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com

Source: by Anik Singal

http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/website_traffic/link_exchange_campaign_ideas.htm

How to make an RSS Feed - What NOT to do with RSS

Here are some tips on what not to do with RSS feeds.  Let me know what you think and leave a comment below.

What NOT to do with RSS

By: Richard Keir

Everybody is hot on using RSS to increase their traffic, promote their sites and do their marketing. Why?

Well, it's newish - at least within the internet marketing segment. Not as new as it was a year or so ago, of course. Getting significant results is a little harder as the competition increases.

With the profusion of blogs and spam blog-pinging to attract the search engine spiders to index static pages, the utility of this approach has been seriously impaired by unscrupulous overkill.

Pinging every 3 minutes is - even to an idiot - absurd - or at least it should be. Why not just scream, "I AM AN AUTOMATED SEARCH ENGINE SPAM PROGRAM." Lovely footprint, very hard for even a seriously brain-damaged bot to identify.

Still there are a lot of sites with RSS feeds that are real feeds being produced as pages change and new content is added. So, yes, RSS feeds still work. Maybe not as fast and maybe they are less powerful than they were, but RSS remains a valid and increasingly necessary part of site promotion.

Techniques do get abused and the early rapid response tends to decline as a result. If people were a little clearer about what they're doing and why and how it all works, the frenzied search for new approaches could, perhaps, be a little less daunting. And if the quick buck artists were less successful at misleading people into doing things that are bad for everybody in the long run, then . . . but that's how it is, was, and apparently will be forever more.

One thing about a real feed - it's for more than getting bots to index your pages. If that's all you want then you can stop reading here.

For the remaining readers (if any), consider the single most critical element of any marketing or website promotion effort. You can have the most magnificent site, the greatest ever-changing content, beautiful and valid feeds in all formats -- and very little in the way of traffic. Unlike the search engines who have all those lovely spiders we are so hot to gain the attention of - most blog/RSS search engines and directories do not send out bots in search of RSS feeds.

Nope. You have got to submit to them. I know. I've done the smart thing - submit to a bunch - and the incredibly unspeakably stupid thing - letting the submissions slide because, frankly, it's a horrible boring tedious and extremely boring (did, I mention how boring it is?) job. That's not a very pretty admission, but there you are. I have a limited ability to tolerate severe boredom - even when I know I'm hurting myself.

And if you don't do the submissions, you won't get the traffic you could have. And that means fewer conversions, sales, opt-ins or whatever it is your site is about.

Ah, but there are answers to this problem. RSS submission services exist and so do RSS submission tools. In fact here's a new (still in beta) service that allows you to submit to 17 blog/RSS search engines - with more promised - for free. It's called FeedShot and you can find it at www.feedshot.com.

Now with FeedShot you need to enter each feed individually. However, with a tool like RSS Submitter you can enter from 3 (in the free evaluation version) feeds to an unlimited number in the SEO version. RSS Submitter then submits automatically to over 70 blog and RSS search directories and can also be used to do additional manual submissions with auto-form filling.

This tool is the purest gold for the serious RSS feed marketer. It works, it's easy to use and it saves you incredible amounts of time - and eliminates that nasty boring tedious repetitive work. Check it out and download a free evaluation copy through www.MarketingWithRSS.com/rss-submitter/

Just to be clear here you should realize that you can create and use RSS feeds without ever using any of the ping sites. RSS feed updates are noted by RSS readers/aggregators which check feeds for new content either on demand or on a schedule. RSS/blog search directories also check on a regular basis. Users find your feed through these directories. Again, if you want visitors, then no matter how you do it, you've got to submit.

Obviously, if your feed is produced by a blog, you'll want to notify ping sites when your content is updated. But you still need to submit the feeds. And you can also submit your blog URL to a whole host of pure blog directories, but that's a different subject.

The people who use RSS readers/aggregators in addition to or in place of a browser are the real target group for RSS marketing. When you consider how and what you want to market with RSS, keep in mind that this group tends to still be made up of relatively affluent, early adopters with some technical sophistication, a taste for new technology, a low boredom threshold and a keen appreciation of the value of their time. And don't forget to submit.

Author Bio

Richard writes, teaches, trains and consults on business and professional presentations, eCommerce related matters, RSS and more. For more information on RSS Marketing - www.MarketingWithRSS.com/blog and on eCommerce sites and eCommerce site building - www.building-ecommerce-websites.com

Article Source: http://www.ArticleGeek.com

Source:  by Richard Keir

http://www.articlegeek.com/internet/rss_articles/what_not_to_do_with_rss.htm