Never Write A Newsletter Again: Solicit Articles
by James D. Brausch
http://www.QuitThatJob.com

It's really pretty simple. The only hard part is
setting up formmail.pl.

If you already know how to setup formmail.pl, then just
copy the article submission form from the bottom of the
following page and change the "to" email address to your
own:

http://www.AtHomeBusinessPortal.com/newsletters

If you don't yet know how to setup formmail, this is a
chance to learn. Here is the URL to download this free
script and set it up:

http://www.scriptarchive.com/formmail.html

Basically, this is a generic script that allows you to set
up a form on your site and have the results sent to your
email address. You can use it for your newsletter signup
form, your "Add URL" form and for soliciting article
submissions.

Once you have your form setup and tested, be sure to keep
track of the authors who submit. A friendly email to them
on a monthly basis asking for more articles is a good idea.

If you don't want to mess around with learning formmail
right now (and I don't blame you; I only learned a couple
months ago), it is very inexpensive to find someone to do
it for you. Here is an option for you:

Post your project to Elance.com. This is kind of overkill
for such a small project, but it's an option. If you have
other work to hire out to Elance, you can bundle this in
with it.

Now just sit back and relax. You will be amazed at how
quickly you start getting submissions and how many you
receive.

Eventually you will receive enough submissions to this
form that you will never have to write another article for
your newsletter if you don't want to.

The author, James D. Brausch, is the coach and webmaster
of QuitThatJob.com, a site dedicated to providing step-by-
step instructions to start your own profitable Internet
business and Quit That Job! For more info, please visit:
http://www.quitthatjob.com.

Selling Traffic
by James D. Brausch
http://www.QuitThatJob.com

Are you an affiliate of Commission Junction, Clickbank
or another network or individual program? If you are,
you are already in the traffic selling business. You
are selling traffic in return for commissions when a
sale is made (or a lead generated).

So, why should you expand to selling traffic directly?
There are several reasons:

1. You get the email address of any customers who buy
directly from you. You don't get the email address of the
customer you send the traffic through an affiliate link.
The merchant does. With that email address (and the
customer's name), you can send them other offers in the
future. Your customer list is priceless for this reason.
You can never have a customer list unless you sell
something yourself.

2. Selling traffic is residual. Once you make a customer
happy, they will pay you month after month and you never
have to do any more work. Residual income is very nice!

3. There are a limited number of affiliate relationships
that are possible within your market (ie: the subject of
your site) using just affiliate programs. So; how can you
expand? By selling traffic directly.

4. You don't have to wait for a sale. Generally, you will
be selling traffic on a flat rate basis (flat charge per
month) or on a PPC basis (pay per click). So, you don't
have to wait for the merchant to make a sale; you just
have to deliver what you promised. It is up to them to
convert the traffic (although you do need to keep your
traffic very high quality to get long-term repeat
customers).

5. You will be building a customer base which just happens
to be other webmasters in your subject area. Once they
are your customers, they will be very open to joint
ventures with you.

OK; so you agree... You should be selling traffic
directly. Let's get started. First you need to decide
how you want to sell traffic. Here are some options that
I recommend (in order):

1. You can sell links at a flat rate every month. A
popular way to do this is to sell a link at the very top
spot in one of your directories for $5/month. If you have
100 directories, your potential monthly income from this
type of sale is $500/month! If you have 10 sites, that's
$5,000 per month. An advantage to this type of traffic
sale is that you don't need to track the traffic you
send. You just put their link in the top spot and leave
it there as long as they pay $5/month (or whatever rate
you decide to charge monthly).

2. You can sell links in your directory for a flat rate
per click. We do this for 10 cents per click. To do
this, you will need a tracker program. We have used
OrbitCycle.com and highly recommend them.

3. You can sell your home page for a flat rate per month
or per click. We do this for 15 cents per click on our
sites.

Now, you need a way to collect the money. I think the
easiest way is PayPal. They have a subscription program
where they will automatically deduct the $5/month (or
whatever you want to charge) monthly from your customer's
account.

Another option is to get your own merchant account and
shopping cart. I recommend this long-term because a
higher percentage of webmasters will purchase from you if
you have a real merchant account and shopping cart. For
now, PayPal is fine.

That's all there is to it. Before you carry on with the
rest of today's work... Get a page on each of your sites
offering to sell whatever forms of traffic you decide.

The author, James D. Brausch, is the coach and webmaster
of QuitThatJob.com, a site dedicated to providing step-by-
step instructions to start your own profitable Internet
business and Quit That Job! For more info, please visit:
http://www.QuitThatJob.com/

Developing Traffic By Exchanging Links
by James D. Brausch

Exchanging links with sites of a similar topic is one of the most effective free forms of advertising I have ever found. It really is the most direct way to improve your web presence. This is the nature of the Internet... The more paths you have to your site, the more traffic you will have. The more traffic you have, the more sales you will make. The more sales you make, the more profit you will earn.

Here's the step-by-step method that I started with:

1. Create a spreadsheet. Keeping track of 5,000-10,000 sites when you solicit a link exchange is mind boggling.
Your spreadsheet should have the following columns:

a. Site URL.

b. Topic in your directory

c. Webmaster name

d. Webmaster email address.

e. History of email exchanges with this webmaster

2. Visiting each website and looking for contact information. You may also want to look to see if they have a link directory and read their directions for exchanging links. You may not be able to get the webmaster's name at this point. If so, that's OK. Just fill it in as soon as you know it (usually from the answer to your first email).
Once you know their name, always use it in every email after you know it.

3. Write the webmaster an email similar to the following:

Hi {webmaster's name here},

I just added a link to {insert the url to their website here}. I really enjoyed visiting it and think it will be a great resource for the visitors to my website. I especially liked {insert something very specific that you liked about their website here}.

You can find your link on my site here:
{insert the exact URL to the page on your site where you are linking to them}

I would really appreciate a link from your website to mine. Here is a page with information on how to link to me:
{insert the URL to your "Add URL" page here}

In any case, please let me know if you want me to make any changes to your link on my website. Also, since we both have websites of the same topic, please let me know if there is any other way we can help each other. I look forward to hearing from you.

Regards,
{your name}

Keep track of all correspondence in your spreadsheet. You will have much better luck with getting inbound links if you keep track of what they have said previously. Make any requested changes and thank them even if they don't offer a
return link. Often times, they will do so at a later time
if you leave a favorable impression.

When you are finished with all 5,000-10,000 links in your directory, you should have at least 250 inbound links to your site. On average, you can count on at least one daily visitor per inbound link. That means you should have at least 250 people visiting your site on a daily basis now.
That is the low end. Typically, you will have 500-1,000 inbound links at this point, and if you were very careful to be patient and responsive to every email, you may have as many as 1,500 inbound links at this point.

This is the point where I usually stop a Link Exchange campaign for a particular site and sit back and enjoy it.
With that much traffic, it will grow on it's own and other people seek you out for link exchanges.

The author, James D. Brausch, is the coach and webmaster of QuitThatJob.com, a site dedicated to providing step-by-step instructions to start your own profitable Internet business and Quit That Job! For more information, please visit:
http://www.quitthatjob.com/