Yeah, I know this is my affiliate site for Muscle-Build.com products. You're supposed to pre-sell my products (not sell them) and I'm supposed to do the selling.

I get that.

But I also know that many of you might want to tackle creating your own products and in so doing, you'll need to learn how to write your own copy (or pay somebody else to do it).

I just got hold of a nifty set of videos that shows you exactly how a top copy writer writes sales letters that convert like crazy. I won't sell it to you here – check it out here on Internet Marketing Muscle. Buy it there for a ridiculous price. You won't find a better deal on step-by-step videos that show you exactly how to write copy that sells.

Plus, it comes with resale rights.

• Building community
• Distributing presell content
• Growing your list
• Mobilizing your affiliates
• Monetizing the design elements
• Establishing a brand
• Creating loyalty and credibility

The list could go on and on.

If you have a blog, then one of your biggest obstacles to using it effectively is promoting the blog, i.e., generating traffic.

[If you don't have a blog, then it's past due ... it should immediately leap to the top of your "to do" list.]

Jimmy D. Brown just released a new 23-page report that you can download below at no charge.  It's entitled, "30 Minutes Per Day Blog P.R.O.M.O." and in it you'll learn how to drive traffic to your blog in about half an hour per day.

The report reveals a different daily strategy to implement for each of the five workdays.

You can download it immediately at…

http://affiliates.muscle-build.com/go/blog-promo/

There are no lists to join.  No hoops to jump thru.  Visit the site and click on the download link. End of story.

However, this free offer will permanently "retire" on Friday, April 9 at 10PM CDT.  At that time it will be removed from the Internet and will no longer be available for download.

I'm going to tell you, in a nutshell, how that system works. I cannot give you all of the details, but I can certainly give you the 30,000 foot view.

The basic premise is that you get a lot of links and they're all inter-related. You also use RSS feeds from those links and get links to them.

Here is the overview:

1. Create an article or post on your site.
2. Create another article or post on a blogging platform like Blogger or Wordpress (the free kind) with a link embedded to the post in #1.
3. Create another article or post on a different platform with 2 links – one to #1 and one to #2.
4. Keep on creating articles with links embedded to #1 and the article you just created.
5. Complete the loop by creating an article or post in one last platform with 2 links – one to the original and another back to #2.

I suggest you do this with 8-10 articles. I know, sounds like a lot of work. But the crux is the backlinks, not the length of the articles, if you catch my drift. The purpose is not to generate traffic but to get the backlink.

This technique is known as a linkwheel.

Then, after that is done, you submit all those articles to social networking sites like twitter, Facebook, digg, StumbleUpon, DropJack, and Diigolet (to name a few).

The "super bonus" follow up technique is to then take the RSS feeds from all of these sites and submit them to the RSS directories. More on that later.

It is truly a "complete" online business builder, offering not only site building and hosting, but domain name registration, the best brainstorming and niche-finding tools, as well as a comprehensive guide to building your online business.

It does NOT promise overnight riches; though, judging by the testimonials, there are quite a few folks earning a living with the sites they've built with SBI. In fact, I use it for Muscle-Build.com.

I will admit that I don't use it for most of my other sites, like Hardgainer Manifesto and The Muscle-Build.com Blog. It is pricey; however, for building your very first web site, it is the perfect companion. If you just follow the Action Guide, you will lay a solid foundation on which to build the rest of your online business.

Additionally, SBI covers blogging, building traffic, monetizing your site, sitemaps, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), among many other useful and overwhelming tasks. Give it a look. You will be blown away by all it has to offer. I simply cannot tell you everything it does; it's just too much to list. And it's been invaluable in giving me a start on the muscle-building niche.

By the way, I do nearly nothing, other than tweeting the occasional page, for Muscle-Build.com – and I'm getting over 15, 000 visits a month. So somehow it magically builds traffic, too.

Site Build It

1. Monetize. Get more (or some!) revenue out of each post.
2. Capture Leads. Encourage a visitor to subscribe to your mailing list.
3. Improve Relevance. Provide an improved user experience for all.
4. Make it Rank Better.  Doing on-site and off-site optimization will help specific money pages to rank better on the search engine result pages.

Each is a great reason for optimizing your most popular pages. Give it a read and try to implement the suggestions. They're worth doing.

If you have a WordPress-based blog, I suggest that you modify your ping list to something more robust than the measly default list WP gives you. I'll share my ping list with you in another post. Keep your eyes peeled for that.

I also encourage you to install the Ping Optimizer plugin. It will keep you from pinging too much, which can get you banned from various sites.

If you're familiar with weight training, you've probably heard of the "5×5" system. It's a weight training system where you do 5 sets of 5 reps for each exercise. There are various ways to implement it, but the goal is the same – improved strength and size.

I do something very similar with building backlinks. I try to get 5 links from 5 different methods, every single day until I feel comfortable with the results. It all kind of depends on the niche, my competition, and how willing I am to keep at it day after day (I'm being honest here – I didn't get into this business to work harder than I did in the "real world").

1. I go to 5 blogs and make 5 on-topic comments. I only make comments on blogs where my name serves as a hyperlink. If the commenting system allows you to input your website address ( URL), then your name will serve as a hyperlink to your site. I try to get a mix of on-topic and off-topic backlinks.
2. I submit my site to 5 directories. Here's a good list – Directory Maximizer
3. I use Angela's Backlinks and get 5 links. I've found this service to be invaluable. Angela finds about 30 high PageRank website and shows you how to get a backlink from each (hint: to make things way less cumbersome, use RoboForm).
4. I submit my site (could be the root-level domain or a particular page/post) to 5 social media sites (examples include twitter, Facebook, digg, Reddit, and Dropjack).
5. I create 5 articles and post them to a popular article directory. There is conflicting advice on this one on the 'net. Some say to use original content; others say it's okay to use your existing content (content already published on your site). I have seen no evidence of the latter being detrimental. However, what I do is I submit the original article to an article directory (Searchwarp.com is my favorite because they approve quickly and your article gets indexed very fast) and then repost that article on my site. After all, that is one of the dual purposes of article directories – the idea is that others are free to use your content on their sites with attribution to you, giving you a backlink in the process.

That's it. There is one super strategy that I'll partially share with you in a subsequent post. I say partially because it's not originally my idea and I paid to get full access to it – I suggest you do the same. Hint: It's called Backlink Flood if you want to get a jumpstart – it's the easiest free method for getting a ton of backlinks.

By the way, this "find" leads me to another thought – I "found" this article through the Comments section of another blog I run (the Muscle-Build.com Blog) – the author of the comment is the man behind SEM Labs. You NEVER know what you're going to find in your Comments (so check them – they sometimes are GOLD)!

Of course, you don't want thousands of people flooding your website and never buying. But look at the alternative: Zero visitors and zero purchases. Which would you rather have?

If you create compelling content (i.e., a reason for people to read your posts), you will find buyers who keep coming back.

So how do you get people to come to your site?

There are 2 main ways to drive traffic to your site. One way is to pay for it with cold, hard cash. Cash that you probably don't have because you're just starting out. We'll explore paid traffic in a future post. But it's really for experienced marketers who have some money to invest and time to spend learning how to do it properly.

The second way to attract traffic is the free route. It's really not free, however. You're just spending time (which you have more of) instead of money (which you don't have).

However, there are some free methods for driving traffic to your site that give you a really good bang for your time buck.

One thing you should embed in your head is this: EVERY time a visitor visits your site, it's from a referral.

Think about that for a minute. Let it settle in. Visitors don't randomly type in your URL. They see it somewhere. It could be from:

• Google, Yahoo, or Bing (or another search engine).
• Another website. The author may like your site or a particular post and linked back to your site. He may have linked to your site in a post or he may have liked your site so much that he put you on his blogroll.
• You may have made a comment on another site and the reader of that site wanted to know more about you or your site.
• A visitor may have found you in a Directory. There are directories all over the web, from places like Yahoo, Google, and other search engines to site directories to niche directories.
• The visitor may have found your site through a forum. Perhaps you made a good post or answered a question and the visitor wanted to get more familiar with you.
• Perhaps your visitor found you on twitter, Facebook, or some other social media site.
• Article directories. Did you know you could post articles on ezinearticles.com, goarticles.com, and Searchwarp.com with links back to your site? These directories get loads of traffic and it's not too difficult to get these pages indexed and ranked on the search engines. Plus, depending upon the rights you give, other website authors may post your article on their sites with links back to your site (they have to attribute the content to you or else they're guilty of violation of the TOS of the article directories as well as plagiarism).
• If you participate in blog carnivals, you can attract visitors to your site if you post compelling content.
• If you run a blog, your RSS feed might be picked up by a feed directory and visitors may find you through this route.

There are many more ways to attract visitors with free methods like this. These are just a few of the big ones – these offer a huge bang for your time buck.

Just note that all of these backlinks do not happen by accident. You can strategically place backlinks on other people's sites through various methods, such as by making forum posts, submitting comments on other blogs, creating your own blog that links back to your main site, or by submitting your articles to directories.

You can learn more about these methods by picking up a copy of Guaranteed Free Traffic System. This inexpensive report will give you the tools and knowledge you need to build a lot of targeted traffic to your website.

Of course, I will make specific posts in the future about various tactics and strategies that will build your web traffic.

I know that when I started this internet business, I had a difficult time deciding whether I should sell my own products or sell other people's products. Let me tell you – marketing for others is far easier and just as lucrative – if not more so – than creating your own products.

There are many advantages of affiliate marketing – here are some of the benefits.

• There is no need to create a product. You simply make mention of an existing product, place an affiliate link, and move to the next promotion. Remember your high school term papers? How much you procrastinated? How you abhorred them? It's the same with creating a product. Plus, people look to you as an expert, so you'd better deliver expert-quality content. No more "mailing it in."
• Speaking of mailing, there is nothing to ship. Every part of the sales transaction is handled by the product creator. You write your product review, a user clicks your link and he buys the product at the vendor's site. Everything from then on is taken care of by the vendor.
• You don't have to deal with customer support issues. The product creator handles all of this.
• There is no "inventory." Many products sold on the internet are digital in format, but even the physical products like books and CDs are shipped out of the vendor's inventory. There is no need for you to store anything at all.
• You don't have to assemble a sales force – YOU are the sales force. In order to be successful, an internet marketer who's created a product needs to develop a sales team of eager affiliates (people like you). It's not easy. For one thing, there are tons of products to sell – why should an affiliate pick yours? In order to lure potential affiliate marketers, product vendors often have to offer very high commissions (50, 75, or even 100 percent!). You reap these rewards by simply pre-selling the product for the vendor, who then takes in 50, 25, or 0 percent of the sales price.
• You don't have to create any sales pages, set up elaborate sales funnels, or configure shopping carts or other sophisticated (and complicated) sales systems.

As you can see, there are many benefits of being an affiliate marketer. Of course, you need to get eager buyers to your site to click your affiliate link. Traffic building will be the subject of a future post.