Archive | July, 2018

The popularity of Yahoo Answers is huge, with many people taking advantage of the website to ask questions on just about every topic you can imagine.

Odds are there are questions being asked right now in your particular niche of expertise – so why not leverage these questions into traffic driven straight to your website?

Have you ever performed a Google search just to wind up on Yahoo Answers? This means that someone’s question and answers landed on page ONE of the natural search results, and it happens all the time. So ask yourself – what if you answered someone’s question in a professional, helpful manner, in such a way that they wanted to know more, and clicked the link you left in your answer? And what if that link lead to your website?

As you can see, this is not rocket science. It’s akin to forum posting and gives you similar results. Here are some tips to optimize the process and get the very most link juice with the least amount of time spent…

1. Always give a good answer in addition to your website’s URL. Give the answer first and offer the URL second. For example, if someone asks where to find forums in your niche, instruct them on the search term to use in Google to find the forums, and then write something like, “or you might check out www.YourOwnForum.com.”

2. Expect to receive targeted, free, high quality traffic from questions even after the questions are closed. This is because people searching both Yahoo Answers and on Google can find the questions and your answers.

3. Yahoo Answers are voted on by members to determine the best answers. Go ahead and vote on yours when the voting period for each question opens up.

4. Use the “Advanced Search” option to find the questions you want to answer. Type in your keyword, select “open questions” under question status and click the submit button. Then bookmark this page to avoid having to use the search process each time.

5. If you haven’t already spent some time on Yahoo Answers, answer 20 questions without inserting your link into your answers. This will give you enough points to reach level 2 (Yahoo Answers awards you points and status levels as you progress). Once you are on level 2, then you can begin inserting your URL into your answers. Using it right from the start may invite unwanted scrutiny.

6. Don’t be afraid to ask questions as well as post answers. It makes your activity look more natural.

7. Answer some questions that are outside of your niche and don’t leave a link. Again, it makes your activity look more natural to Yahoo. You want to appear as a helpful expert, not like someone spamming for traffic and link juice.

8. Looking for another niche for your marketing efforts? Use Yahoo answers to help with your research. Browsing the categories and finding what’s super hot may spur you to think of clever ways to exploit these niches on the fly.

9. Are you looking for information product ideas? Again, Yahoo Answers is a good place to do research and see what it is that people want to know.

10. If you have been blogging for awhile or have created content online, invite the questioner to Google your name. This lets the questioner and the readers know that you are trustworthy.

11. Be sure the link you provide relates directly to their question. Don’t give an answer about knot tying and then send them to a cooking website.

12. Invite them to contact you personally if they have further questions. This builds a relationship for future sales, and further establishes your credibility as someone who wants to help.

13. No time? No problem. Become familiar with Yahoo Answers, write down exactly what you want done, and then outsource the entire project.

Bottom Line: Yahoo Answers is a hugely popular website that search engines love – thus it can drive highly targeted traffic to your websites. And you can simultaneously further establish yourself as an expert in your niche with each question that you answer.

And don’t forget – when you have questions of your own, consider posting them to get fresh answers and feedback.

The kid who got straight A’s in school is probably the most successful person from that class, right? Actually, no. While good grades and a high I.Q. can be helpful, they not only don’t guarantee success – they sometimes hamper success.

After all, life is not school. And the skills it takes to get great grades don’t always transfer over into running a successful online business. Heck, I know people who struggled in high school and never made it to college who are pulling down 6 and 7 figure incomes online. How do they do it? By possessing the following traits…

They have the drive to succeed. How you define success will determine exactly what this means to you. Success for you might be making as much money as possible, it might be furthering a cause of yours, or it might be one of a hundred other things. Whatever it is, you’ve got to have a need to reach this success that you can feel in your bones. It should be your total focus so that your mind is constantly at work finding ways to make it happen.

They’re good at networking. Even online, or perhaps especially online, it’s important that you build relationships with your fellow marketers and your customers. And even if you’re not a born schmoozer, don’t worry – networking is a skill like any other that can be learned. Work on building yourself a large network of people you can turn to for advice, assistance and so forth, and always focus on what you can do for them.

They stay focused. Imagine you’re driving your car and you decide to go 5 different directions – at once. How far will you get? Or imagine chasing 5 different rabbits all at the same time – how many will you catch? Business is no different. Decide what you’re going to do and then do it, rather than falling for the flavor-of-the-week business idea.

They’re persistent. You’re not going to build a super-profitable business overnight. And if you’re looking at others thinking they became successful in a flash, know that in reality their success probably took years. Remember, nothing worth having comes easy, and persistence does conquer all.

They stand on their own two feet. I’ve seen people purchase a course on how to do something online, such as build a website or get more traffic. Then they bombard the author with a hundred different questions rather than figure anything out for themselves. Are they ever successful? I doubt it. Being an online marketer, or any type of entrepreneur, carries with it a certain autonomy. So don’t expect others to hold your hand.

They work first, they work hard and they play later. Sometimes MUCH later. You know those stories of working 2 hours a day and then laying on the beach? That’s for AFTER you make it big and you can hire somebody to oversee things for you. Maybe. Or even when you do make it big in online marketing, you may find that you still work hard. But either way, in the beginning you’ll be working long hours to get your business up and running. And yes, work does come before play if you want to be successful. If you want to play first, you might as well ditch the idea of being an online marketer and stick with a job.

Learn to outsource. There is only so much you can accomplish by yourself, even when you are working long hours. So yes, you’ve got to outsource. The first thing to outsource is anything you’re not good at, whether that’s website building, product creation, or whatever. Because if you’re not good as something, it makes more sense to bring in an expert than to spend weeks trying to master it yourself. Then as you begin earning more and more, you can also outsource more and more.

To be an online marketer, you don’t need to be the next Einstein. Your grades in school don’t matter a hill of beans. What DOES matter is what you do here and now. Adopt the above 7 traits and you are already halfway to growing an online business that can take care of you for the rest of your life.

You work for weeks on your latest product only to have low – or worse yet – no sales.

What happened? You did your research and analysis so you thought you knew what the market wanted. Yet your product bombed and you wasted all that time creating a dud.

Could this have been prevented? Almost certainly, and here’s how:

Once you’ve done your research and you think you know what your market wants, create a mini-product. It might be a 7 to 12 page report, or a 20-30 minute video or audio. Solve a problem in that mini-product, and create it in one weekend, or preferably one afternoon.

For example, your research tells you that gardeners are dying to know how to grow a vegetable garden on their patio. Instead of making a full blown $37 course on how to do it, choose just ONE thing – perhaps tomatoes – and create a quick product that shows them exactly how to grow luscious tomatoes in a tiny area of space. (Or some such, you get the idea.)

Now offer that mini-product for sale at a mini price. What happens? If it sells, it tells you that you are on the right track and it’s time to get to work on your big product. If it doesn’t sell, you just saved yourself a whole lot of time and effort.

And you can take this one step further. Suppose your research gave you 5 great product ideas. Which one should you pursue? Rather than guessing, create 5 mini-products that solve one problem in each area, and then see which one outsells the others. THAT’S the one you should now create a big product around.

Time saved? A lot. But just as importantly, getting that mini-product out there and selling will also give you the motivation to work hard and fast on your big product, because now you know almost for certain that it will sell and sell well.