When I first started out on Twitter, I remember being absolutely astounded at the sheer amount of users trying to make you buy products that would supposedly make you “God of Twitter.”

Now, as I have developed my own method for gaining followers, and thus status & power on Twitter, I have seen my account even more preoccupied with Twitter-based profit schemes. It seems that the more affiliate followers I pick up, the more Twitter promoters I am seeing! These programs don’t work, are overpriced, and need to be stopped.

I am so frustrated with the millions of promoters for hundreds of Twitter “miracle systems” out on the internet. :devil: Because of this, I’ve developed a method that works just as well… and is almost fully automated… that you can get without downloading anything, without signing up to any newsletter and without paying!

Why am I doing this for free?
Well, because I’m so darn foolish!

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Check out our other posts on traffic techniques for more ways to boost your traffic!

When Really Simple Syndication (RSS) was first created, many thought that it was little more than a gimmick… and could never possible prove to be of much value to site owners. As time has gone by, RSS has become an industry standard across the board, and NOT using one can really damage your viability. Not only is it ultra-useful, but it can be pretty darn valuable if used correctly. Let’s walk through some ways you can make your RSS feed bring in traffic!

Getting Your Blog an RSS Feed…

To take advantage of the tricks we outline here, you are going to need an RSS feed. I am 100% behind a service called FeedBurner, which is an RSS service used by almost all of the pros out there. If you already have an RSS feed through your blog system (WordPress, Blogger, MovableType, etc.), it’s really easy to sign up and convert your blog to a Feedburer feed. Best of all? It’s 100% free!

If you own a website that does not have a built-in RSS module, you will have to manually convert everything that you write into an XML format so that it can be picked up by an RSS reader. This is definitely possible, but will be a bit tedious. You can find out how this all works here: About RSS. Once you get your RSS up in basic XML format, again just convert it to a Feedburner feed and you are good to go.

Trick One: The Nature of RSS

Our first traffic technique is to simply use RSS as the tool it was designed to be: an easy way to encourage visitors to come back to your website. I wanted to mention this method because it is simply an obvious way to get users back to your blog. When you own a website, you want to not only be able to get loads of traffic, but you want your users to like your content enough to come back again and again. This is the magic of RSS feeds. They allow your users to have an easy method to see when you are updating your content, and it gives them the opportunity to check out your latest articles any time you add a new RSS feed item to your blog. Use the nature of RSS to promote your blog and add some traffic by getting your users to subscribe and generate hits every day to your website!

Trick Two: Add Your Feed to a Squidoo Lens

Do you have your own Squidoo lens? A Squidoo lens is a lot like a Wikipedia page, but is much easier to get approved… in fact, it’s downright automatic! If you aren’t capitalizing on the SEO and traffic benefits to operating Squidoo lenses, than I want to seriously encourage you to get on the bandwagon and start promoting your material. Don’t know how to profit from Squidoo? Check out this post on Garry Conn about Making Money with Squidoo.

One way to capitalize on your RSS feed is to add it to all of your Squidoo Lenses. Not only is it super easy, a virtual “set and forget” method to traffic, but you can get potential hits every day to your website. The more Squidoo pages you have, the more recurring traffic every day! Here are the steps to add an RSS feed to your Squidoo lens:

1. “Edit” your Squidoo lens
2. “Add Module” to your page
3. Use the “Add Your Own Feed” feature

Once you have added your RSS feed to your Squidoo, you should modify a few of the settings to be able to take full advantage of the SEO and traffic synergies going back and forth. Specifically, you need to go in and edit the title of your new module, changing it to a keyword phrase or a title filled with keywords. Then, you should add a description, and set the RSS tracker to pull your feed as frequently as they allow you to do this. Once you have the settings the way that you feel best with, hit save… and relax, you’re done!

Trick Three: Submit your RSS to Multiple Feed Directories

Much like there are directories around the internet to promote your website, there are also many services that focus on promoting RSS feeds by themselves for added traffic. Because there are literally a hundred services, I am not going to list all of them here. Instead, here are a few of my favorites, and the more popular places:

• RSS Network
• Syndic8
• DayPop
• Feedster
• Feed Beagle

You can get a massive list of places to submit your blog at RSS-Specifications.com, which runs a huge constantly-updating roster of the best websites for submitting your blog and rss feed url. Additionally, you could pay for a service called RSS Submit to do all of this in an automated fashion, which could save TONS of time and effort.

Bottom Line: You can really turn your RSS feed into a traffic goldmine if you use the methods above, and perhaps more useful tricks to getting all you can out of your feed. Anyone have another way to get added exposure with RSS? Post your idea or link below (no spamming!), and we’ll include you in the next update!

-The Net Fool

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Welcome back to another great tip for getting traffic to your blog, as a part of our Traffic Week here at theNetFool.com. If you’d like to find some more great tips, check out the other articles!

I’ve recently come across a very interesting new way to get traffic that exploits the difference between buying from a physical store, and buying from an online retailer. What do I mean? Imagine that you are in a book store, lets say it is a Barnes and Noble, and you want to buy a book. Your options could be to check out the cover, read the testimonials on the back, flip through the pages, and read a few paragraphs. The point is, with a physical store, and a physical book, you have your options to know whether or not you would like to buy the novel.

Much online a physical book retailer, with the online world… people aren’t always so sure of what they want to buy. You can look at the average user rating or the relative popularity of the title, but is it really for you? In today’s world, a wide majority of consumers will use user reviews to gauge whether or not they are going to want to buy it. One of the best programs for this, and a top seller of books online, is Amazon.com.

Why Amazon.com is Great for Traffic

So we have discovered first off that reviewing books is an important business that many people will rely on before making that final yes/no decision on a new title. How can you profit off of this? Become a book reviewer for Amazon.com! At Amazon, anyone can become a book reviewer, and you’ll get that review posted at the bottom of every sales page for things you have reviewed. Better yet, you will get your own unique homepage with all of your book reviews listed neatly on it, as well as a link back to your home page (what we are REALLY interested in!). Getting to the top of the reviewers page is an important trick that can net you TONS of traffic if done correctly. I know that I always read the reviews on Amazon before buying a product, and the same goes for a majority of interested shoppers.

Sounds Great, But How Do I Get Ranked?!

Much like YouTube or Digg, your ranking is going to effect how well your reviews are placed relative to other book reviewers on Amazon. The ranking system is all based upon two factors: number of reviews, and average helpfulness. One of these you can control, the other… not so much. What you CAN do is throw up a whole bunch of reviews on some top-selling books. I recommend only reviewing top ranking books because those are the links that will get you traffic over the long term. Furthermore, you should be reviewing books that are close to your niche interest. For example, if I am in finance, I won’t review books on gardening. This is mostly common sense, but the bottom line is that the more you review… the higher your ranking will be. Simply click the “Write a Review” button on the bottom of any book page, and you are on your way!

Your “helpfulness” is really nothing more than a quality ranking. If your review is especially good, you will be rewarded (hopefully) by a third party user upping your ranking here. This is weighted quite a bit more than your number of reviews, but will be significantly hard to achieve because it is entirely unpredictable. One tactic could be to write a review and have your friends mark it down as helpful themselves.

How to Eek Out the Most Traffic

Here are my top ten methods to getting the best amount of traffic from Amazon’s book review:

• Review Books in Your Niche
• Keep Your Reviews Short (100-300 words)
• Make Your “Reviewer” Page In-Depth and Interesting
• Tell People Why You Are Qualified (On Your Profile Page)
• Be Specific, Give Useful Critique
• Don’t Pump Out “Fluff” or Worthless Reviews
• Review as Much and as Often as Possible
• Encourage Others to Mark Your Review as Helpful
• Stick to Areas and Books that You Know
• Write Posts with Authority!

So there you have it, ten great ways to boost your traffic with Amazon.com Book Reviews, a method that is largely under-used in the industry… and one that should be especially noteworthy. I highly recommend that you experiment with reviewing books online, as it can actually be a huge traffic source. Better yet, if you do it correctly, everyone coming to your blog will be people that like to read, and are interested in your topic area… the perfect combination for a long-term subscriber!

-The Net Fool

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Welcome to the first of many posts, brought to you exclusively from theNetFool.com, focused on getting the maximum amount of traffic to your website or blog. You can access all of our traffic tips by checking out our traffic techniques section of the blog.

Today, I’d like to talk about one of the increasingly popular methods of funneling thousands upon thousands of unique visitors to your website or blog. Video marketing is a technique that has been historically thought of as a bit too under-developed to really work. However, over 2008 and onward into 2009, site owners have not only seen video traffic become a viable resource for new visitors, but it has become an accelerating traffic trend that has made many entrepreneurs millionaires overnight.

Why is video marketing, or even video blogging (vlogging), such a great alternative to plain ol’ text anyway? I have found that with video, not only do you have your content on your website, but you can have your thoughts, opinion and brand name spread all over the internet… we’re talking embedded on random websites and streamed from the source. Video blogging has caught some major traction as of late, and using video to market your website has become just as popular.

There are two primary means that I see as extraordinarily useful in video marketing to gain traffic: search engine optimization, and YouTube popularity. Let’s dissect each method and get you in the know.

Video Marketing for Search Engine Optimization

Many search engine optimization professionals pour hundreds of dollars into getting top-tier placements in the Google search engine for various keywords. I would have to say that one of the roots of internet marketing is in obtaining high Search Engine Results Pages (or “SERPs”), so that your website is one of the top search results for relevant common phrases that people search through on a daily basis. Gone are the days that content-rich websites rule the boards here… it’s been typical now to see videos appear as the #1 or #2 results under high-powered keyword search results.

HINT: You MUST have a link back to your site in the “description” section of all videos!

How can you use video marketing to get that high search engine result? There are plenty of ways… and I would recommend promoting your videos just like anything else that you would. This means creating articles and using article marketing to target the keywords that you think will hit for your video. Additionally, you could create some profiles on places like HubPages and Squidoo to get more links pointing to your video. There are ton’s of methods that all involve getting extra links to your video, and you always want to link up to the video using a targetted search term that both lacks competition and has plenty of search volume. Heck, if you’d like to learn a bit more about “friendly marketing,” check out the article I wrote a while back on some ordinary methods to get extraordinary traffic.

Finally, by getting enough backlinks to your video, you will start to appear on organic Google search engine results. With this, you’ll start seeing the traffic roll in! Need a hand? I actually use a program called Video Post Robot to get my video uploaded to dozens of video-upload websites (i.e. YouTube, MetaCafe, etc.) at once!

Getting Noticed Through YouTube

Yes, I have YouTube as an entirely separate entity for getting traffic to your website. Why? Well, it is really like the difference between getting a high search engine result on Google versus Yahoo or MSN… it’s the king! With over 60 million unique viewers every month, rest assured that YouTube commands something like 90-95% of the online video scene. YouTube is optimized for 18 different languages and has a large presence in the Asian marketplace… not only this, but it’s the fourth most popular website in the entire U.S! What this means is that you can get an insane amount of traffic to your website if you have a popular video on YouTube (with a link in the video’s description to your website, of course), so let’s see how we do this!

Getting lots of hits on YouTube is easiest done if you can land a video on the front page of YouTube. There is a specific algorithm that determines which videos make it, and it is largely based on the videos that gets the most views, favorites and comments. Again, getting on the front page isn’t the only way… but it certainly makes it easier!

First off, your video needs to be new and fresh. Much like any social bookmarking service like Digg.com, YouTube will give your video a higher ranking if it is brand new… because it is seen as more relevant and well-liked. Therefore, I would actually recommend re-submitting your video to YouTube if you don’t hit it off right from the start. This is an area that video has a huge advantage, because no service can track whether you are re-submitting the same video correctly… whereas re-submitting a text article to a network is caught easily.

Next, you should focus on creating a power profile. When YouTube determines which videos will appear on their front page, it is typically a function of how popular said user’s profile is. How many friends have you made on YouTube? How popular are your videos typically? It will be much easier for a consistent user to get a video on the front page of YouTube than one that just signed up… though not  impossible.

Finally, from each visitor that you get to your video, you should ask them to favorite it, comment on it, and rate it five stars. These ratings aren’t just imaginary… and they are actually used to determine the popularity and relevance of various videos. Not only will this help for the front page of YouTube.com, but it will rank you up higher in YouTube’s own video search system. Nobody knows for sure which is more heavily weighted (views, favorites, ratings or comments), so make sure that you go for all four!

How can you get traffic to your YouTube video to make it all possible? Again, there are literally hundreds of marketing methods… so it is up to you to decide. I would recommend to start by simply sharing the link with your friends. Then, you could even use a different social media website (Digg or StumbleUpon are my favorites here) to link up to the YouTube video and get a rush of traffic when you need it most.

Bottom Line: Video marketing is an increasingly popular way to get tons of traffic and popularity to your website. Even if the video isn’t originally hosted on your site, having a third party directing loads of traffic your way can be a huge boost to your daily traffic… and is typically a method that also will rank high in Google. There’s no two bits about it: the future of the internet is in interactivity and video, so get in on it while the industry is relatively young!

-The Net Fool

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