So you’ve got a few online business ideas you’d like to execute. Or you may want to make money blogging. If you’re an online entrepreneur or hoping to become one, you may want to read about some of the web marketing strategies I’ve learned through the years.

I’m going for something a bit different today, which is to touch a little upon the subject of online business, since it has such a big impact on me. After all, it’s my livelihood! My introduction into the world of the internet along with its opportunities, rewards and promises was all a serendipitous accident that befell me, a few years ago. And it’s changed the course of my work life tremendously.

Earlier on, I had the chance to touch the surface of how to start an online business; this time around, I’d like to explore the things that online business owners can do to help promote or market their business. Being more of a technical person, I’ve found this aspect of business as something brand new, so there was a lot I had to learn over the years.

When it comes to trying to earn money online, we’ve got two goals: it really boils down to figuring out ways to monetize your site as well as building traffic for it. Well, the latter goal — figuring out how to get visitors to your site and how to attract customers — is where this article comes in.

10 Web Marketing Strategies For Online Business Owners

The following are some ideas for promoting your site. Here’s some disclosure though — these are all just suggestions, not all of which I’ve tried. Also, some ideas are tailored to general web businesses, and may not necessarily apply to blogs (but most do).

1. SEO or Search Engine Optimization

What I didn’t realize when I first started blogging was just how important this thing called search engine optimization would be to any site. In fact, I started blogging with no clue what SEO meant (have a laugh at my old tongue-in-cheek post on how to promote your site). I’d rather avoid getting into details here because there are tomes and sites out there that discuss this stuff to no end; instead, I’d rather just say that SEO is what you need to get ranked in search engines and ultimately to gain traffic via search.

2. SEM or Search Engine Marketing

Another way to get traffic is to buy advertising. Some people I know have been trying out Google Adwords for this purpose, where they hope to snare some customers who end up clicking the ads they take out. Others do direct advertising in highly popular sites, but be sure to read Google’s policies for doing this sort of thing. You can also check out Microsoft adCenter, which costs only $5 to sign up, or Yahoo!’s Small Business resources or Search Engine Marketing program.

3. Press Releases

A more traditional way to attract eyeballs is by doing press releases.  You can sign up to services that can prepare press releases for you, or depending on the type of business you have, you may want to cross over by doing “real world” activities that attract offline customers to your site. For instance, you could sponsor an event in your local area or support a neighborhood sports team as a way to promote your business. Or get in your local papers by offering a nice donation to a cause. There are many ways to generate buzz and you may want to try thinking outside of the box to see what methods stick best for your site.

4. Content in Various Forms (Interviews, Podcasts, Guest Articles)

Again, if you want to drum up buzz and give your site more authority, then you can extend your reach by creating interviews, podcasts, guest articles hosted on other sites, and whatever else you think can give your site some attention. The thing is, unless you’ve got a team of people supporting you, this stuff can get pretty time-consuming. But if you’ve got the resources, this could be a pretty effective strategy. Here’s one more tip: of you’re looking to share content with other sites, you’ll have to be careful not to go on a spamming spree or you risk becoming an annoyance. Make sure your content is a fit for places where you intend to host them.

5. Giveaways, Freebies, Coupons and Discounts

You can also host giveaways and freebies from your site, or offer coupons and discounts if you are selling a product. I’ve got a friend with an absolutely awesome Etsy store. She regularly gives away her jewelry to some lucky customer as a way to market her store.

6. Affiliate Programs

Would you like to have blogs and other content publishers write about you? Why not set up your own affiliate program? As a form of internet marketing, you can offer to pay someone else to promote your product or service through an affiliate set up. For each person they send to your doorstep (who successfully signs up to your service or purchases a product), give them a little reward. Lots of bloggers live for that payout!

7. Social Networking and Social Bookmarking

Certain sites house large communities that you may want to explore. If you feel you can tap Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace, you can spend some time and effort developing your profiles here. There are also places like Squidoo or HubPages that allow you to build profiles and pages that promote your stuff. For content rich sites, you can leverage social bookmarking sites that are pertinent to your content. For financial bloggers like me, we’ve got sites like Tip’d and PFBuzz where we can share our content with a financial audience. In the past, StumbleUpon, Digg or Reddit have been particularly friendly to blogs, but as they’ve grown, it’s become much harder to get traction in these sites (as their community and its tastes may have also changed). Interestingly, social networking is one avenue I haven’t had time to pursue as much as I’d like to. Maybe later?

8. Forums and Blogs

If you’ve got a static website, why not set up a blog to offer a different dimension to your site? Blogs are a great way to build promotional content around your product or service. You may also want to build a community for your customers through a forum. Or you may prefer to join an existing forum that caters to your business, to see if it’s possible to market your stuff there (be careful though, that the forums you visit won’t mind this sort of thing).

9. Customer Service and Community Building

Then there are those businesses that aim to cultivate return customers. In those cases, you may want to do things to improve customer retention and to build your community by making sure that your site is well designed with an easy way for people to contact you for questions. Just like with any other business, being able to respond promptly to customers’ concerns, having a return policy and honoring guarantees are always a good way to keep people satisfied and hopefully, interested in coming back.

10. Online Networking

Finally, one thing that’s worked well for me as an online business owner is to build relationships with others with similar aspirations and goals. If it weren’t for online friends I’ve made in this space, I doubt that I’d have the guts and knowledge to leave my job and subsequently develop this hobby into a business. So make friends with other site owners, bloggers, web publishers and internet marketers, and get inspired to take your business to a new level.

So what do you think? If you’ve got an online business, I’d love to hear about what it is you do to try to build a customer base. Yeah, other than saying that we should create products that sell themselves.

10 Web Marketing Strategies For Online Business Owners

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I wasn’t really paying much attention to this, but it suddenly caught my eye — my traffic statistics are showing me that this blog has hit an awesome milestone! This site has finally registered its 2 millionth unique visit (and close to 3 million page views), and wow, that’s just something that really cheered me today.

Keep on truckin’!

So I want to thank everyone who has subscribed to our site, and those who’ve come by to visit and check us out throughout the years. This blog is around 2 and a half years old…. born by accident, but I’m glad to know that I’m still here able to nourish it on a daily basis (well, almost).

Looking back, I’m just awed by all the people I’ve met through my blog, and excited about the things I’ve learned over the last couple of years. What were some of these things I’ve picked up?

Few Things I’ve Learned As A Blogger

1. Passive income on the web is hard to come by. At least for me, it takes a humongous amount of work. Even more than I spent working “for the man”, but it is pretty fulfilling.

2. You can give up your day job if you want to. I did it because I had to make a choice — I couldn’t juggle everything and I was burning out. Other folks are able to carry on with several jobs and a family life at the same time, but I couldn’t. So I quit my job and decided to blog full time to try to replace my lost income. So far, it’s turned out to be the right choice for me.

3. You have to like what you do. So you can keep on doing it. If you enjoy what you’re doing, it will increase your chances of longevity at your chosen field, activity or business.

4. There’s so much to learn. But, it’s also a lot of fun. For many years, I’ve pigeonholed myself as someone who did one thing (software development), and I built my professional identity on that long-term career — one which I went to school for. I’m changing those notions and my professional profile now, by taking on stretch goals and projects that are redefining who I am in a whole different business and “career”. And so I’ve discovered personally, that there’s life beyond the nine-to-five that we’re used to living.

Anyway, I’m excited about getting to this point. So here’s to more sharing, education, information and growth (in terms of our community here, and our personal finance learning) over the years. Till the next milestone!

Learning About The Blogging Business, Thanking Our Blog Readers

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Want to make money blogging? The more optimized your blog, the better your chances!

If you’re not interested in reading about the world of blogging, please feel free to skip this post. But for web publishers out there who are curious about how to juice up your blog, then you may be interested in learning about a service that a fellow personal finance blogger has put together to help you out with your online efforts.

Pinyo, who’s the guy behind Moolanomy (a top personal finance blog), is also recognized as a pretty experienced blogging expert and has been running a site called Blogthority. One of the main services he offers is a personalized blog optimization report that has the following features:

• Design and Usability Report that includes personalized feedback about your blog’s overall appearance, branding power, consistency, readability, image usage, and article quality.
• Search Engine Optimization Report that includes key statistics and personalized feedback about your metadata, headings usage, sitemap, robots.txt, keywords analysis, and cross-linking practice.
• Monetization Report that includes personalized feedback about your revenue channels and ad placement.
• Code Validation Report.
• Personalized Improvement Checklist.

Here’s what a sample report looks like.

How To Order the Blog Optimization Report

The regular cost of this report is $49.95, but you’ll get it for $10 less ($39.95) by entering the discount coupon code “SVB819″ when you order the report here. Pinyo will tailor this report to your site: he’ll review your blog and provide specific suggestions about what you should do to make improvements.

There are other such blog coaching services out there as well, that range from free to more expensive, but I’m sure that each service provides their own value.

So if you’re serious about blogging, and looking to get your blog to the next level, it may be worth the small investment to have another set of (experienced) eyes review what you’re doing.

A Blog Optimization Report To Increase Your Web Traffic

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September ended with a bang for the financial industry, but not in a positive way. However, we here had a good month, that only got better as it drew to a close. I’m guessing that visitors are dropping by to commiserate over the issues going on in the economy and are looking to see what others are saying about the significant financial events that are preoccupying our minds lately.

If you’re a new visitor, I hope you’ll take this chance to subscribe to our site. For daily, automatic updates, you can pick up our site’s content quickly and easily via RSS feed or through email. No worries though, as you can also unsubscribe anytime you like.

Thank you to all of you who have kept us chugging along another month. Here are some others I’m grateful to as well!

Top Commentators For September, 2008

• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
• Escape Somewhere
• Austin Real Estate Broker
• Jack
• CMOE
• Saving To Invest
• Andrew

Top Traffic Sources For September, 2008

• Frugal Living: About.com
• The Consumerist
• IEX.nl
• The Simple Dollar
• Million Dollar Journey
• Get Rich Slowly
• Frugal Dad
• All Financial Matters
• Inquirer.net’s Money Smarts
• Lifehacker
• Zen Habits

Thank you for dropping by! Get set for more finance in the fall!

Top Traffic Sources and Commentators For September 2008

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We were caught up in a lot of social events this Labor Day weekend, so I’ve been basking under the sun more often than I’ve been facing the computer, for a change. But now that August is over, let me take the chance to invite you to pick up our site’s content quickly and easily via RSS feed or through email. By doing so, you’ll get fresh daily updates from The Digerati Life automatically.

With the end of the month, more thanks are in order to those of you who visited our site and joined us in our discussions, as well as to our top commentators and traffic generators.

Speaking of which, I noticed something interesting about some commentators — I notice a lot more comments by the same people appearing towards the end of the month. Hmmm…. interesting tactic, if your goal is to make my top commentators list, which I absolutely encourage especially if you’re using your names (not key words) for the links you leave behind.

I’d also like to provide this gentle reminder about my comment policy: if you have a commercial site (or blog) and you are leaving comments while using competitive key words as your handle, I reserve the right to remove and disallow the use of certain key words while I keep your comments and links usually intact (subject to review). On the other hand, I’ve had the pleasure to read some great comments from those behind such sites, and I welcome your visits here. But in keeping with the spirit of the blogosphere, I’d like to keep our end-of-the-month acknowledgments to bloggers and readers.

Moving on to our site supporters this month…

Top Commentators For August, 2008

• annakat (reader)
• Blueprint for Financial Prosperity
• Kevin (reader)
• Steward
• The University Kid
• Fathersez
• Kevin Thompson
• Money and Such
• Sam
• Frugal Dad

Top Traffic Sources For August, 2008

• Frugal Dad
• The Simple Dollar
• Smart Spending
• Million Dollar Journey
• Wise Bread
• Wallet Pop
• Zen Habits
• iVillage
• Lazy Man and Money
• Gen X Finance

As always, I’m grateful to all of you who come here to visit, share your more than two cents and generous thoughts, and provide us your warm support. Here’s to another sunny month!

Top Traffic Sources and Commentators For August, 2008

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We’re at the start of a brand new month and I can hardly believe it’s August already. The week was extremely busy for me as I’ve been attending some summer activities with my kids which entail parental participation. So I’m glad it’s the weekend — maybe I’ll be able to catch up on some of the stuff on my “to do” queue. Maybe…

Speaking of which, if you’d like to put us on your “to read” queue, why not subscribe to our automatic updates by adding this site to your RSS feed reader? By subscribing, you’ll be able to receive content from The Digerati Life with great ease and convenience. .

Just try this button:

Or any of these links:

• Subscribe to my feed.
• Subscribe via email.

As for the month that passed, it was a quieter one in the realm of blogging. Most of us are out and about enjoying the sunshine and finding ourselves preoccupied with more than just the internet . At any rate, we still had our share of noteworthy commentators:

Top Commentators

• RacerX
• MoneyNing
• Austin Real Estate Broker
• JP
• RC @ ThinkYourWayToWealth
• jim @ Blueprint For Financial Prosperity
• Frugal Dad

I was happy to receive such thoughtful discussion from these folks and from many more of you readers and commentators who took the time to stop by and “talk” about personal finance with us.

We also got wonderful traffic boosts from several sites. A huge thank you to those of you who linked to The Digerati Life last month!

Top Traffic Referrers

• MSN Smart Spending
• Get Rich Slowly
• The Simple Dollar
• Million Dollar Journey
• My Money Blog
• Zen Habits
• All Financial Matters
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Lifehacker
• Lazy Man and Money

That’s all for now. Even with the vacation months in full swing, I hope you’ll be able to find the time to visit us this August. Thanks once more to all our readers, subscribers and blogger friends for keeping us alive!

Top Traffic Sources and Commentators For July 2008

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If you enjoy personal finance, I’d like to offer you the convenience of automatic updates from this site, The Digerati Life. If you’d like to include my posts in your RSS feed reader, just click on this little button :

You can also add us to your reader or email box by trying out these links! Subscribe to my full feed here or via email.

Thank you to all my readers and subscribers! Traffic and subscriptions are growing at a healthy clip and I’m just really glad there are people out there who are interested in what I talk about on a daily basis.

Also, a HUGE thanks to those who’ve been helping me out along the way… who else but all the other site publishers and bloggers who’ve sent traffic our way, and folks who have added to our discussions on this site.

Top Traffic Generators for the month of March (2008)!

• The Simple Dollar
• Free Money Finance
• MSN Money Smart Spending
• All Financial Matters
• Lifehacker
• Million Dollar Journey
• Lazy Man and Money
• No Credit Needed
• Get Rich Slowly
• Gen X Finance

And of course, thank you once more to my online colleagues who’ve shared their thoughts and comments with us. I have enjoyed all your comments and I’d like to recognize those who made our Top Commentators list for March 2008:

• Working Dollar @ The Working Dollar
• Mrs. Micah @ Mrs. Micah
• RacerX @ Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Money
• Jayson @ New Homes Section
• Ron @ The Wisdom Journal
• FIRE Finance @ FIRE Finance
• Saving Advice @ Saving Advice

Yay, we’re finally getting to Spring!

Top Commentators and Traffic Sources for March 2008

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January was a roller coaster of a month and once more, we’re ending it with a few lists. FIRE Finance has produced their Top PF Bloggers list for December 2007, and things have shuffled about a little. We even made it to the list with a nice mention from the FIRE Finance team, along with a reminder that for you bloggers out there, it would be good for your traffic numbers if you take steps to get your stats counted by Quantcast and Compete (via tracking scripts and plugins) so that ranking exercises like those undertaken by FIRE Finance can reflect your numbers accurately.

Again, despite a horrible start for stocks and continuing malaise in the economy, real estate and credit markets, we’re seeing brighter days for our blog thanks to our traffic sources, and awesome readers and subscribers! Speaking of which, if you haven’t had a chance yet, this is a great time to subscribe to our automatic updates using this link.

Here were those who drove the most traffic to our site last month:

Top Traffic Generators

• The Simple Dollar
• I Will Teach You To Be Rich
• Lifehacker
• Gen X Finance
• Lazy Man and Money
• My Money Blog
• No Credit Needed
• My Open Wallet
• Zen Habits
• Free Money Finance

Special mention to a couple of ladies who’ve referred a good number of readers over here as well: Mrs. Micah and Millionaire Mommy Next Door.

While here are our most active commentators:

Top Commentators

• Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Money (aka RacerX)
• Mrs. Micah
• The Wild Investor (aka thewild1)
• Frugal Dad
• Fathersez
• Early Retirement Extreme
• The Financial Blogger

Before I close, I’d like to take RacerX’s lead and acknowledge the MVP for January as Mrs. Micah, who is someone who has been both a top source of both traffic and interesting discussion.

Thanks to all of you readers and bloggers who’ve shared their thoughts here and for making this a great month for us!

Top Traffic Generators and Commentators For January, 2008

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Photo by Pentoon

That says it all!

As we’ve reached a new milestone with the arrival of 2008, I’m happy to report that we’ve also passed our own milestone — the 600,000 visitors mark. I owe it all to you out there who stop by this site to read, comment, subscribe and link away. As always, I’m very grateful for your support and encouragement as goodness knows how blogging can be a time-consuming and work-intensive activity. A lot of the fun we derive from it is not just from the fulfillment we receive from baring our thoughts to the world but also from the interaction we get from our wonderful readers.

If you’d like to catch more updates from here automatically, you can do so by subscribing to my feed or by signing up for email updates. By doing so, you’ll be sure not to miss an iota of my long-winded chatter.

For the month of December, we had the following folks topping the list of active commentators:

Top Commentators

• Mrs. Micah
• RacerX
• The Financial Blogger
• Fiscal Musings
• Minimum Wage (one of the financial web’s more recognizable visitors!)
• The Wild Investor

And of course, I wouldn’t be passing any traffic milestones without the support of so many fabulous sites in the financial blogosphere and beyond. These sites contributed the most to our December numbers:

Top Referrers

• Lifehacker
• The Simple Dollar
• Mental Floss
• Lazy Man and Money
• The Kirk Report
• Millionaire Mommy Next Door
• MSN Smart Spending
• Get Rich Slowly
• Generation X Finance
• Free Money Finance

With that, we wish you a healthy and prosperous year ahead — to more saving, more controlled spending, and perkier investments all around!

 
Image Credit: Pentoon

Happy New Year! Plus Top Commentators and Traffic Generators For December 2007

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The month of November was an unprecedented one at The Digerati Life as traffic doubled for us in a span of a month. This was largely due to some posts that were picked up by larger sites, the catalyst of which is the support we receive from other personal finance and money bloggers.

To all readers, new and old, a warm welcome to our site! If you haven’t had a chance to subscribe to The Digerati Life yet, you can do so through email or RSS feed, to receive automatic updates.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to acknowledge our Guest Bloggers who have contributed their posts here in the last couple of months — their articles were extremely well-received by our readers and have encouraged some really good discussions.

• The Financial Blogger (for 3 Great Money Lessons from My Old Man)
• I’ve Paid For This Twice Already (for Stop Worrying About How You Got Into Debt and Start Focusing On How To Get Out)
• Plonkee Money (for Credit Is King In An Emergency)

If anyone else would like to guest post, please drop me a line. The door here is open to anyone who’d like to talk about the subject of money.

A big thanks to the Top 10 Traffic Generators for the month:

Lifehacker
The Simple Dollar
Ernie’s House (contains adult content)
Dumb Little Man
Get Rich Slowly
Lifehack.org
My Money Blog
Wall Street Fighter
Lazy Man and Money
Gen X Finance

And our Top Commentators:

The Financial Blogger
Mrs. Micah
Marketing Deviant
Let’s Discuss Money
Finance Is Personal aka American Consumer News
Money Ning
Curious George, an astute reader

To all readers, I appreciate all the feedback you’ve given me whether in the form of comments or email — I’ve enjoyed our interchanges and have learned a great deal from you as well!

Here’s to a great month and to more financial banter ahead!

Top Commentators and Traffic Generators For November, A Blockbuster of A Month

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