POD For You!

Actually, this is one of the hardest parts of the whole process for me. I can write the content (brilliantly, I might add) and I can plot and scheme better than anybody I know…. but dragging those visitors to my site while they’re kicking and screaming can be a bit overwhelming at first. I quickly learned, thankfully, if you do the planning and write the content well, getting the visitors to come is much easier.

Think of the planning and content like measuring the ingredients for a cake recipe- it gets messy and confusing sometimes, but if you do it well, finding tons of willing volunteers to eat the cake (visitors) is a snap. Search engines will send you free traffic if you’ve done your homework and included a bunch of targeted keywords in a niche that’s not too narrow or over-saturated.

Once everything is in place, then it’s time for you to expand your wings and start marketing your site a bit more. Start with free marketing using social networks. You can do several things like: build a Squidoo lens concerning your niche, Twitter about your exploits, create a MySpace or Facebook account…. the list goes on and on.

After you’ve started receiving search engine traffic and traffic from social networks, it may be time for you to experiment with paid advertising. I’ll warn you though…. GO SLOW! Advertising is sometimes like gambling….. you give sites your money and you may or may not see a good return of your investment. NEVER spend more on advertisement than you can comfortably afford to lose.

Even if you find a great moneymaker, things sometimes happen that are beyond our control. I’ve heard several shopkeepers bemoan the fact that one of our POD companies crashed while they had advertising campaigns running. It happens…. trust me….. you don’t want to spend a ton of money that you can’t afford to lose when there are so many variables involved.