Tavis Yeung answers:

Keep Visitors Coming Back

Don’t just market to new visitors; market to return visitors as well! There are a number of ways to do this:

Update your web site at least once a month!

Make sure ALL departments are using the web site to communicate. Not just the marketing staff but, also, your volunteer manager, anyone who works with clients, your fund-raising staff, etc.

Have a place on the home page for announcements, upcoming events, links to blog updates, etc., so that a visitor to the home page can immediately see what’s new.

Create a subscription-based email newsletter to promote updates to your web site.

Create a way to allow people to receive updates about your web site via their RSS readers. For instance, you could create a blog at a free site like Forumer (it’s what I use for my blog) that you use only to announce events, new services, updates to your web site, etc., and then link these announcements to appropriate places on your web site. Then, anyone who wants to can put your web site announcement blog into their RSS reader, and automatically receive updates whenever you post such (the RSS feed address for the Jayne Blog: is http://blogs.forumer.com/rss.php?u=jcravens).

The key to successful Internet marketing is to accept that it is a never-ending, integrated process. New web sites and online discussion groups emerge and disappear regularly. You need to track with regular searches new sites with whom to link and new lists on which to announce your organization and its service. To market efficiently and effectively online your entire staff has to immerse itself, at least to some degree, in using the Internet regularly as part of their work.

Other resources from Jayne Cravens and Coyote Communications:

Promoting Your Nonprofit Online
Advice that goes well beyond just Web sites — it talks about email, online communities, podcasts, webcasts, and more.

Don’t Just Ask for Money!
Something much more should happen if someone clicks on your web site’s “Help Us” link than a message that asks only for money.

Mission-Based Groups Need Use the Web to Show Accountability
There has never been a better time for mission-based organizations to use technology to show their transparency and credibility, and to teach the media and general public about the resources needed to address critical human and environmental needs.

Handling Online Criticism
Online criticism of a nonprofit organization, even by its own supporters, is inevitable. How a nonprofit organization handles online criticism speaks volumes about that organization, for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come. There’s no way to avoid it, but there are ways to address criticism that can help an organization to be perceived as even more trustworthy and worth supporting.

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Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

Use social networking sites to promote your products and links. As you know social networking sites are self promotoable. If you got a nice profile with beautiful pictures in it, i bet you’ll get a lot of visits from other members. Forum Marketing works just like Yahoo Answers. They would be a lot of tips and questions exchanged in any forums. So start getting active and contribute to any forum members and they will appreciate your expertise and start visiting your websites for more up-to-date tips.

Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

Here are some free web marketing tips.

Not all web marketing needs to cost money. Aside from website submissions, there are a number of things that web marketers can do that are free, though they may be rather time-consuming. Other marketing tactics are relatively inexpensive, and are often well worth the investment.

Follow these basic steps to market your website and business.

Free Web Marketing Tips
http://www.small-business-software.net/free-web-marketing.htm

Tavis Yeung answers:

Getting traffic to your web site is a slow process but it is one of the surest way to establish your site for the long term success. You need to promote your website FOR FREE in order to acquire inbound links to your site. At least for a start. Plenty of quality inbound links to your site improves your site’s search engine rankings.

When you’re getting your feet wet learning the ropes of online marketing, the skills you develop in promoting your website FOR FREE will be enduring. Once you master a few FREE online marketing techniques, you can rinse and repeat the same process for other sites that you are going to launch in the future.

The following are some ways to get FREE advertising and promotions for your website:

Using Social Media Sites: This is the hottest method today. The web has become a social tool where people meet and exchange ideas and thoughts. Social media sites can be categorized into

•social bookmarking sites like Delicious.com
•social networking sites like Facebook.com
•social news popularity sites Digg.com
•social communication sites like Twitter.com
•Social image and video sharing sites like YouTube.com and Flckr.com

Using Free Classified Sites: The key to success in free classified advertising is an effective title. It must be magnetic for others to open your ad. And once they open your ad, the ad description should be compelling to make them click on your link. You should renew these ads regularly for search engines to find and index them. Sometime, search engines will find your profile page in these free classified site and index the profile page which must display your latest ads.

The following is a list of some sites you can get FREE Classified Advertising:
– www.bestwayclassifieds.com
– www.asdcashgenerator.com
– www.exchangead.com
– www.webclassifieds.us
– www.asdcashgenerator.com

Good Luck!

Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

Here are some free web marketing tips.

Not all web marketing needs to cost money. Aside from website submissions, there are a number of things that web marketers can do that are free, though they may be rather time-consuming. Other marketing tactics are relatively inexpensive, and are often well worth the investment.

Follow these basic steps to market your website and business.

Free Web Marketing Tips
http://www.small-business-software.net/free-web-marketing.htm

Tips Direct from Yahoo Answers!:

You could give out fliers in the local area, adverts in newspapers, offers – by one get one free, free products, set a good price etc

Tavis answers:

Nearly every post or a couple of posts would be great.

Hal Smith
URLdreamer Consultant

Tavis answers:

There are really two sides to this coin with a variety of hungry vultures hanging out on each.

FREE ADVICE
Ever hear the old adage that you get what you pay for? To a certain extent it’s true. However, you will indeed find many sites that offer free advice. The problem is, unless your a smart Internet Marketer your not going to know the good advice from the bad. What’s worse, since you are needing the advice it’s likely that you have not gained all the wisdom you are looking for yet. This ends up being a vicious circle with no real end.

That’s why SEO & Beyond provides a free website analysis for anyone who asks (at least they do as of this writing). They believe that doing so goes beyond advice into actively participating in the lives of those who are looking to use their service.

You can check out more about that at the following link.
===> http://search-engine-optimization-and-beyond.com/A-simplemachinesforum/index.php?topic=36.0
I was quite pleased with the review they gave my http://commit2fit.info website.

PAID ADVICE
If you are going to have someone train you to be a successful Internet Marketer, then find someone willing to give you some type of guarantee.

“If our system doesn’t work for you, then you don’t pay a dime!”

It’s a gutsy approach to be sure. But it goes beyond the idea of pay us all your money and you will be a success approach. With this method you don’t know if you are being sucker punched or not and all you have to show for it in the end will be absolutely nothing.

I do know that there are indeed many people out there willing to provide a ton of advice if you pay them. I don’t know if anyone has the guts to work by the above approach. If I did I would probably sign up for their course in a second. When paying for a mentor or what not the heavy burden for success should be on the shoulders of the one providing the assistance rather than the one paying the bill.

THE MORAL
Pay for a mentor if and only if the mentor believes in their services enough to give you an awesome guarantee otherwise stick with the free advice; or better yet free website reviews.

Tavis answers:

Do a search for “business WordPress themes”. Three specific themes that come to mind are:

Cleaner
Granity
Universalistic

Tavis answers:

It comes down to 2 things basically? Do you have money or time? If oyu have time then here are some great suggestions to help you.

You can try to create a Facebook fanpage which is free. Get people to join your fan page on Facebook & Twitter. Send weekly or monthly reports, articles, newsletter or tips to your followers & fans.

Example. “This week here are 5 tips (e-mail/articles/report) how to avoid being scam by Insurance agent when buying a homeowner policy. ”

Next Week, “Do you know what is the difference between comprehensive,collision & liability coverage means on your auto insurance? ”

Following week, “How to buy the right life insurance for you & your family.”

These might seem like general knowledge to you, but there are many people that would really appreciate you sharing this information.

Doing this will position yourself as the expert when it comes to insurance. In addition, this helps to build trust & credibility. Having fans & followers could easily means tons of referrals once people start to call you & ask questions. Lots of potential to drive online prospect & convert to customers.

If you do not have time then you could consider hiring a SEO company that specialize din lead generation or result driven SEO services. Many if not all SEO consultants will take your money while sitting on their chair comfortably & scare you by making simple things sounds complicated.
Therefore, you need to pay even more money for them to help you. Hire SEO company that can help you rank your web page on the 1st page of Google, Yahoo & Bing.

Tavis answers:

Go to free-press-release.com or you can google free press releases and use these sources to build your impressions on search engines. If you have a website! You can exchange links with other businesses that offer products or services that differ from yours, but hide them on a page linked through a site map.

Now, these are a few free-ways you can use to enhance your sites popularity with search engines, but the best way is to consult with a SEO (Search engine optimization) consultant. $$$

I’m using Adwords right now and it SUCKS! I’ve received 18 clicks in the last month and a half…….

Tavis answers:

I’ve been creating and marketing large ecommerce sites for people for 10+ years (I am part of Web Retail Group – http://www.webretailgroup.com/ ), I hope I can give you some good ‘starter’ advice and answer your specific questions:

1. Yes, make your own site at your own domain name. This has many benefits: build up your site with your Internet Marketing efforts, not someone else’s site that you have a page on.

A) Register your domain at http://www.godaddy.com – they’re cheap and the best in the biz. (w/ good customer service most of the time)

b) Get an ecommerce consultant with real experience to help you build your site–let them help you choose technologies, etc; and let them advise you on design/usability issues on the site. If you want to do it your self first to get a feel for it–the GoDaddy website tonight service is cheap so you can try it without losing too much money…but ultimately you’re have a more professional standards-based if you hire a professional ecommerce consultant.

2. Internet Marketing methods with the best ROI:

a) Mailing List – ask visitors to join your mailing list; put those who buy from you on your mailing list; use facebook to build your mailing list; tell people you’ll offer them discounts for joining your mailing list.

B) Search Engines – Post your new site to dmoz.org, google.com, yahoo.com, bing.com:
http://www.dmoz.org/ – find a good category they click the ‘add your url’ link at the top of the page to add it
Google – http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/…
Yahoo – http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/sub…
Bing – http://www.bing.com/webmaster/SubmitSite…

c) Social Networking – use Facebook and others like linkedin and twitter, digg, etc. To build lists of friends for your business website and link to your site. Keep at it, and keep updating.

D) SEO – Search Engine Optimization
i) Keyword Research – Use this tool to determine great keywords for your products that are actually being searched for online,
ii) On-site Optimization – then put those ‘good keywords’ in your website content, and in your TITLE tags on your pages, and in some of your in-site links to your pages.
Iii) Link Building – the most time-consuming part – get other sites to link to yours–many ideas on this…too many to list here!
Then wait…over the next 60+ days you should see an increase in your website traffic for them.

E) List your products on shopping comparison engines (CSEs), here’s a good list of them:
http://www.productfeeds.org/ – some are free, others require payment to advertise. At least do the free ones!

3. Take your time and don’t spend too much money on PPC / CPC marketing online. (maybe spend NO money on this if the above works out for you!)

i hope this helps you get started…