I believe that the most common mistake made in link building is linking to your homepage. Sometimes this may be the best landing page, but nine times out of ten it’s not. Think about the subject of the site you’re getting that inbound link from and what their users are interested in. Is a generic home page link going to be the most helpful to them? Maybe not. Maybe you should have that link pointing to a specific page, category, or post.

For example, say I solicited a link from a webmaster blog that catered to the new and inexperienced. In this case, I think that it would not only be more beneficial but more enticing for those users to visit my site through a link pointing to my “Promotion 101: The Basics” article or my “Usability and Accessibility” category which contains many easy advice posts for new webmasters, instead of a standard front page link.

Basically, just spend a moment thinking about which part of your site would be most likely to keep users engaged and on your site. If I’m getting a link from a blog dedicated to forum owners, then it would make a lot more sense for the link to point to my “Forum Promotion” category, because I know that that is what my audience for that link is interested in. The point is to make the least amount of work for them. If they land on my homepage and have to look around for what they’re interested in, they might leave. But if I give it to them right off the bat, they’re more likely stay, read, and become repeat visitors. Keep it simple and straightforward for your users!

1. Advertising restrictions placed on proxy sites
2. Horrible CTR from users
3. You are competing with the site that you are serving for your user’s attention
4. Small space to place advertisements on

Add this on top of the fact that a successful proxy site quickly requires a powerful and expensive hosting package and now you have the reason why most webmasters who set out to make money from such a site fail. However, in this article I am going to discuss 5 techniques that will help you turn the tables and make a profit from your proxy website.

1. Pop-unders / Pop-ups

Pop-ups used to be the huge new thing a while back, until the internet was flooded with them. Then came pop-unders, a modification of the successful pop-up. People were seeing CPMs of $3-5, which is huge. But then came pop-up blockers, and the war began. Nowadays, pop-ups and pop-unders are not in such proliferation, but if used properly they can still be an effective source of income. Find the companies which have been developing advanced pop-up/under technology that beat the latest blockers and implement them into your proxy website. Don’t overdue it, however. Test out different strategies on how to serve them and how often to serve them, and see what works.

2. Interstitials

Interstitials are the ‘new pop-up’ to say – most advertiser’s response to pop-up blockers. These are ads that load between pages – you’ve probably run into them from time to time. A user will click a link to go to another page on a website and be taken to a transition page that will automatically redirect the user to their target page in 5 – 10 seconds, but in the meantime displays them a full-page ad. These types of ads typically have higher CTR since they grab the user’s full attention. Try incorporating interstitials into your proxy site – for example, having one display for every 20 pages a user visits through your proxy.

3. Adsense

Using Adsense on a proxy website is hit or miss – it may work for you, it may not. You’ll have to try it out and see what your results are. I contacted Google a while ago to ask about using Adsense on a proxy website and they said that as long as the code is on your page (not somehow tacked on, or making it seem like it is part of, the page that you are serving through your proxy) then it is fine.

Most proxies keep a “bar” running across the top of the page that reminds the user which proxy they are using and links back to their homepage, etc., and place their ad there – however, this is unlikely to be effective because of “banner blindness” that users have nowadays, so try something different. Maybe implement Adsense like an interstitial – every so often between pages the user will be displayed a transition page that has some text (“Thank you for using myProxy – blah blah blah. You will be redirected to [page] in 10 seconds. In the meantime, take a moment to look at our sponsors.” or something to your liking) and then displays an Adsense box. This is much more likely to be effective because it captures the user’s attention by placing the ad block front and center.

Some people write Adsense off as something that is no longer as effective as it used to be – this is false, you just have to be more creative in your implementation of it. You can still make nice money if you know how to work it. Test things out, record your results, and modify appropriately.

4. Affiliate Offers

Affiliate marketing is becoming bigger and bigger with tons of money to be made off of it. Find products/offers through companies like Copeac and AzoogleAds and then use the techniques described above to sell them – display the offers and salestext in interstitials or pop-ups/unders. After a little experimenting you should find out which type of offers have the highest success rate, so stick to those. The possibilities with affiliate marketing is endless, so keep an open mind and try everything!  Remember that you can’t just place a link to the offer and expect people to buy it – you have to presell it first.  Read about successful landing pages and incorporate those techniques into your interstitials.

5. CPM

If you have enough traffic you can still make decent money off of CPM, even if it is only a single banner ad. Try placing a standard banner in your proxy info bar at the top of the page and see what your results are. Because proxy traffic is not generally high-quality traffic you may not get into the bigger name (and higher paying) CPM companies like TribalFusion, FastClick, or Burst!, but you will be sure to get into at least a couple of the lower quality ones. Let’s say that you only earn $0.30 CPM, but you are serving 300,000 pages a day – divide that by 1000 and you have 300. 300 x 0.30 is 90, so you would be earning $90/day – wow!

While proxy sites are hard to make a profit off of, I have showed you 5 techniques that will help you do just that. The most important thing to remember is to keep trying different techniques and see what works best for your site. Be creative – you’d be surprised at what might work!

• Make your blog as different as possible.
• Use interactive features like polls and surveys.
• Let your readers know about great little known resources.
• Take criticism.
• Admit your faults.
• Create bragging rights.

Check out the link and learn some new techniques!

You must have mindshare before you can have marketshare.

Consider the truth in that statement for a moment. Your users make up your market so it follows that without them you have no market. Don’t market TO them, rather communicate WITH them. Identify and understand your target audience’s needs then create solutions that deliver satisfaction to them, based around their needs, not yours.

This is not a new idea, and I am sure that you have heard the same general advice from any marketing site you may visit – but not everyone understands why it is important. The answer: it builds mindshare. And mindshare equals marketshare. And marketshare equals profit.

Your challenge: connect with your users – become not ‘some guy’ who is trying to sell them something but rather a unique individual who is offering them a product or service that fits their unique needs and with whom they can relate to.

The same is true about promoting a website. You don’t stop promoting after you start to see an increase in traffic. If you do, your traffic will not be sustained at that level, it will drop back down.

So here is my call to action: define a couple of daily/weekly goals for yourself, write them down, and then do them. Every day. You won’t become successful if you are lazy. For example, try something like this:

• Make 3 posts in 5 different forums targeted around your niche every day
• Guest post on someone else’s blog once a month
• Create one informational video and upload it to YouTube once every two weeks
• Read and comment on 5 different blogs targeted around your niche every day
• Write one concise but informative ebook and release it to the public once every month

These are just some examples of what you should be doing to really promote your website. The traffic (and revenue) is there for those who are willing to work hard for it.

1. List your site on proxy.org and other directories. Proxy.org is the biggest proxy directory online and you can receive a sizable amount of traffic if you have yours listed with them. Don’t ignore the smaller directories, however, because you can still receive good traffic from them.
2. Advertise on game arcade sites. A large chunk of proxy users, like students and company employees, use proxies to play games on arcade sites or browse social networking sites, sense those are usually the type of site that get blocked. By advertising on these sites you are getting your name out to your potential audience.
3. Get a dedicated server. Proxies take up a lot of bandwidth and system resources, so most shared hosting providers do not allow their clients to run proxies. You do not want to start getting traffic to your new site only to have your hosting provider shut you down because of a violation of their terms. Do it right from the start.
4. Advertise using a MySpace profile. I know, you’re thinking ugh. But it works, and traffic is traffic. Create a MySpace profile and get a bunch of friends. Have your site link displayed prominently on your profile page and occasionally send out messages to all of your friends telling them of your proxy. Just remember to abide by MySpace’s TOS. MySpace promotion is a shady area, especially if you start getting into friend adder robots and such.
5. Make it simple. People come to proxies for one reason – to surf other websites. So make it easy for them to do. Have your form that takes in the URL that the user wishes to visit displayed front and center. There is no need to have a lot of clutter. Honestly, all you probably need is a quick blurb about your proxy, an adsense block above your form and one below it, and that’s it.

Proxies tend to come and go fast. Take yours into the big league by building a solid, simple site hosted on a dedicated server and promoting the hell out of it. You may initially be wary about having to plunk down $99 to $140 a month on a dedicated server, but it won’t do you any good if after a month your hosting account gets shut down.

If you follow the tips above you will get lots of traffic, fast, so you’ll quickly need the power of a dedicated host. And with traffic comes revenue potential. Stay tuned for my next article which will show show you how to beat the notoriously low click through rates of proxy sites and make a profit!

Consider this video:

1. All Link Exchanges Are Good – sorry, but no. Reciprocal link exchanges have pretty much no benefit for SEO and in most cases should not be done. However, if the two sites are on the same topic you may wish to perform a reciprocal link exchange for the benefit of drawing targeted visitors, but you still won’t improve your search rankings. Link farms should especially be steered clear from.

One-way links are the holy grail of website promotion – they carry a lot more weight with them in terms of SEO, and are almost always targeted. How do you attract these one-way links? Write solid content with great headlines.

2. A Big Promotion Budget Means Big Results – having money to throw around is not going to make your website successful. You can’t just stop at getting the visitor to your website – you have to sell to them, also. Make them want to buy your product or subscribe to your feed and become repeat visitors or whatever your objective is.

Before you spend even a dime on website promotion you need to carefully design your site with your visitors in mind. Just because you would buy from your site does not mean that other visitors will want to. Know your audience and how to sell to them before wasting your money. Work on getting your conversion rates high first before you aim for larger amounts of traffic. Remember, you don’t need to have a big budget (or any budget at all) to become successful.

3. Design Is Everything – one cannot underestimate the importance of a good design, but without great content, the design will mean nothing. Your website design should work to compliment your content, which is the main focus of your website. Use your design to draw the reader in and spotlight your articles, focusing their attention.

There is no excuse nowadays to have a crappy template with the proliferation of good, free templates all around the internet, but you also don’t need to be spending all of your resources and time trying to create the perfect design – text is what sells. You don’t buy a book based on the cover, you buy it based on the content. The cover may be what draws you in, but the text is what sells you. Your priorities should be: good design, great content.

4. Anybody Can Create A Successful Website – false. It’s a lot harder than it looks. It takes a huge amount of time and dedication. That is why 90% of new blogs don’t make it past two months. Only if you are willing to put hours into research, learning, building, and promoting, and realize that you will fail multiple times before you succeed, will you be able to become successful. There is a huge change in what it takes to build and run websites as a hobby and as a business.

5. If You Build It, They Will Come – just creating a website does not guarantee that visitors will come to it. Google has over one billion websites in its database, and you can bet that a thousand of them are very similar to yours. If you just do what everyone else is doing you will get the same mediocre results. To truly get attention and attract visitors, however, you need to be unique. Do something that no one else is doing, put a new spin on an old idea, or just do it better. You need to have a good answer as to why a user would rather go to your site instead of one of the other thousand that offer the same thing.

6. Yours – what do you think is the biggest website promotion myth?

As you can see, building a successful website is not easy. It is, however, an exciting and rewarding journey if you are dedicated to it.

Well it’s about time that you try something new.  The worst that could happen is that you waste a little time and don’t get any new traffic from it.

Or you could strike a new goldmine.

Just like in any other aspect of life, those who take the chances are those who have the most success.  So think of your most outlandish idea on how to promote your site, and do it!

Remember, if you do the same thing day after day, you will get the same result day after day.   Take your site to the next level – try something new each day.  You will be amazed at what can actually work well.

I am about to let you in on this secret. Well, I like to think it is a secret because nobody ever told me about it, and my blog, my rules! Ha…anyways, I digress. So what is the secret to getting your site indexed by Google within a day?

Digg.com.

Ah, yet another promotion use for Digg. When I first launched AbstractPromotion.com, I had a handful of articles already written. Naturally, I submitted them to Digg, hoping to get a few visitors from them. The next day, just for giggles I thought that I would check Google and see if they had indexed my site yet. Lo and behold, I noticed that all four of the articles I had submitted to Digg.com were already indexed, before Google even crawled my front page.

Wow! That was fast, I thought. And now I always do it – publish a new article, immediately digg it, and start getting search traffic from it through Google.

So there you go – I hope you can put this technique to good use :)