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I am not a professional photographer nor am I in the travel business. However, I stay very busy these days taking scenic photographs and featuring them on my web site because my “not so” professional travel photos are bringing serious traffic to my web pages.

I consider myself a serious hobbyist when it comes to photography. It’s a hobby because so far no one is willing to pay for any of my pictures. I know it’s a serious hobby because I am never totally honest with my wife when she wants to know just how much I spend on photography. Over the years I have been privileged to see and shoot a few of the spectacularly scenic locations that exist in the U.S.

When I started designing web pages I was constantly on the search for fresh images. One afternoon my search for a waterfall took me into the basement of my home where my wife had stored dozens of shoeboxes filled with hundreds of ordinary vacation snapshots. I found the perfect scene for my project among the many photographs I had taken of Niagara Falls.

I scanned several of the Niagara pictures into my computer and tweaked them slightly with an image editor. I was very pleased with the results and decided to post the images on my personal website. I made a mistake when I typed the words and the file ended up as “NiagraFalls”. I didn’t think that much about it because I only planned to publicize the Niagara Falls pages to a few friends and relatives so they could enjoy the pictures also.

A few weeks later I was checking the stats for my website and noticed that a number of guests had surfed in through search engines. To my surprise 30% of my visitors had come through a search for “niagrafalls”. I went to one of the major search engines and keyed in that phrase and was amazed to see that my site was in the top ten returns.

I decided to see if other scenic hotspots might become “virtual” destinations of choice. I went through the same process with photos I had taken at Garden of the Gods State Park in Colorado Springs Colorado as well as a few other Colorado locations. I was pleased that “gardenofthegods” became another key search phrase that brings people to my site.

In the past I used my personal web pages to promote my web design and hosting business. Unfortunately, web design and hosting is not that relevant to my guests who come because of scenic interests. After some measure of trial and error I discovered that “entertainment” products market very well to the scenic seekers that visit my site.

I began a banner rotation on my photographic pages that link out to various entertainment sites which I affiliate with. So far the results have been very encouraging. In a future article I hope to explain what I discovered about keyword searches in the entertainment sector.

Let me summarize with these simple instructions. Get those vacation photographs out and upload them to your website. Build a separate page for each exotic location that you have been to. Be sure to enter the name of the place in your page title and in the keywords and description meta-tags. Set up a relevant banner rotation program and enjoy the traffic of virtual travel.

About The Author

Ken Mowery’s articles have been published in a number of magazines. He also writes a monthly column for the Greeley Tribune. He has been involved in web design and promotion for 8 years.

kmowery3@comcast.net

One of the best ways to drive traffic to your website is by writing articles. Getting your own articles written, distributed and published on the Internet is one of the very best Internet marketing techniques in existence.

Once you have become an author of an article, you become an instant authority. When visitors locate and read your article they could obtain some useful information from it. They would most probably appreciate you. When appreciation turns into trust, it is very likely that would click the link in your article resource box to visit your website to get more information.

Chances of them signing up with you in one of your recommended business opportunities or buy one of your recommended products would be greatly enhanced.

The question is how to write the relevant articles which might demand some of your effort and time?

If you are good in writing and enjoy doing it, you might decide to write your own articles. Otherwise you could join an article cooperative to get access to private label articles OR hire someone to write articles for you.

Let’s discuss the differences of these 3 possibilities:

1) Do Your Own Research and Write Your Own Articles.
The main advantage of writing your own articles is that it’s “free” and it would give you a sense of pride in accomplishment. You might enjoy writing articles to share your experience in Internet online business. The downside is that it’d take up some of your time to conduct some research work.

2) Join An Article Cooperative to Get Pre-written Articles.
A recommended article cooperative is InfoGoRound where you could get hundreds of pre-written articles for a small enrollment fee. From these you could choose those discussing subjects related to the content of your website. These are referred to as the “Private label articles” which you have full permission to use and also add your own name and article resource box to the article as the author.

2) Hire Someone to Write Articles For You.
If you are not comfortable writing your own articles or if you find it too much a hassle especially when you’re new to this business or if you do not fancy pre-written articles due to lack of originality, you could use an article ghost writing service such as Just Articles to put your own ideas into writing
For a relatively small fee you can get your articles written very quickly.

For article marketing on the Internet, articles written with between 400-700 words would suffice. It goes without saying that your articles must be relevant to your Internet business. Hence topic of your articles should be related to: “working at home”, “home based business”, “Internet marketing”, “making money online”, “promoting a website”, etc.

The next question is how can you ensure that your articles will reach the maximum amount of potential web visitors?

Below are some routes you can use:

1) Submit to Article Directories
The best place to submit your articles are Article Directories. Many publishers of websites, blogs, and ezines visit the sites of these Directories. Hence your articles will be quickly exposed to people who have a large amount of traffic.

2) Submit to Article Lists/Newsletters
The next step is to submit your articles to article lists such as newsletters on Yahoo and Topica. Articles from such sources are normally better received by publishers. Hence when a submission is done by you via an article list, publishers have more confidence in your articles and would very likely use them.

3) Approach Individual Related Websites
Many Websites focus on providing valuable information and educational materials to their readers. You could submit your articles to these sites if your articles are relevant to what they need. It is best that you only contact sites where the readers would have an interest in the topic of your article.

4) Search Through Ezine Directories
Once your articles have been submitted to directories and article lists as mentioned earlier, you could start contacting individual publishers such as the publishers of ezines that are related to your topic. Choose those who accept articles and write to them and convince them that your articles would be of value for their purpose.

5) Give The Articles to Your New Affiliate members
To help your affiliates especially the newly “recruited” ones, you could give them your articles as a way to help promote your site. They could either publish them as they are or they could substitute your link with theirs in the resource box of the article. They would be impressed by such generous gesture from you.

In conclusion, submitting your articles and getting them re-published on others’ websites and newsletters/ezines is one of the most powerful Internet marketing strategies. Your articles will then start working as a free advertisement for you forever. And you do not have to pay even a dime for such advertising space. You will continue to enjoy free traffic driven to your website for a long, long time!

Copyright 2005 Woon Sung Liang

About The Author
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Sung-Liang Woon is a Rubber and Latex Consultant with about 25 years of experience. He enjoys writing, lecturing,travelling, playing flamenco guitar and singing. Not long ago, he didn’t know ANYTHING about Internet marketing.However, within just a few weeks, he launched his own professional website and learned how to PROFIT from an opt-in list, pull in sales with ezines, make money with writing articles and setup his own BLOG!

To find out how he has done it, please head for his Blog here:
http://www.blogwithjohnwoon.blogspot.com

And look for his posting titled “Haven’t you started your Internet business?”

The best traffic-generation ideas combine the better sources of free traffic with some paid advertising. I propose three methods that will boost your traffic. If you remain dedicated to these three methods of advertising, you will get all the traffic you need.

1. Writing and distributing articles

This is my favourite way of driving traffic to my sites. Articles have the ability to become viral, and that can be a huge plus for you, and a great reason to write articles. Focus on creating a 300 word article related to the theme of your site or business. Include a resource box at the end of your article that features a link back to your site. Then, distribute your article to article distribution sites (like EzineArticles.com) and email groups (like http://groups.yahoo.com/group/business_articles). You will see traffic from this method.

2. Contributing to forums

The key word here is “contributing.” Recently, too many good forums have been besieged by “marketers” posting ads. This is considered to be forum spam, and is not in good taste. Instead, visit forums, read posts, and when you have a good, well-thought-out question or reply, post it to the forum. This type of question or reply allows you to build credibility in that forum, and will earn interest in your business from other readers. Most forums allow you to post a link at the end of your post, or in a signature file, and you can promote your business there. As you build credibility, you will build traffic.

3. Buying ezine ads

This is a paid method of advertising, but it works, because it is the most targeted of these approaches. Write a concise ad for your business, then begin contacting ezines to place your ad. (Do a search for “ezine directories,” and you will find enough lists to keep you busy.) When you contact an ezine, look for rates for both classified ads and solo ads. The advantage to a solo ad is that your ad goes out by itself in a separate email, but they can be more expensive. Because these ads are targeted (you should NOT advertise in an unrelated ezine), you will definitely see traffic, but you will need to track your results to see which ezines bring you the most and best traffic.

These three sources of traffic will keep you busy and will bring you all the traffic you need.

Kirsten Hawkins is an online marketing specialist from Nashville, TN. Visit www.pageranksite.com/ for more great online marketing tips and webmaster resources.