If you are reading this you are most likely a friend of mine that clicked on my ad on FaceBook, Myspace or linkedin. If we have not met, nice to meet you. As most of you know for the last 20 years I have used the Internet to grow my businesses. I would like to share with you some of my secrets that will help you grow your business.

Since we are friends I am going to share with you several ways to increase your bottom line without breaking the bank. Now normally I would ask you to forward this hubpage on to all of your family and friends but since I am giving you some of my best trade secrets for FREE please keep this information to yourself.

Within this hubpage I am going to share with you ways to;

• How to build your own web site in 1 hour for $20
• Get more traffic to your website with PPC & SEO
• Make a larger impact when people land on your site
• Make money just from Traffic
• How to convert traffic into buyers
• How to get more out of your current customers
• The FREE power of hubs and blogs
• How to use social networks like FaceBook, Myspace & Linkedin
• How to use Craigslist to build your business

I just want to add that I an expert at all of the techniques on this page and can teach you how to start using this information to grow your business. Email me at thomasameyers@gmail.com to get started.

No matter what type of business you have you really need to have a website. Even if you provide service and have no product that you sell some sort of web presence is important to validate your business.

Years ago building a website was a very difficult and complicated task. You had to purchase an expensive program like FrontPage or Dreamweaver. Create the website from scratch by adding text, pictures, video and flash. You had to organize the site so that one could navigate from page to page. Once you got the site completed then you had to buy a FTP "file transfer program" to upload the files to your server. Your only other choice was to hire a company to build a site for you. The price for this started at around $1500 and went up from there, some sites costing north of $50,000. Then anytime you wanted to change a price or add something you had to call your webmaster and pay to have it done.

Today there are some very inexpensive ways that you can build a site yourself with absolutly no experience. You do not need to know HTML, you don't have to buy any programs or transfer any files. If you can find your way around Microsoft Word, you can build your own site.

These easy to build sites are know as "template websites" and my favorite place to build these sites is www.godaddy.com. Go to GoDaddy and open an account, it's FREE. The first step is to buy a domain name, they cost about $10. When you buy a domain name godaddy will include access to "website tonight" . There you will be able to build a 5 page website. Trust me it is not hard. Just like the name says you can have a great looking website up and running by tonight. You can pay for hosting yourself which cost $8.95 a month or you can allow godaddy to place some ads at the top of you site and then hosting is free. You will also get an email address with your website which is great. Lets say you choose the name www.specialty-lumber.com then you can have the email address Orders@specialty-lumber.com .

Maybe the only downside to these sites is that you must stay within the template. But lets face it, you are probly not the only person in your type of business, no need to reinvent the wheel.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I give this a diffculty rating of 4

SEO-Search Engine Optimazation

PPC-Pay Per Click

I like to look at websites like gas stations. Which gas station is going to sell more gas? The one with a fancy coffee bar that is located at the end of a dead end street or the old shitty looking one along the interstate?

It does not really matter what your website looks like, with out traffic it is doomed. Traffic is Everything!

In this section I will try to briefly explain these two very common ways of getting traffic.

If you have ever searched for something on Google, Yahoo or AOL the first thing you do is type in what you are looking for. Lets say you live in Atlanta and you need some drywall repaired. You may type in "Atlanta Drywall Repair" into the search box. This is called a "keyword Phrase". When the search results pop up on your screen you are looking at the sites that have worked hard to achieve first page ranking on on that search engine. There 2 different ways to to get to top of this page.

The first way is SEO. These are the sites located below the 3 or 4 sites in the shaded area. These sites are at the top of the "organic search results or the natural search" and take my word for it, it is not easy to get there. The more popular the keyword phrase the more competition there is for that page and the more difficult it is to be near the top. There are many factors that Google and other search engines takes into consideration when cataloging websites. They basically look at to different things. Your "on page content" and your "off page content"

Try to look at it from Googles point of view. They are a search engine. They want to provide the public with the most information possible on the keyword phrase being searched. It does not matter to Google how many employees you have or how many drywall jobs you have done in the past. In other words you don't have to be Wal-Mart to be at the top. You do need to provide more information about the subject than the next guy. This is your "On page content" and it makes up about 40% of what Google looks at. You also want this information written and located on your site in such a way that it is search engine friendly or "Optimized" There is way more to this but I would have to write a novel to explain it all.

The next thing they look at is your off page stuff. Believe it or not your off page stuff makes up for the other 60% of what they look at. One of the most important factors for your site to be considered for first page ranking is who you are linked to. Being back linked to sites that themselves have high ranking can rocket you to the top. being back linked to sites that end in .gov or .edu can have very positive effects on your ranking. Contact me and I will share some easy ways to get some .edu back links. Having articles and press releases about your site can also help a bunch.

In my opinion the best way to make it to top of the organic search results is to hire myself to help you. I charge around $350 a month and it takes anywhere for 6 month to a year to get your site on the first page.

The other way to get there is to pay to be there or PPC. This one of the most brilliant ways of marketing ever invented. It has made Google one of the most powerful companies on the planet. I will explain why it is such a great way of advertising compared to conventional ways.

Lets say you own a brick and mortar store front and you sell ice cream. You decide to run a 1/4 page ad in the news paper to promote your "buy one scoop get one scoop free" promotion. You will have to create the ad and then pay the news paper to run the ad. No matter how much ice cream you sell the cost of the ad is the same. Ask the newspaper if instead of paying $800 for the ad you will give them a dollar for every person that comes in the door. See what they say. I will save you the trouble, they are in the business of selling newspapers and ad space. They could care less if your ad works or not.

PPC on the other hand works like this; you only pay if someone clicks on your ad and lands on your site. You pay per click. Lets say you live in Atlanta and you have a doggy day care. You want to be at the top of the search results for the keyword phrase "Atlanta dog sitting" Google will tell you up front how much it is going to cost per click to be at the top of the search results and how much it going to cost to per day to stay there. You only have to pay if someone clicks on your ad and lands on site, essential walking in you door. Lets say they it cost $1.10 per click to be at the top and $350 per month to stay there. Is not money way better spent than $800 for one ad in one paper? Would you not gladly pay $1.10 for the opportunity to sign up a client that may leave their dog with you 5 days a week from now on?

The sites that you see on Google in the shaded area at the top of the page and the sites on the right side of the screen are all ppc ads. They are also know as sponsored links. The way start a pay per click campaign is on the google search page scroll down to the bottom and click on "Advertising Programs" on the next screen click on "adwords" I wish I could tell you it simple but the truth is it is not. It gets to point were it is manageable but only after you become familiar with it. Contact me and I would be more than happy to set a ppc campaign for you.

On a scale of 1 to 10 I give this a diffculty rating of 9

Once you have in place some ways of diverting traffic to your site you to convert the traffic to money or monetize the traffic. The first step is keep people on your site. Remember most people are searching the web for information. Give them the information they are looking for first. This is where audio and video tools help immensely. Try make yourself out to be a authority on the subject. Try to appear to unbiased and helpful. Always try to under promise and over deliver.

I will add more information here when I get a chance...

Traffic equals money! You can make enough money to pay for your pay per click campaign and put a few extra dollars a week in your pocket. If you go to the Google home page and scroll down to the bottom of the page. You will see a link called "Advertising Programs" the first section is "Adwords" which has to do with a pay per click campaign. The other section is called "Adsense". This is where Google will pay you to run ads on your site. If someone is on your site and clicks on one of the ads you get paid. It's like pay per click in reverse. It is not that difficult to set up but you are going to want to run the right type of ads so that you don't lose customers to a competitors site.

You can also make money on everything they buy on the site that you landed them on. This is called "Affiliate Marketing" and it is very simple and free to sign up. Some of the most popular affiliate sites are;

• Linkshare.com
• ClickBank.com
• CommissionJunction.com
• Marketleverage.com

I quit my job as a Realtor as soon as I discovered linkshare and have never looked back. I once sold over $40,000 worth of flowers the week of mothers day. It cost me $32,000 at Pay Per Click but I made $8000 in one week. Want to know how?

Most of what I have told you about so far has to do with getting more traffic and then turning that traffic into customers. Which is very important to any business. Your business is either growing, or its dying, there is no middle ground here.

However, it is a lot easier and less expensive to squeeze a few more dollars out of your existing customers than to constantly try to get new customers. Many business owners over look this low hanging fruit.

The first step here is to create a list of your loyal customers. More specifically an email list. If you don't have an email list of your customers you need to start forming one immediately. A great way to start this process is to give away something for free. If you have a brick and mortar store create some type of drawing to win something. Ask for the customers first name, last name and email. Save all these email addresses in one file.

The next step is to stay in contact with your customers. This can be a daunting task with everything else you have going on day to day. The best way I have found to do this is with a "Auto Responder" This is a mail program that will mail a newsletter, memo or just plain email to an entire list as often as you would like. Some of the most popular ones are;

• aweber.com
• getresponse.com
• constantcontact.com

There is one small catch. In order for any legitimate auto responder company to work and not be considered spam the recipient's must "opt In". This simply means that the recipient's gives you permission to send them your newsletter. Some people are going to refuse and you just have to respect that. Most people will give you their permission if your newsletter provides them with some useful information or discounts. A great way to grow your opt in list is to offer your customers an "ethical bribe". I good bribe would be something like "Sign up for my newsletter and get your next whatever FREE!"

The auto-responder company will send that customer an email confirming that they want to receive the newsletter. If you customer hits "yes" they have opted in. At the bottom of every newsletter there is always a link unsubscribe. So be prepared to lose some and win all the time.

The next thing you have to do is create a newsletter. This seems harder than it really is because like I said before you are most likely not the only Realtor, Hair Dresser or Drywall-er in the world. You can use a template newsletter and just add your info and promotions. It is going to take some time to get it all set up and running but this stuff works great.

This is blog that you are reading right now, it happens to be called a hub but they are the same thing. They are totally free and work just like a little mini website. You can add text, video, pictures, articles, rss feeds and much more. Hubs and blogs get picked up by search engines and make there way up the search results much faster than websites. They are a great way to increase traffic to your website. I made a hub called "Solar Marketing Idea" years ago and I believe it is still #1 on Google for that keyword phrase.

I estimate this hub alone will earn me about $350. Not bad for few hours of work. I can show you how....

Social networks are just simply the bomb! They are 100% free and people seem to love them. I have hooked up with so many old friends and colleagues through FaceBook, MySpace and Linkedin. Don't over look social networks as a way to bring in extra business. Make it well know on your home page what you do and how to contact your business. After all, if I needed a painter, realtor or Internet consultant I would rather use a friend than anyone else.

Craigslist.org is the second best way of advertising behind pay per click. It takes some time but it is totally free except for some of the help wanted areas and real estate. I can show you all kinds of tricks you can use to post really great ads that will shoot your bottom line trough the roof. I can show you how to use picture ads so you don't have to keep writting ads over and over. I can show you how you can have written for you for $1.00 each. email me thomasameyers@gmail.com