I am always trying to scheme up ways to make money. Marketing, as a vehicle toward making a buck, has always fascinated me. Isn’t it amazing how marketing works? I’m not just talking the basics, but the really subliminal stuff. Our society is now driven by consumerism. This is a far different lifestyle than what was the drive 500 years ago. Back then, it was just about survival. Today, we want things that we really don’t need. I remember reading in one of Plato’s diaglogues, there was a man describing Socrates. It mentioned this old over-coat that Socrates had worn for years. I have a coat that’s been around for about 4 years, but that’s it. People don’t hang onto something for so much functionality as they do for aesthetics. We always have to have a newer car, clothes that are in fashion, more expensive watches, more elaborate vacations. This is where modern marketing, it has driven the people to be consumers. This is what fascinates me. Vinyl records worked just fine, why do I need an MP3 player? It’s more portable. But I didn’t ever want to listen to music while I went for a walk. But that’s because you couldn’t, now you can. Oh yeah, let me upgrade, and spend.

1. Technical Skils – PHP, FTP, HTML
2. Trends on the internet – Social Media, SEO.
3. Writing Skills – You need to be able to write
4. Money
5. Patience -

With the advent of the search engine, having a unique name can be a big help.  If your company name uses common words like Smith’s Dry Cleaning, it will be more difficult to stand out on the search engines. Having a name like Squidoo, Flickr, Twitter, or Omegle can help you stand out as being unique and easier to find. Besides, I would rather eat at a Frappr’s Pizza than a Brown’s Pizza.

Today’s tip for marketing your website involves being an active participant on other people’s websites and blog. Many blogs allow commenters to have a link back to their own website or blog. The more link you have back to your website, the higher your rankings will be on search engines like google.

So here’s what you need to do.

1. Find blogs/forums/websites where you can comment on content that someone has posted. Make sure it is in a niche that goes along with your site.

2. Leave good information and tips in your comment that others will find useful. This will increase the desire for someone reading your comment to check your site out.

3. Set a goal to do things on a regular basis. Perhaps one post per day. Also set a goal to find a new site to post on per week. This will give you a nice variety of sites to choose from when posing.

Being the marketing major that I am, and needed to promote my own websites, I am going to share with you a series of posts on how to promote your blog.

Today, we are going to start out by discussing web directories. Web directoriesare sites that are essentially a yellow pages for other web sites. There are quite of few of these web directories that don’t really specialize in one partucular area. However, many of the web directories specialize in a niche. For example, one might find a web directory on dogs. a good example of this would be http://www.i-love-dogs.com/directory/ or http://www.puppysites.com.

To find directories related to your blog niche, simply do some google searching. The above sites were found simply by searching for “Dog Directory”.

Once you find some direcectories, you will want to request the directory to list your site. Usually you will find a button on the directory that says “Get Listed” or “Add Site.” You will find that some sites offer listings for a price. There are many sites that also offer free, simple listings.

Once you have put in a request to get listed, it is always a nice idea to have a link from your site back to the web directory. This way you are helping each other out. 

In conclusion, it is a good idea to get listed in web directories. Not only does this help the potential audience find your site, it also allows you to have more inbound links, which helps your rankings in the search engines.