More and more people want to have a home business. This is because they understand the benefits to having a business where they can work at home and have the opportunity to earn more money than they ever possibly could working their J-O-B.

Given that you are here reading this, I can pretty safely suppose that you either already have a home business or that you are enthusiastically seeking information because you want to have your own home business.

A common question I run across is "How can I find time to run a home business?"

The quick answer is ‘If you have a home business that is run completely online then it could be very easy‘.

An online business that is automated will not take you much time to run. Often you can get by with only an hour or two a day. Sometimes less & sometimes more. It all depends on the business, your knowledge about working at home, how much extra money you are wanting to earn with your home business AND how focused you are.

Because the subject of this is Time Management we will concentrate right now on how focused you are. The more focused you are the more you can accomplish in a shorter amount of time.

If you are a person that gets easily distracted, then it will take you more time to accomplish what you have set out to do. This is simply because you will be wasting more time dawdling and going off your path into different directions as you become distracted by different websites that you come across while advertising your site or possibly by phone calls from friends, etc.

To make the best use of your time you need to set goals. You need to make a plan. If you fail to plan then you plan to fail is an old saying that still holds true today.

Some people will recommend that you write out some long complicated plan before you even can get started working on a business.

I don't feel that this is necessary. I think that if you get stuck on writing out a long complicated plan then you might never really get to the part where you have your own home business.

I believe that if you take the time to figure out WHY you want a home business it will help you to focus better. What is your reason for wanting a home business? To be able to spend more time with family and friends? To earn more money?

You need to think about that and figure out what your reasons are for wanting to work at home. Write them down. Put them in a place where you will see them often and this will help you to stay focused.

Then you need to figure out WHAT you want. Do you just need to earn enough for a few extras each month? Then you probably can get by just working 30 minutes or so a day.

Do you want to have the chance to actually quit your real world job and earn your living entirely from home? If this is WHAT you want to achieve with your own home business then you will really need to focus, get rid of as many distractions as you can and you will need to spend more time working your home business.

When you do this then you will be able to put your time to the best use possible and you can make progress on much less time than someone that attempts to work their home business without focusing at all.

Maybe you have little ones that you need to take care of but you can still manage to work a home business while taking care of them.

If they are still small and take naps then use that time to work on your business. This way it will be quiet and you will not be so easily sidetracked.

Another option is to choose a specific time period that is Your Work Hours. Let everyone know that in order for you to provide your family with a better life that you need this time to work on your business.

Make sure that they understand that you are still there if they need you but that unless it is important that they should try not to bother you.

Some children can sit and play happily right there beside you without causing you to lose focus. If this is how your child is then you are doubly blessed. Enjoy having your child near you as you create a better future for them.

Other children are just naturally loud and clingy and there will be no way that you can even think about getting ANYTHING done with them around.

Only YOU know your children. You will know in your heart if yours belong to the first or the second group. If they belong to the second group then you will need to wait for their nap time or bedtime or wait until they are in school. Have someone keep them distracted so that you won't be.

Maybe you can someone that you know that would like to have their own home business too. If this is the case you may be able to take turns watching each others children so that you both will have the time you need to work your business.

Set a specific time that is your ‘Work Time‘. This way you know that when that time comes it is time for you to take that 1-2 hours and really FOCUS on your business. This will help you to get your work done each day.

The home business that you choose will also have an effect on how much time you need to work your home business.

A home business that requires less time- meetings, calls, etc. will be easier to handle than one where you have to have meetings regularly and are expected to call numerous people every day.

When you have a home business that provides you with ongoing monthly income then that is even better yet.

With residual income you will finally get to a point where if you want to go do something special or fun you can do so without having to worry about making up for that lost time.

So, if you have been thinking about starting your own home business there has never been a better time. Contrary to what you might think now really IS a great time to start a home business. With the economy the way that it is more and more people are starting their own home business.

If you like to find out more about choosing a home business, avoiding scams. and more, and you get a FREE gift too all you need to do is to just send a blank email to freedomin90days@freeautobot.com

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Want to give your kids a better life? Wonder if a home business is right for you?

Many single parents find themselves in a position where they can't make enough money to pay all of the bills, put food on the table and give their children some of the extras that they would like to.

But, many times, working a second job isn't an option because of time, health or just the fact that they would like to be able to spend some time with their kids before they grow up and start their own family.

Another deciding factor is money. Many single parents just don't have the money that it takes to start a home business.

Many home businesses cost a lot just to join and then you have to buy stationary, business cards, advertising, letterhead, a desk, chair, printer, computer, fax machine, new phone line for your business and then there is the long distance charges that you are liable to run up in the course of building your business.

Who can afford all of that and take care of their kids too?

With many home businesses you end up filling your home with unwanted products and you run up your phone bill or spend time on conference calls, meetings, etc. Who wants that?

Single parents need a home business that is tried and true with no scams and no unwanted products piling up. They need to be able to earn money at home without having to invest and arm and a leg into all of the usual office equipment.

They need a home business where they can earn residual income (month after month) for work they did months, or even YEARS, ago.

They need to work with a company that has been around for many years, showing their stability, and that has NEVER had a late payment. This way they will KNOW that they will be paid.

Single parents usually don’t have a lot of money to invest in a home business so they need a company that provides a professional website already setup and hosting included with no extra charges.

So many home businesses might look like they are low cost and a good deal but you end up paying extra for a website and hosting and sometimes there are hidden fees you don’t even realize until it is too late.

Since many single parents don't have a credit card. So then what do they do? Most businesses online require you to have a credit card. Your best bet is to find a home business that has more payment options like using a credit card or Paypal. This way the millions of people who don't have a credit card can still start a home business..

Trying to raise a family alone is hard enough and then worrying about money too just makes a tough situation even worse.

So many single parents dream of the day that they have a home business where they will be able to spend more time with their family & not have to worry about money anymore. The best home business for most people but especially for single parents is the ability to work when YOU want to and to be able to do this with a small monthly fee and to only need to spend 1-2 hours a day on their home business. This way they can start their home business while they still work their J-O-B.

Many single parents are looking for a home business with the opportunity to make $3-10,000 a month. They need a home business that can start bringing in money in as little as 90 days. The opportunity to make that kind of income that quickly would make a big difference in the family of a single parent home.

Imagine for a moment, taking your loved ones on great vacations and living the life you are meant to instead of struggling for every penny? As a single parent you probably dream of the day when this is your reality instead of just a dream.

Ok, now it is time for a reality check. If you are thinking of starting a home business you need to realize that what you earn depends upon what you put into your home business. No business whether it is online or off, home based or not will not bring in money if you don’t work them. You cannot get something for nothing

Now, you are probably thinking…

Where on earth am I going to find a home business where I can work at home in my spare time, earn the money that I need to in order to support my family AND have it meet all of the guidelines listed here?

Think this sounds impossible? Would you like to find out more about choosing a home business, avoiding scams. and more?

You get a FREE gift too. Just send a blank email to freedomin90days@freeautobot.com

Content

Social Bookmarking is FAST becoming the 'New Way' to generate even more FREE targeted traffic to your websites because of there raising popularity and their ability to deliver the information web users want or their community members query.

And thats not all either, if you've been following the whole 'Tag and Ping' trend thats been going on then you'll also see the added benefit to Social Bookmarking if you own your own Blog and/or Website and how people can spread the word for you 'Effortlessly' throughout the many Social Bookmarking services available online today giving your Blog and/or Website even more exposure without you even lifting a finger.

I'm serious, and I'll reveal 'How' at end end of this article.

Now, with that said, for the rest of this article I want to stress to you the TOP 5 reasons why you should consider getting involved with Social Bookmarking.

So with that said, lets go to TOP Reason #1.

TOP Reason #1. Social Bookmarking services are FREE.

This is probably the single most beneficial reason for getting started with Social Bookmarking simply because these services are Absolutely FREE to the public to use at their convenience.

TOP Reason #2. Bookmark as many websites as you want.

Another great reason to use Social Bookmarking services is you can Bookmark as many websites or webpages as you want. Whether they're Articles, Reviews, Sales Letters, VRE Content Sites, etc.

As far as what kind of websites you can Bookmark really depends on the bookmarking services 'Terms of Service', so if your unsure as to what you can bookmark, that is the first place I recommend you look.

TOP Reason #3. Tag your bookmarks with targeted keywords.

This is the single most important benefit you get with Social Bookmarking services and that is the ability to bookmark your websites and/or webpages with whatever 'Keyword Tags' you want that will help you locate that bookmark when it comes time for you to want to read that particular information.

In the next TOP Reason I'll go into a little more detail as to why your 'Tags' are so important and why you need to choose your keyword tags carefully for maximum benefit.

TOP Reason #4. Make your account Private or Public.

This is where you have to make a choice. And this choice is whether or not you want to make your account with the particular social bookmarking service a Private account or a Public account.

Now, if you choose to have a Private account then those bookmarks you made will be available to you ONLY. But, if you choose to make your account Public then this is where ALL your FREE targeted traffic will come from because now web surfers and the social bookmarking community has access to your bookmarks under the 'Keyword Tags' you chose for the websites and/or webpages you tagged.

That's why I said it's VERY important you choose your 'Keyword Tags'wisely because you want the web surfers or community users to be able to find your websites and /or webpages you bookmarked which in turn could lead to more sales for you.

Also, by making your account Public your profile and websites and/or webpages you bookmarked will be picked up by the search engines and indexed, so you will benefit from the search engines that way, plus… you'll get some high PR(depending on the Social Bookmarking service) 'One-Way' backlinks pointing back to your websites and/or webpages Boosting your overall link popularity and search engine ranking for those websites and/or webpages.

TOP Reason #5. VIRALIZE your Blog or Website.

Remember I told you I would reveal 'How' you can VIRALIZE your Social Bookmarking efforts 'Effortlessly' without lifting a finger if you have your own Blog or Website to multiple Social Bookmarking services.

Well here's HOW!

All you need to do is add a piece of code to your blog or website and let your visitors do the rest of the work for you. It only takes a few minutes to do depending on your experience with HTML.

If your visitors find the information you offer of quality interest then they will definitely spread the word for you to other social bookmarking networks and communities giving you even more exposure without you lifting a finger.

This to me is a definite PLUS!

If you want to find out more about this pluggin go to ==> http://www.socialize-it.com

Well there you have it, the TOP 5 Reasons you should at least consider Social Bookmarking before getting involved.

I'm sure these 5 reasons alone are enough but who am I to make that decision for you.

Go search out a few Social Bookmarking services for yourself so you can see how easy it is to get started and visit the link above and add that code to your Blogs or Websites so your visitors can spread the word for you.

Content for WordPress

Social bookmarking has been around for a couple of years, but for me, it's a whole new concept as I learn more and more about internet marketing and how best to get traffic to my site and blog. It is a process that is becoming more and more popular as a means of generating traffic and page rank, so it's something I want to get started with right away! Most of us who own a PC know that when we come across a website that we like, we can add that site to our list of favorites or bookmark it for our own future use. Social bookmarking takes that organizational process a step further by making public the list of sites you frequent. This article will discuss what social bookmarking really is, its advantages, and how it can help your website.

What is social bookmarking? As mentioned above, social bookmarking is a system of organizing websites that you want to re-visit, but rather than bookmarking them in a folder on your computer, you bookmark them on a special social bookmarking website. If you do a Google search for "social bookmarking websites" you will find a list of the top social bookmarking sites that you can join to add your favorite sites to. The way you go about this is to use keywords that represent your favorite site's content, or in other words, you "tag" it. You can then make your entries public or private. The ones that you make public can be seen by anyone who visits the social bookmarking sites and looks up the keywords you used to describe your bookmarked sites. The public display will also show who created the bookmark, when, and how popular those keywords are.

There are many advantages of using social bookmarking as opposed to simply bookmarking. By making your list of popular sites public, you have the ability to share information with others who are looking for the same type of information. They will be able to find a list of sites that display exactly what they want just by logging into a social bookmarking site and typing in some relevant keywords. This is a tremendous way of helping others find useful information, or sharing resources with a group of people. For example, a group of network marketers may want information on prospecting, so they would log in, type in "prospecting" and receive a list of bookmarked sites on "prospecting", and other related topics, just like that! Not only will you find links to sites that you are interested in, but you can find out who has bookmarked your own site and how popular it is. Also, if you want to contact others who are interested in the same topics and sites as you, or know more about it than you, you can easily make a new connection with someone! How handy is that?

Aside from the benefits of resource sharing, social bookmarking can help generate traffic to your site and blog. You can set up your blog to link to your favorite tagged sites, and allow your blog visitors to easily bookmark your site. This will result in more traffic, possibly a better Google Page Rank, and potentially more sales! Some of the social bookmarking sites that you join allow you to add your bookmarks to your blog. In this way, your blog can be updated with tags and links on a daily basis! If you know how important it is to update your blog frequently to get the search engine spiders and traffic over to your site, then you will appreciate this feature! Not only that, but you can use your social bookmarking sites to post links to your website, thereby increasing your traffic and PR with a backlink from authority sites!

I have yet to discover the disadvantages of social bookmarking, but its advantages, as listed above, are enough to get me excited about this relatively new way of marketing my website and blog! I hope you are excited too, and will take action to improve your websites and blogs! You never know, you may even connect with an expert in your specialty area that can help you achieve your goals and dreams!

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You have probably heard a lot about social bookmarking lately. Social bookmarking is an online tool that allows anyone to easily bookmark their favorite sites into an online archive. As a matter of fact, you can spend all your time crawling the web today just to find out what Social Bookmarking is all about. Well, not here. I am giving you this information. I have done all the research on Internet Marketing and found this to be a super way to get more traffic to your site. The best news is, it's 100% FREE!

To detail all of the available features at these social bookmarking sites is well beyond the scope of this article - It would require a small ebook. With social bookmarking you can tag the site with "clothing" or "fashion" or "footwear" for example and when you select any of these tags in your own bookmarking area the site will be listed accurately!. Human/Real people have decided to save (tag/bookmark) the sites; not robots.

There are many different types of online communities that you can join and most will help you get a certain amount of traffic to your site. Social bookmarking is all about users adding their bookmarks onto websites so that they can then share them with other users that are signed up to that particular website. Some sites such as Blinklist allow you to keep bookmarks private - this makes those sites a good permanent replacement for offline bookmarks. After all. Put Social Bookmarking on Full Autopilot!

In addition. Basically Social Bookmarketing sites allow users to create a set of content bookmarks. These bookmarks are organized by tags which are (usually) arbitrary words or phrases the user can assign to content. Check out http://www.trafficwebsecrets.com/socialbookmarking/bookmarking_demon.html.

Just click on the cloud to see all the pages tagged with a particular label. I personally have hundreds of gigabytes of my own information and information of others connected to my notebook and socially bookmarked online. Tagging your sites is particularly useful when your browser based bookmarks have become unwieldy and totally unmanageable. By being added to the bookmark site, you have linked or pointed to your site from the bookmark site. Put Social Bookmarking on Autopilot!

Website content

Social Bookmarking is a significant thing for your online shop! And here I’m going to tell you why.

No visitors – no sales. You own a web-shop (or even many web-shops) and you want it to be profitable. There are several thing, on which it depends: hosting, design, prices, payment methods, additional services etc. One of the most important thing is your web-shop RANK in search engines. Yes, exactly rank helps your site to be easily found by potential customers. The higher rank of your shop, the higher it is in the list of searched information between other (including competitive shops) web-pages. Usually, customers look through only 1-2 first pages for needed shop and you must do everything to be on those first pages! High rank of your online shop helps to increase your traffic - to get more visitors (read - potential customers). That is what you need!

How make your rank higher? It is easy to answer but not so easy to do. Of course, it’s search optimization (SEO). And an important part of SEO is Social Bookmarking.

Social bookmarking is a way for Internet users to store, organize, share and search bookmarks of web pages. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Many social bookmarking services provide web feeds for their lists of bookmarks, including lists organized by tags. This allows subscribers to become aware of new bookmarks as they are saved, shared, and tagged by other users - Wikipedia.org

Social bookmarking is a powerful tool in promoting your web store. The more people bookmark you shop, the more value it will get for search engines and the higher rank it has. It also gives your site more exposure. Your web-shop rank depends on quantity of links to your site on other sites. The fact is that links from social sites are more trusted than from commercial one (by Internet users and also by Google and Yahoo). But there is one "but" - social bookmarking by itself is quite time-consuming. Make bookmarking of your site easily and fast!

There are a lot of services designed to reduce the time and effort needed to socially bookmark a website. I’ll shortly tell you about one of the best. It is unique solution which will let your customers to bookmark your site: any your product, category or page into social favorites / bookmarking services - Social Bookmarks Supercharged osCommerce Module

Here are the most important Social Bookmarking Module Benefits for your online business:

- very simple way to bookmark your site

- your visitors promote your website - for you, without you

- increase link popularity - Improves SEO results in long run

- multiple design templates out of the box

Module Features:

- flexible bookmarks pane position suitable for any store design: choice from multiple predefined layouts are available

- turn on or off any bookmarking service

- support of all most popular bookmarking services - 120 out of the box and adding constantly

- support of Advanced SEO for osCommerce

- improves SEO results in long run

The goal of the Module is to help you to get more visitors, higher rank and, as a result, increase your sales. Don’t miss this opportunity and download free trial version here http://www.magneticone.com/store/oscommerce.modules/social.bookmarks.supercharged…oscommerce.module

Successful bookmarking!

Content for WordPress

You have probably heard a lot about social bookmarking lately. As a matter of fact, you can spend lots of time and effort today just to find out what Social Bookmarking is all about. Well, not here. I am giving you this information.

I have done the hard part of the research and found this to be a super way to get more traffic to your site. While social bookmarking is a good hobby imagine if you could replace the website option with blogs? There are thousands of blogs out on the web there is no doubt about that and the most popular ones will be very hard to find. The best news is, it's 100% FREE!

To demonstrate the differences between Social Bookmarking sites to normal search engines - let's talk about Google for example as a search engine and how it works compared to Social Bookmarking site such as Furl or Delicious. In any social bookmarking site -your screen will show a range of tags which are in different colors size and intensity which marks the popularity of the tag. These Social Bookmark sites provide a great means of sharing quality content sites - so start bookmarking today!.

We all spend more and more time on the Internet- whether we're researching; looking for work; or just browsing for fun. If you are looking for a great blog to read in the morning then you will love the chance to find out the most popular blog via your favorite bookmarking site!. Social bookmarks are usually public- hence the 'social' and they also allow other users to comment on the links you have saved.

Social bookmarking saves uploading a bunch of urls to your domain or remembering to send them to your Aunt Sally before you visit on the off chance you'll need to remember that special something while you're away. I get a goodly amount of traffic from social bookmarking sites like technorati as well but I would call that site a business bookmarking site so I'm not going to mention it here. Check out http://www.trafficwebsecrets.com/socialbookmarking/bookmarking_demon.html.

But remember; in the final analysis others will make the decision on whether your way of bookmarking is ethical and useful or spam. A good way to make social bookmarking more useful is to use the notes or comments fields when tagging pages. The simplicity of Social bookmarking websites allow you to save bookmarks online and Tag/Categorize them with keywords instead of saving them as bookmarks in the favorite's list of your browser: Put Social Bookmarking on Autopilot!

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Social bookmarking has become a common term within the internet surfers. What exactly means? Why social bookmarking is important for marketers? What's the benefit of social bookmarking sites? Let's quickly answer these questions…

What is Social Bookmarking

Definition from Wiki:

On a Social Bookmarking system or network, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists can be accessible to the public by users of a specific network or website. Other users with similar interests can view the links by topic, category, tags, or even randomly.

Other than web page bookmarks, services specialized to a specific subject or format - feeds, books, videos, music, shopping items, map locations, wineries,etc. - can be found.

In a social bookmarking system, users store lists of Internet resources that they find useful. These lists are both accessible to the public or a specific network, and other people with similar interests can view the links by category, tags, or even randomly. Some allow for privacy on a per-bookmark basis. They also categorize their resources by the use of informally assigned, user-defined keywords or tags. Most social bookmarking services allow users to search for bookmarks which are associated with given "tags", and rank the resources by the number of users which have bookmarked them.

Many social bookmarking services also have implemented algorithms to draw inferences from the tag keywords that are assigned to resources by examining the clustering of particular keywords, and the relation of keywords to one another.

Its increasing popularity and competition have extended the services to offer more than just sharing bookmarks, such as rating, commenting, the ability to import and export, add notes, reviews, email links, automatic notification, feed subscription, web annotation, create groups and social networks.

Why Social Bookmarking is important for marketers?

Suppose you just created your Website or Blog. Now What? Your site needs to be spidered and indexed in the search engines. One of the fast ways to accomplish this is via Social Bookmarks. By bookmarking your own sites, your site will be indexed and have an initial backlinks to jump up in the Search Engine Rankings.

Also in order to have a successful and profitable Blog or Website you need traffic. There are many sources of information regarding ways to bring traffic to your site, but Social Bookmarking is one of the easiest ways with multiple benefits.

These methods are perfectly ethical and you shouldn't have any concerns doing them.

Benefits of Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking can bring immediate traffic to your website, as web 2.0 community websites such as Technorati, Digg, Reddit and Tailrank provide almost immediate information on various topics. These type of Bookmarking sites index and categorize content usually faster than the major search engines. People looking for the latest information on certain topics usually refer to these types of services.

The benefit is two fold. They provide immediate traffic from like-minded targeted viewers but also powerful backlinks to your sites that bring positive SEO and Search Engine results.

In summary, social bookmarking has been created to bring upfront the relevant information created and uploaded to the internet. The beauty of the system is that users are the ones who "vote" for the good content. In this way it's a sure way to find the best stories and the best content in the front pages of these sites. Therefore, the traffic bookmarking sites generate has exponentially increased during the last years. Savvy marketers are finding its way to get a share of this traffic.

Content

The success of the "social" web applications is undeniable. Social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo or YouTube have reached success and fame in the past & present. Now followed by social bookmarking websites as they are becoming more and more praised by internet users.

Why create such a buzz around these websites? Let us give you a brief overview and the reasons why you should be in it to win it!

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is an online tool which allows people to organize, rate and share their favorite sites on the Internet. Categorize favorite sites using tags, which describe the content of the website. Other people who are interested in the same subject can browse through this selection, based on the recommendation and choose to bookmark the page themselves. The web application often allows users to store links (bookmarks- hence the name ), share and search a web page location (URL), web page address or a file name. All of these lists of online resources can be made accessible to the public. That is why it is called " social " bookmarking site. These bookmarks can be private or shared. To get your own social bookmarking storage - simply register to one of the website below.

List of Social Bookmarking websites

* Blue Dot

* del.icio.us

* Digg

* Diigo

* Furl

* GiveALink.org

* Ma.gnolia

* My Web

* Netscape

* Netvouz (Allows both tags and folders for organizing bookmarks.)

* Newsvine

* Reddit

* Shoutwire

* Simpy

* SiteBar (SiteBar bookmark server is open source software)

* StumbleUpon

* Thoof

A bit of Social Bookmarking History

The idea of sharing internet bookmarks was born in April 1996 with the launch of the first social bookmarking website itList.com. The market flourished in three years and websites like Backflip, Blink, Clip2, hotlinks and quiver enter in the competition. But this first generation of social bookmarking software didn't have a viable money making model behind it. Many failed especially with the dotcom bubble gone burst in 2001. In 2005 and 2006, a second generation of social bookmarking site like Del.ici.ous, Simpy and furl rushed into the social software market, followed by Diigo, Ma.gnolia, Netvouz and Stumbleupon. Latest members to the family are websites like Reddit, Digg, Newsvine, the Uncut Times and Netscape. Recently IBM have revealed plans to enter this market and even the traditional BBC has added social bookmarking links for its news and sports articles.

Social Bookmarking: a small web revolution!

This a new way to discover the web. It is a big innovation in the area of searching for information online. Compared to the traditional system using a search engine, social bookmarking sites have a great advantage: The categorization of the bookmarks is made by humans who understand the content of the pages they have listed (or so we hope), unlike to the search engines which are using algorithms to rate & store the content of web sites. The result pages are ranked by the number of users or the times the keyword searched has appeared on the resource.

The importance of Social Bookmarking sites for Search Engine optimisation!

These Social Bookmarks are a nice "Add-On" for every companies Internet Marketing Strategy. It is all about traffic -and your online bookmarks again generate links which can potentially bring traffic to the website. Furthermore social bookmarking sites are highly considered by search engines because they are seen as reliable and recommended websites - human edited.

Create your account and start digging!

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Copyright (c) 2007 Titus Hoskins

Recently, a page on one of my websites was bookmarked or listed on Digg, a popular social bookmark site. It gave me the perfect opportunity to study and analyze the traffic coming from these social media sites. Read to discover the advantages and disadvantages of social bookmark traffic and how it can be applied to your own online marketing or site.

Is Social BookMark Traffic Useless?

First, we must make the distinction that no traffic is useless. Any visitor to your site is a good thing and should be welcomed. However, all traffic is not created equally, there are great differences in the sources of your traffic. This article takes a close analytical look at social bookmark traffic from an internet marketing perspective.

In case you haven't noticed, right now social bookmark and media sites are all the rage on the web. Social bookmark traffic comes from such popular sites as Slashdot, Digg, Stumbleupon… basically these sites are driven by their users - that is, users or members pick and bookmark the content they want to view and discuss.

These social bookmark sites are extremely popular; they command the high traffic numbers most ordinary sites can only dream about obtaining.

But is this social bookmark traffic useful?

Is it worth your time? Should you be actively promoting to these social media sites? Should you concentrate your online marketing efforts on these types of sites? More importantly, what are the benefits and disadvantages of getting a front page listing on a sites like Digg or Stumbleupon?

As a full-time online marketer I wanted to know the answers to those questions. Moreover, I wanted to discover how or if I could use these sites from an online marketer's advantage; i.e. how can they help me create more online income.

Recently, the Digg listing gave me a first-hand opportunity to really study these sites.

Of course, nothing happens without a reason… I did actually court these social bookmark sites by placing the free Addthis.com bookmark on all my pages. You can do the same. Just use this simple bookmark to attract these sites.

But be careful; getting your site featured on the front page of these sites can drive 100,000's of visitors to your site immediately, so much traffic that it may overtax your server and crash it.

So be warned; if you're actively promoting to these social bookmark sites just make sure your servers or web hosting is up to the demanding task of handling all these sudden visitors.

In my case, it didn't crash my servers but unfortunately, the page/link in question featured an old poorly written article I did on the history of the Internet. Why it was even featured on Digg is a puzzle and beyond me.

But still I am not one to waste an opportunity, so I put my Google Analytics into overdrive and starting analyzing these visitors and social bookmark traffic.

It pointed out some very interesting factors about this bookmark traffic.

Most of this traffic will:

* simply bounce back

* very few visitors will spend much time on your site

* very few visitors will even venture into your site

* very few will sign-up to your newsletter

* very few will enter your marketing follow-ups/funnels

(The unknown variable here being the content on your site, how good it is? How well does it perform?)

Regardless, one common problem with traffic from these sites, it's very temporary traffic. The high volume will only last a few days… until your item is moved back from the front page.

These visitors will not stay on your site long and most are gone within seconds, never to be seen again. A few may sign up to your newsletter or venture to other areas of your site but not many.

Social bookmark traffic is very fleeting, like customers in the drive-thru section in a fast food restaurant, they grab the content and surf back to the major linking site very quickly and surf on to the next item.

This traffic will behave very differently than organic traffic from the search engines, or from your newsletter traffic or from traffic in your marketing funnels. Much different.

It was unlike getting one of my articles featured in Addme or SiteProNews, where I can easily get 200 or 300 new subscribers in a day. Plus, these visitors are interested in my information and have been exposed to my content (article) before coming to my site.

So there was no comparison; I would take the traffic from these sites any day over traffic from the social bookmark sites. And I would take free organic traffic from the search engines over any other source of traffic.

So the question remains - is social bookmark traffic useless?

First, as I mentioned before, you must realize no traffic is useless; any visitors to your site is a good thing. Without traffic your site is worthless, just a few files sitting on a server in the middle of nowhere.

Obtaining visitors is one of your first objectives as a webmaster. You must get visitors to your site or it's game over.

The best kind of traffic is traffic coming from organic search, visitors who come from the search engines seeking exactly what you're offering on your site. These are targeted visitors who will consider your offer, real your information, maybe buy a product or sign-up to your newsletter or follow-up system. They often become repeat visitors to your site. These are your ideal visitors. This is the kind of traffic you want.

Social bookmark/media traffic is different but it does have some saving graces.

Mainly it can help expose your site to millions and help brand your site or business. It can get the word out about your site. Start a buzz.

If you have a site that appeals to the mass market, then these social sites could be an excellent recruiting ground for visitors and traffic.

These social sites are good for another reason; getting your links on all these high traffic, high PR7 and PR8 sites can't hurt your search engine rankings. Once featured on a site like Digg, your link will appear on many secondary sites around the web, so far 500+ and counting. Monkey see, monkey do. Although it has never been my main ambition to get featured on Fark.com, all these sites do have high PR ranks so from a SEO standpoint it is not necessarily a bad thing.

Since many of these visitors will be using the Firefox browser which has the Alexa toolbar embedded - your site's traffic rank will increase. Over 50% of the bookmark traffic coming to my site were using the Firefox browser. Alexa's traffic rankings are not a true picture of the web's traffic but it's a good measuring stick, nonetheless.

Google might even consider it when ranking your site. Google basically considers their whole indexing system as a democratic voting structure… sites give a vote by linking to your content; wouldn't it also be reasonable to assume more traffic means more votes. So wouldn't getting a lot of traffic or being featured on a site like Digg where the users vote to propel the best content to the front be the ultimate vote.

One strange thing I did notice, for some reason the traffic from Stumbleupon was different. These visitors stayed longer on my site and reacted more like organic traffic. Maybe the Stumbleupon site is of a higher quality and this may have been reflected in the quality of the visitors coming from there. It also reminded me, all traffic from these social media sites can't be judged with the one brush.

This whole experience also pointed out another important factor; it made me realize how unsuited my content is for the general web surfer or t
he mainstream web. All my sites and content were planned and organized to first draw in targeted (warmed up) visitors from free organic search and from my online articles.

If I or anyone wanted to take advantage of this social media traffic, you would have to create your site/content to appeal to these surfers and then somehow draw them into your marketing funnels. I don't know if the majority of the users of these bookmark sites would make good prospects, but my guess is not very likely, the nature of the beast. But it would largely depend on what you're offering on your site and how well it is suited to these users.

So I am not drawing any conclusions yet.

Hopefully, I will have further chances to study traffic from these social sites and get the long-term effects, especially in regards to my keyword rankings in the search engines before making any final judgments.

For now I will keep an open mind but the jury is still way out whether or not social bookmark traffic is worth the interruption to the daily marketing tasks of your site. Just seems like much ado about nothing.

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