In the recent years, I have see an explosions of ebooks, video course, webniars, guru coaching, etc on Web. 20 marketing and how to drive traffic and promote your affiliate products using Web 2.0 sites. Each claimed to have found a secret formula for wealth creation using these sites. While I have never written a comprehensive guide and put all the ideas together in one place, I have published quite a number of posts on this subject. This guide is an attempt to streamline all the information, so called “secrets”,and tips and tricks to make a comprehensive resource for affiliate marketers.
Before I start on the subject, let me introduce to you some of my earlier posts on driving traffic and building links using Web 2.0 sites. In how to harness Squidoo traffic for online marketing, I introduced you to a Web 2.0 site called Squiddo and showed you how you can use it for your affiliate marketing. Better yet, you can build your own three way link network using two Web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hubpages using my free back link strategy.
Want to know best tips for driving traffic using StumbleUpon? Check out my 11 best best tips for StumbleUpon Traffic. An old traffic generation technique is to use Yahoo! Answer and it’s still very popular among affiliate marketers. I have also shown you a 13 step traffic generation formula using Yahoo! Answer.
Web 2.0 sites help you drive traffic and build back links at the same time. If you want to jump into building back links from high page rank sites, start with my list of 25 Web 2.0, high PageRank Websites for getting back links. You can supplement the list using another 16 Web 2.o sites for free oneway links.
What are Web 2.0 Sites?
If there are Web 2.o sites, there must be sites that are Web 1.0, right? But the fact is, there was no such term for describing the first generation of Web sites that started mushrooming starting from 1995. The first generation of web sites were mainly texts and graphics with little or no user interactions. Ans we still have plenty of these sites and use them regularly.
During and after the dotcom bust (circa 2000), a new generation of websites started popping up all over the Internet with some distinct characteristics. Some of the salient features of these sites are:
- Mixing of text and images with complex multimedia (videos, flash, etc.)
- Sites got center aligned with plenty of spaces on the left and right of your wide screen monitor
- Visitors participation started to dominate the internet in the form of feedback, reviews, status updates, and even complete editing of web pages like in a wiki.
- Explosions of blogs
By observing some of these trends, Tim O’Reilly coined the term Web 2.0 to describe these new generation of web sites that he predicted to dominate after the dotcom bust. And his prediction was right.
Using the Web as Computing Platforms
The first generation of websites were developed using concepts of old media like a magazine, newspapers, or product catalogs. They were like printed copies of old media in the Internet. The new generation of websites treat the web as computing platform.
If you have used Facebook, you will understand what I am talking about. These new breed of sites allowed developers to develop and deploy application with the websites like numeraous Facebook applications, WordPress plug-ins, Widgets etc. These sites turned the web into a participation platform or a computing platform.
The Emergence of a New Breed of Customers
The post dotcom era not only saw the birth of a new type of websites, it also experienced unprecedented growth in web users all over the world, encompassing all the demographics – age, education level, gender and income. The audience to these sites are no longer geeks but ordinary people from all walks of life who are ready for new experiences in consuming information and buying stuff online.
The expectation of these new breed of consumers is to have a relationship with you and your brand. You cannot simply put a website and forget about you visitors. They demand interaction and make purchases based on trusts.
The Growth of Classifieds Fro Free
Take for example, my own site classifieds for free. It started more than a decade ago as a simple web site where you can post free classifieds. Though you can still do that, but over the years, I have morphed it into a Web 2.0 site. Now it has a blog that provides contents to improve your affiliate marketing efforts, it has a forum, a regular news letter, Twitter account with close to 30,000 followers and a Facebook Fan page.
The part 1 is an introduction to the Web 2.0 story. In the coming weeks, I will drive deep into the subject and show you how you can use these Web 2,0 sites effectively to explode your traffic.
Related posts:
- A Definitive Guide To Article Marketing For Affiliate Marketers – Part 1
- A Definitive Guide To Forum Marketing To Make Money Online – Part 4
- A Definitive Guide To Forum Marketing To Make Money Online – Part 2
- A Definitive Guide To Article Marketing For Affiliate Marketers – Part 4
- A Definitive Guide To Article Marketing For Affiliate Marketers – Part 8
