You have probably heard about the benefits of outsourcing some of your business tasks. Maybe you would like to, but you just feel you do not have the money to hire anyone. It may seem backwards, but paying others to handle some of your business tasks will actually make you money in the long run.

Take a look at the number of hours you are working on your business and figure out which tasks are actually helping you to earn money and which tasks are taking away from the time you could be spending on more important things.

Think about how much more money you could be earning if you spent all of your working hours on the tasks that make you money. The truth is you cannot afford to not start outsourcing. The following are tips for outsourcing your tasks when you do not have a lot of extra money to spend on hiring others.

Start outsourcing your tasks slowly. Maybe you can hire a ghostwriter to write a couple articles for you. That may not seem like much, but those articles can be used on your website and distributed to article directories, which can help bring in a lot of traffic to your site. You can hire a virtual assistant to write and distribute a press release for you. Which, again, can help bring in a lot of traffic for you.

Another option is to barter with service providers. If you sell Tupperware and are looking for someone to help you create a newsletter, ask if they will accept some of your product instead of cash. Or, if you are a ghostwriter in need of a website, ask a web designer if she will trade her services for articles.

If you visit a service-providers’ website and you notice that they charge $15 per hour but you can only afford to pay $10 per hour, send them an email and let them know your situation. If they know that you plan on being a steady client, they may be willing to offer you a reduced rate.

You can also contact your local high school or college and offer an internship in your business. An intern is a student who is willing to work for free in exchange for the experience. Depending on what the student is studying, he or she may be able to handle administrative tasks such as answering email and returning phone calls or highly technical tasks such as web design.

As your profits increase, you can slowly start adding to the list of items you outsource. Even if you add one thing per month, within a year you will have gained a lot of time and maximized your profits.

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OK, so unless you’ve spent several hours with your nose buried in SEO forums and talking to various SEO gurus (or at least reading their blogs) you probably have no idea what optimizing your website involves. And if you did, there is a good chance that you have the WRONG idea from BAD advice.

I’m going to let you in on a few secrets. First of all, here is what optimizing your site for search engines does NOT involve:

1. Submitting your sites to search engines
2. Slapping meta tags on your pages
3. Measuring the density of your keywords in your content (Say what?!)
4. Filling your pages with tons of keyword phrases whether related to your site’s content or otherwise
5. Creating doorway pages.
6. Hiring someone who does any of the things mentioned above.

So, what exactly DOES optimizing your website for search engines involve?

First, I recommend you do your research to find out what keyword phrases people are actually using to find your product. Then name your pages appropriately.

For example, if you are selling baby slings using a Shop Kit Plus site, you might do your research and discovered that there were 472 searches for “baby slings” in the past 90 days and 426 for the phrase “baby sling.” However, the term “baby carrier” received 583 searches. So, I would recommend using the “baby carrier” phrase as well as the “baby sling” phrase.

Second, you need to name your pages using the keyword phrases you found. So, if you’re using the Shop Kit Plus, you would name your product “Red Widget Baby Carrier.” In the Shop Kit Plus, this will give your single item page the same name as the product.

On your product information pages, you might have a page with care instructions. So you might name the page “Baby Carrier Fabric Care.” This will give the page, at the top of the browser, the same name.

In the Shop Kit Plus, I would also recommend hiding the page title in the content area itself, then writing your own headline, using the keyword phrases, but written with your human readers in mind.

And third, the most important part: Write your content with your human visitors in mind. It must be compelling and either informative or persuasive, depending on the purpose of your page (sales or education).

This is optimizing your site in a nutshell. There are several methods of offsite optimization, but we’ll get into those later…

(For more information about proper search engine optimization, join SEO Power Up.)

Popularity: 32% [?]

A group of web sites that display each other’s ad banners in exchange for credits. The more impressions you display, the more credits you receive. The credits are converted into ad spaces for you to display your ad banner on participating websites.

I don’t recommend using banner exchanges, because you end up sending people to other’s websites. If you’re going to do that, go with adsense or join an affiliate program. You’ll at least be compensated for the traffic you send away.

For proven marketing techniques that DO work, download the free Truth About Traffic report my friend Alice Seba created.

Popularity: 20% [?]

An online ad on a web page that links to another website or landing page. Banner ads are one of the first methods of advertising on the web. They have different costs depending on how much traffic and page views the website gets, and can cost up to $150,000 per month. Banner ads get their name because they are placed at the top or bottom of a web page, however, they can also be placed on the sides of the website content.

Prior to the dot com bust, many websites paid for themselves and earned profits from banner advertising. This stopped when advertising revenues dried up in the bust. If you’d like to hear one WAHM’s story about how she survived the dot com bust, listen to Vickie Barnes on Product Seller’s Talk Radio.

I advise owners of product selling websites to avoid littering the top, sides and bottom of their websites with banner ads. People are not going to see the ads, and they’re not going to see the products among all the other graphics either.

Popularity: 19% [?]

Try these plans at your own peril.

So, how would you describe your marketing plan?

1. Throw mud at the wall and hope something will stick…
2. Build it and they will come…
3. Try anything once…

We’ve all tried at least one of these plans at some point in our online business careers. You know from experience that, unless you’re really lucky, those plans won’t work. Of course, the last thing you want to do as a business owner is rely on luck. It’s going to run out eventually…

What’s wrong with these approaches? Why won’t they work?

1. Throw much at the wall and hope something will stick:

Unless you have thousands of dollars to spend on marketing and plenty of business to make up for it, this method will leave you with very sad results. You might get lucky, as you’re slinging the mud, and find one technique that works. But chances are, even if you do, you’ll be so busy cleaning up your mess that you won’t know success as it stares you in the eyes.So, enough of the metaphors. I have been here. One day I send out an email newsletter to my paltry mailing list, the next I place banner ads on a few sites. Then I post on a few random message boards that I think might have members of my target market.

And then I wonder why none of it worked. Why?

Because I didn’t stick with anything. Your best method of getting results from your marketing efforts are to pick proven marketing strategies and then follow through with them.

2. Build it and they will come:

You’ve build a shiny new website, filling it with great content and products that you know your target market is dying to buy. But they aren’t. You can barely get your mother to the site. What’s up?Back in the 90s, if you put a website up and told a few friends, chances are, you could get a ton of traffic with little effort. Back then, websites were a novelty. If you knew enough to build the site in the first place, you most likely had the resources to get it in front of the online public.

But that’s not true anymore. Anyone can build a website. Anyone can get their site in a search engine. But not anyone can get the top rankings they need to generate traffic and therefore make sales.

3. Try anything once:

In today’s marketing environment, you can’t try something once, and if it doesn’t have shock and awe results, toss it aside. You have to start out with an understanding that you’re going after long-term results, not short term. So, for example, if you choose article marketing, you’ve got to understand that 30,000 visitors aren’t going to show up on your virtual doorstep tomorrow, if you submit three articles to directories tonight. However, over time, if you continue to steadily write high-quality articles, add them to directories and other webmasters use them on their sites, your traffic will increase. Again, this is over time. Unless you have a large marketing budget, worthy of a Madison Avenue advertising agency, you’re not going to be able to get overnight results.

My advice? Create a plan that features a smart assortment of marketing techniques, both online and off. Maybe a do some article marketing, blogging, press release writing and a targeted postcard campaign in your area. Keep in mind that you’re going for slow and steady. It’s the turtle that wins the race…

Popularity: 19% [?]

Google runs this ad serving programs that allows website owners to gain revenue by displaying ads on their websites. Google provides text, image and video advertisements that appear on participating websites. These ads appear based on the keywords and content present on the website.

Adsense has become one of the most popular methods to gain revenue from a website through advertising space. Adsense ads are less intrusive than traditional ads. Since the ads are picked based on the content of the website, the ads are also more relevant than traditional banners.

Web masters are paid when an Internet user clicks on an ad on their web page. Depending on the ad, the revenue may be a few cents up to a dollar per click. The ads used in Adsense are gathered from participants in Google’s Adwords advertising program.

Since web masters are paid regardless of whether anything is purchased at the advertiser’s site, it may be tempting for the web master to click on all of the ads on his or her site. However, Google watches for this type of activity, which is called “click fraud.” If a web page is showing signs of click fraud, a web master may lose their access to Google Adsense permanently.

Web masters can discreetly encourage clicks on their website by using three main techniques:

• They can use a wide range of traffic generating techniques to get more visits to their website.
• They can add valuable content to their site, to attract Adsense ads that pay higher per click.
• They use copy on their website to encourage visitors to click on the ads. Some of the most common phrases are “Sponsored Links” and “Advertisements.” It is against Google Adsense policy to post statements like “Please click on my Adsense links.”

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