The term “Web 2.0” means nothing. It was a buzz term referring to the way the internet was changing, but became overused and nobody can explain exactly what it is without going into techno babble that makes little to no sense to anyone that isn’t a total and complete tech geek.

Let’s compare the top sites between 2005 and today:

Notice the difference? In 2005, nearly every top visited website was a search engine or news site. In 2009, video and social networking sites are mixed right in!

Design has changed. It has gotten more modern. Is it Web 2.0? No, it’s just a nicer looking design…

Marketing on these sites is easy. You simply have to find them and figure out how to use them. The menu bar on any website will tell you all you need to do to build a presence there. There is no secret to it and they aren’t hiding from you! Here you can find the best sites that are considered to be “Web 2.0″.

Create amazing content and you will be found. This is normally referred to as “Link Bait”. You create something buzz worthy and people will find it and send you traffic because of it.

This concept is not new.

Take a look at what is being posted to social bookmarking sites and/or blogged about in any niche. Create something that is worth seeing and make sure that enough people see it. This is all you have to do to ensure that you get all of the quality customers and visitors you could ever need! Once the viral effect kicks in with any marketing, it literally can’t be stopped. Just sit back and enjoy!

Growth and change is good for business if you keep your hand on the pulse of your customer at all times. Find the sites that your customer is going to and make sure that your content is there for them to see.

Social Media is here to stay. Use it in your business and watch as the cash pours in.

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Marketing to groups must be handled like forums. If you outright spam groups (hundreds of people do every day), you will be ignored. Ask questions and supply answers to others. Include a simple signature (like in forums) to generate traffic to your sites.

Groups are different from forums in the fact that their membership normally follows a specific pattern:

• You join a group.
• You receive hundreds of spam messages. 3. You turn off the option to receive emails from the group.

The only way around this is to post to the actual group itself. It functions similar to a forum and you should handle yourself in the exact same manner, but you should provide information about your business in every post (even your first) as an offer for help. If you blatantly advertise your results will be less than if you offer great content and recommend that people visit your site for more of that information.

Secret Tip: Group Owners are normally able to contact the entire membership of their groups. Contact the group owner and offer to make them an affiliate for your products. This gives them a monetary reason to promote your products to their list of members. More people will read the messages because group owners do not normally promote products.

• http://groups.yahoo.com
• http://groups.google.com

Your Single Greatest Asset:

No matter how much you use it, it can never be enough!

The methods described here are totally and completely outside the box. You can use any or all of them to get tons of targeted visitors with ease. Submit your site to Cool Site of The Day and others like it. Nice design? Submit your site to CSS galleries. Have a Widget created for Facebook and WordPress and submit it to widget sites. Have a toolbar created for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Have a free software created, make a PAD file and submit it to download.com and other similar sites. Create a viral Ebook with a great title and submit it to Free Ebook Directories. Allow it to be branded with affiliate links via Viral Cash Cow or My Viral Spiral. Have your website reviewed at any forum you are a member of. Create a tutorial and submit it to tutorial websites.

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Joint ventures are similar to the “talking to the owner” technique mentioned in the “Link Exchange” section. This honestly boils down to advertising each other’s products in an effort to earn money for both of you.

Contact the owner of a complimentary site to set up a cross-selling type relationship. This means that if any of his customers ask where they should buy their next Ipod, the owner will refer them to you. This also means that you have to do the same. In exchange for this, you give each other a percentage of the money earned from your relationship. Developing relationships will do amazing things for your business.

You must set up a way of tracking joint venture efforts to ensure you get paid. There are many ways of tracking these efforts, but the easiest way is to set up a specific page for that customer for them to send their customers to. That way you can track which orders come from them. If you have a shopping cart with numerous products, most have affiliate modifications that can be applied that will tell you when an affiliate makes a sale and how much you owe them.

Remember that you don’t have to have an affiliate program in place to do a joint venture. If you have a mailing list and your potential partner does too, check to see if they would be willing to send a recommendation to their list without a link to get paid. As long as you’re willing to do the same, this works to benefit both of you.

Many potential partners will be willing to do something special for you to promote their products. You should be willing to do the same. Teleseminars, Webinars, custom emails, etc…

Over deliver to a JV partner and they may just refer you to their friends and other people that they may know in your niche.

Also, a JV doesn’t just have to be to promote each other’s products. It could be working together to create one! Digital information products are easily created between two or more people that have knowledge on a subject!

To send someone to your JV partner’s website, add a folder to your website titled “recommends” Create a blank page for your website and insert the following code into the meta tags (between the <head> tags):

<meta HTTP-EQUIV="REFRESH" content="0; url=http://youraffiliatelinkhere.com">

Save the page with a simple one word title you will remember in the “recommends” file and the url will be formatted like this:

http://www.yoursite.com/recommends/page

This is an acceptable practice for affiliate marketing, as well.

Secret Tip: Always make sure that every folder of your website has an index page. Otherwise thieves can find and take any files easily.

Joint Ventures are more about networking than anything else. Having friends in your industry will do nothing but good things for you and your business. Being a loyal friend online will help you gain success quickly and keep it.

The first step in setting up joint ventures is to build relationships with others in your industry. Doing this should consist of researching your potential partner to understand their hobbies, dreams, families, and everything else you can find on them. Next, contact them via the most personal contact method you are capable of. The order of preference would be email, phone, and face to face. Attending seminars and trade shows are hands down the best way to build relationships with others in your niche.

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How would you like it if your videos came up after some viral video that has 30 million views? It’s actually quite simple. Take all of the tags from a video that is most similar to yours and use them in the exact same order for your video. Use the title words they used in your title and description and you will definitely come up when their video ends.

Create Your Own Video Virus – Why do videos go viral? This is not easy to answer. Certain videos go viral with no reasoning behind how or why. In fact, many of them are flat out ridiculous! Let’s take a look at some videos that went totally viral and figure out what we can do to get the same results.

This is the single most viewed video on YouTube. Check out the arrow above. There are over 68 million views for this and it is going up by thousands every day. Also look at the related videos and you will see that the top related video also has over 12 million views.

This is a video of a comedian going through dances from the fifties to now. It is absolutely hilarious, yet the quality is substandard. The quality of your videos is not important. It is the content.

How funny can you be? This is one of the secrets to breaking through the thousands of other videos that will end up on YouTube moments after yours goes up.

This is another funny video. Notice the nearly 31 million views. Take note of the related videos. None of them have less than 3 million views. When a YouTube video ends, related videos will show up in the video window. Wouldn’t it be nice to have your video there?

Want a link to your site from these amazing videos? Place the video on your site and write something that explains why your visitors should watch the video. Become one of the top five sites as far as the amount of viewers is concerned and you will get a link from the video’s page on YouTube.

This one is actually pretty easy to figure out. Miss Teen South Carolina is a dumbass! I hate to be harsh, but she answers a question about geography with world hunger…

I’d like you to meet Chris Crocker. Chris is an absolute weirdo that is in love with Britney Spears. He is also very obviously homosexual (which makes the whole thing a bit odd) . In his crying fit, he begs everyone to “leave Britney alone”. This single video has gotten him onto multiple talk shows and a huge amount of exposure

This video has a fake David Blaine forcing a playing card to pop up in all kinds of crazy places. These guys freak out over finding a playing card on their bodies, their phones and drivers licenses (seriously!).

The common thread between these videos is that most of them are funny. The Britney video is more disturbing than anything else. The viral nature of the videos can be summed up in that they appeal to nearly anyone. Take a note from them and apply the ideas to your videos to get more exposure.

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Link exchanges are nearly useless for SEO purposes, so don’t spend a lot of time on this!

The type of link exchange I’m referring to here offers almost zero SEO benefit. This type of link exchange is for complimentary websites only and they must be in your niche. We are talking about generating traffic here, right? For example: You sell Ipods and you find a site that specializes in Ipod accessories. This would be worth your effort to exchange links with this site because your clients can benefit from their services and their clients can benefit from yours.

A better way of thinking of a link exchange is to trade traffic. If someone goes to a site that has products that compliment yours, it would be mutually beneficial for you to set up an arrangement with the site owner to place a link to your site stating something like:

For complimentary widgets click here.

You would then do the same and send potential customers back and forth. This also works with affiliate links. You can sign up with a company like Linkshare and send people to a site where it will earn you commission if they buy through the affiliate link you provide them.

This is done in the adult website industry quite often. They don’t look at their customers like most other online industries. They do use affiliate links here and there, but why let a customer leave without sending them to someone you would like to help out.

This kind of philosophy would do well in nearly any niche, but finding someone that agrees with that thought is easier said than done. Instead of losing a customer forever, you would be better off giving them an option to go to a site that belongs to someone that you know and like.

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