These last few months, I’ve been spending my time creating or editing sites related to Twitter. Because the number of these Twitter-related sites and tools keeps growing every day, it gets harder and harder to get people to visit them.

Below, you’ll find a list of sites and directories I use to drive traffic to my new Twitter sites and apps.
Visit them to keep track of all new launches, or submit your own.

Twitter Only

• AllTwitterTools - a directory with Twitter related applications, tools, products & resources

• Twitdom - Twitter application database

• TwtBase - Twitter application database

• Twi5 - Twitter application database

• TwitterEye - 440 Twitter tools, and counting..

• TwitterLittle Star - a visual Twitter apps directory

• TweeterApps - resource for all things Twitter

• Tweerrific - Twitter apps, codes and widgets

• Twapps - archiving the best Twitter apps

Twitter can be an incredible asset to your business, just like email can be.  But (just like email), it can also be a huge time-waster and can suck hours out of your day without you even noticing.  You get on Twitter and then the next time you look up it’s an hour later!

A portion of self-control is important for any business person.  If you are self-employed, it becomes even more important!   Wasting time is wasting money. 

Wasting time on Twitter is like sitting around the water cooler and chatting with coworkers about last night’s American Idol segment - it might be fun, and it passes the time, but it wasted time that could have been used to make money.
 

Here are some tips on how to keep your Twitter time under control:

 These last few days, I’ve been drowning in work. No wonder, since I’m working on several projects at a time. Me and my biz, we would probably profit more if I could stick to one particular project and work this out properly. But sometimes the ideas just keep coming…

As a result, I simply don’t have time to write a long blog post, yet I want to give you a little something - being Christmas and all

The ‘48 Hour Action Plan - Your 2-Day Action Plan To Affiliate Profits‘ is my new step-by-step guide that will show you how to set up your own money-making website in less than 48 hours, without having any experience or a product of your own.

I’ve had my hosting company suspend my account seconds after launching my very first JV Giveaway event… I’ve experienced server crashes, and lost loads of important data - more than once… I’ve had smoke coming out of my pc, lost a couple of hard drives and there was one time I wasn’t able to see my own site from my own machine - for three long months.

Still, these last three days have been - by far - the most frustrating days in my entire marketing ‘career’…

Here’s what happened:

Due to a misunderstanding with my credit card company, my Aweber account got limited - maybe ‘blocked’ would be a better word to describe what happened, since I wasn’t able to send out messages, nor receive signups.

I have never felt this lost as long as I have been in IM.

I’ve been Twittering away lately. Ever since I found out about Twhirl -a free desktop client that allows you to post messages to Twitter without having to visit and log in to the Twitter site - I’ve been able to see the fun & benefits of being an active ‘Tweeter’.

To me, Twitter has become more than just a way to promote my blogs & biz: it has proven to be an excellent resource for valuable info & sites, a great way to build relationships with other marketers ánd - last but not least - a channel to get a quick  answer to any questions I have. I found many of my fellow tweeters to be very friendly and always willing to help.

I’m still far from being a Twitter pro: there are millions of things about Twitter and how to optimize my tweets I still need to discover, but I’m learning new stuff every day.

Every so often, I receive a message with a question like

- How do I add a PayPal button to my site?
- How do I create a PDF- or a zip-file?
- How do I use Facebook?
- How do I register for a Clickbank account?
- …

These messages remind me of the fact that some things that I take for granted, are not obvious to those who are new to the Internet Marketing game.

After all, it hasn’t been that long since I was a so called ‘newbie’ too. When I just started online, I didn’t know about things like PayPal, or databases, or how to register a domain name… To learn the ropes, I kept my eyes open, and taught myself new stuff with every new action I took.

Nowadays, almost every marketer has his own affiliate program. That’s no surprise; after all it is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business.

If you are one of those marketers, you’re probably aware of the fact that the major part of the people who signed up for your affiliate program, will never refer any sales… To keep this group of non-productive affiliates as small as possible, it is important to motivate them any way you can.

Here are some tips:

• Lead the way
  Many affiliates never bring in any sales, simply because they don’t have the knowledge to set up a successful promo campaign. Tell them what to do and show them where to go to maximize their results. You could write ashort,  easy-to-follow marketing ecourse, and allow your affiliates to download this at no cost.
   

Miguel Alvarez is putting on a gigantic contest on his blog: The Blog Boost Giveaway.

On September 20th, one lucky winner (plus 3 additonal winners) will receive 1000s of dollars worth of the most coveted prizes a blogger could possibly desire. The list of prizes is way too long to add it to his post, but you can everything that’s included here.

Entering this contest is easy and free. All you need to do to earn a ticket is subscribe to Miguel’s email list. You can earn additional tickets by:

• blogging about the contest
• adding Miguel as a friend and following him on Twitter
• Dig, Stumble, Twitter, … Miguel’s post about the contest
• [Read More]

Good luck!

Here’s the link once more:

http://www.marketingfactor.com/blogmarketing/blog-boost/

These last few weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time working on my blog(s). During my research, I came across ‘Entrecard‘, a blogging network that lets you advertise your blog for free.

Entrecard claims to be a an internet business card. Just as in ‘real life’, you can leave your business card at other sites. Every time you leave your business card, you’ll earn EC (Entrecard Credits), which you can use to purchase advertisements on thousands of blogs or to shop for hundreds of products and services in the virtual marketplace.

You also earn Entrecard credits when others drop their card on your site, or when they buy advertising space on your site.

The site works through a widget you can easily add to your blog sidebar (several versions of the widget are available). You’ll find my Entrecard widget in the sidebar under ‘Leave Your Business Card’.

I’m spending way too much time in front of my computer…

Tonight, we rented a movie - Untraceable - about some psycho who’s torturing people live on the web. The more hits the site gets, the faster his victim dies. While I was watching, I found myself thinking ‘Wow, what if he had put an ad or two on his site… He would not just be a psycho, he would be a rich psycho…‘

I really need to take some time off…

Anyway, the story illustrated one of the basic laws in marketing: All you need to attract people to your site is an idea that is appealing to many…  It doesn’t have to be a good idea - as long as it’s something people WANT to see.