Copywriting master John Carlton is doing what he always does. Helping others succeed.

To do that he is giving away a few amazing resources over at his Simple Writing System Blog. I’ve been checking out John’s stuff for awhile now and know that he does nothing but produce quality information. He has a teacher’s heart and shows you exactly what you need to know in order to do things the most effective way.

John has released a few copywriting case studies in interview form that are free for a few days. There are also going to be a few more coming towards the weekend.

In addition to that, he has put together four free reports called “Making the Sale”.

Yes, this is all in build up to his upcoming releases of his Simple Writing System, but the free stuff is also worth the time to check them out.

I’ve just received an email from Gideon Shalwick and Yaro Starak about their newest resource for internet marketers. It’s called Become A Blogger.com and is a compilation of ten free videos that take you step by step into creating your own blog. The videos themselves are good and provide great information for people who have never set up a blog before.

The topics of the videos include;

Why You Should Use Wordpress
How to Get Your Own Domain Name
How to Get a Webhost
How to Install Wordpress
How to Upload File to Your Webhost Using FTP
Choosing a Wordpress Theme For Your New Blog
How to Install And Use Wordpress Plugins.
How to Create Your First Blog Post and Blog Page
What RSS Is And Why You Need It
How To Use Feedburner For Supercharging Your RSS Capabilities

All in all a great free tutorial on how to get your blog set up and going quickly and easily.

Free Blogging Report

Also while you’re there watching the free blogging videos you can also sign up for Gideon and Yarak’s free report on blogging.

I get asked the question, “How can I advertise my website for free?” almost daily. Luckily, in today’s web 2.0 world, that’s a lot easier than it use to be.

It seems that while there are billions of dollars being spent online each year in advertising there are also more and more ways to get a tremendous amount of advertising for free. In creating advertising campaigns for people each week , one of the things that I focus on is maximizing their advertising budget by utilizing free and low cost advertising. Lately, there has been a pretty big shift in the effectiveness of free vs. paid advertising.

Free is winning out.

To me it’s all about the game. Where can I get the same amount of traffic, or better, for a client’s website without paying for it? How can I best get brand recognition for a new website without spending any more ad dollars on it? How will I get the message out to the masses for free? It can almost seem like you’re shouting into a megaphone on a hilly meadow and nobody hears you.

That’s not the case today though. You can now successfully advertise your website, whether old or new, to a very large, and mostly targeted, audience. This is good news for people who are spending way too much on elaborate pay per click campaigns.

The question is where. Where can you advertise your website for free?

Ten Powerful Ways To Advertise Your Website for Free

1. Write and Submit Articles

Article marketing has been a very big provider of free traffic for me, and my clients, for a long time now. In fact, I still receive a little traffic from articles I’ve written six years ago. There are thousands of article directories online (just google ‘article directory’) and most of the time you just complete a simple sign up and start submitting. Some directories have pretty elaborate sign ups, but for the majority it’s easy.

The hardest part is, of course, the writing of the articles. There are a lot of article writing tips also available online to help you through this process. Or you could always hire someone to write the articles for you.

2. Start a Blog

One of the first things I’ve been telling my clients to do is to start a blog. And not just one. But, if you can to start several blogs on the free hosted blogs at Blogger.com and Wordpress.org.

What start a blog? It’s almost like having your own article directory that you post your own articles on. The best thing about it is that they are indexed in the search engines rather quickly. Especially on the Google owned Blogger.com.

3. Leave comments on other blogs I have to admit that I didn’t jump on this bandwagon until the last six months or so. I just didn’t see the use of spending more time rummaging through other blogs thinking up witty, useful comments. I’ve since changed my mind when I left a comment on a blog, ClickNewz.com I believe, and saw a sharp spike in traffic.

I must make a strong note though. Have something useful to say. Don’t just leave something like “Great post!” and leave.

4. Participate in Forums Again, I have to admit that I was a long time in coming around to the whole forum participation thing. For me the biggest drawback was time. I just didn’t have the time to ‘lurk’ around several different forums waiting for a chance to jump into the conversation. And just like leaving comments on blogs, once I started, I changed my mind.

I now make time each week for promoting my websites as the traffic generated is well worth it.

5. Spend time working on Search Engine Optimization

A major source of traffic to your website is the search engines. Google, MSN, Yahoo, Ask.com… they all contribute a great deal of free traffic on an ongoing basis. However, it does a little work to make sure your webpages are ranking high enough to get noticed. To do that you have to spend time working on each page until they are where you need them. And then follow up as the rankings change constantly. A great resource for this is a free ebook by Dan Thies called SEO Fast Start.

6. Tweet using Twitter

I really like Twitter. It’s an amazing social marketing tool that lets you say what you’re doing to the people who are following you. Kind of like subscribers to your email newsletter. The kick is that you only have 140 characters to do it. The beauty of it is in the immense usefulness of it.

With Twitter you must have a balance of what you’re tweeting. What I mean is you don’t just use it as a means to drive traffic by posting your URL all the time. It helps if you actually do let people know what it is you’re doing. Going to Starbucks… tweet it. Mowing your lawn… tweet it. Writing a new blog post… tweet it. Traveling to LA… tweet it. Landed a new client… tweet it. Get the idea??

7. Participate in Social Media Websites

By these I mean the two big ones Facebook and MySpace. There are others, but these are the two main ones where you’re more likely to meet more people. I was very skeptical of these types of websites as I only thought they were for teenagers and middle aged men looking to hook up. I took the chance of creating a Facebook profile and have met some great people, found new clients, and forming strong partnerships.

8. Write a Guest Post

Once you get the hang of blogging you can then move to writing guest posts on another compatible blog. I wouldn’t help you at all to write a post on the benefits of protein powder if your website deals with car batteries. But, if you wrote a post on fly fishing in Maine and had the opportunity to post it on a fishing blog, outdoors blog, travel blog, etc… you would gain in both traffic and in your own personal brand.

There are a few rules to how to be a guest blogger. For instance you don’t just send in blog posts to someone like they are your own personal article directory. You wait for an opportunity to submit one.

9. Do some Digging and Stumbling

Free traffic today is a process. Part of that process is helping others get free traffic. Websites like Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com are places where you get to rank other websites and leave comments as to why you do like, or don’t like, them. The key to success with sites like these is to Digg or Stumble other sites.

Once you begin to make friends on these sites (it all revolves around people you know…) and digg, or stumble, their sites they begin to do the same for you. If your blog post, article, or webiste can make it to the front page of these sites your traffic soars. In order to do this you must make sure you have great content that others will want to recommend.

10. Participate in Webinars and Teleconferences

I am beginning to love Webinars. They are great little “mini seminars” that are on the web. Most of the time you are on a conference call, but can participate through chat on a website. I have been making time in my schedule to attend at least one a week. By doing so I get to interact with others, leave comments in the chat, and providing commentary that adds to the conversation.

Free online traffic requires work and time, but is worth it

As you can see it takes a lot of time and effort in building and maintaining free traffic to your site. You can begin to feel overwhelmed and it can begin to get a little chaotic. One of the things that can help you immensely is by having a plan in place that you follow each week. A great help in this is a free report by Michelle MacPhearson on Web 2.0.

Free traffic is a lot of work. It does require time. But the rewards are very much worth the time as you are not only building traffic, and saving money, but are also building your brand. This is invaluable and priceless to your online business.