How To Drive Traffic To Your Website

#1 – Business Plan and The Importance of Targeted Traffic

It has been said many times.

Those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

Making a good and detailed outline of the steps that should be taken, the order in which they should be taken and the expected cost of each is the way to get from Point A (zero traffic) to Point B (a lot of red hot traffic).

Some people will tell you that any traffic is good traffic but they are the ones who are most likely trying to sell you something you don’t need. The fact is that just any old kind of traffic is just about useless.

The only good traffic is targeted traffic. The kind of traffic that you need on your website is the people who have their credit cards at the ready and are actually looking to buy what you are selling.

Traffic that passes through your website while on the way to something totally unrelated to the topic of your website or those who just happen to surf by aren’t going to be making a purchase. They aren’t even going to be opting in to your mailing list. It’s better to have 10 potential customers visit your website than a 1000 people who are not the least bit interested in what you are selling.

Therefore: The plan that you will be making is for the purpose of getting TARGETED traffic to your website… not just traffic. You want this traffic to actually be looking for products like yours to buy. You don’t want people who are looking for free similar products and you aren’t looking for people who aren’t interested in or can’t use your product.

So how exactly are you going to go after this targeted traffic? Once you are ready to start actually going after the traffic, you will need to locate the people who are your very best potential product buyer prospects. So you get the attention of these people by:

1. Posting advertisements for your product where potential customers can find the ads.

2. Writing articles about how your product can make your potential customer’s lives better, solve their problems, make them feel better, look better, have more fun, or provide the information that they are looking for.

3. Finding the blogs and forums where your best prospects are gathered and are discussing a subject that is related to the whatchamacallits that you are selling.

4. Making it really easy for these potential customers to find you and your website by having links appear in as many places on the Internet as you can possibly find.

5. Capturing names and addresses of customers and potential customers who do visit your website so that you can entice them to make return visits and do so very often.

6. Using the list that you build to your greatest advantage!

Okay those are excellent goals and they are certainly aimed at the traffic that you most want to attract to your website. You still need, however, a detailed plan of just how you are going to accomplish these targeted traffic goals that you have set for yourself. You will also need some money in order to make this plan work. Let’s start with a $200 budget.

1. Make a plan. That is what you are doing right now.

2. The next step is to get an autoresponder and get opt-in boxes set up on your website. Without an autoresponder you have no way of capturing the names and email addresses of your website visitors. You will also have to offer enough of an incentive to encourage people to sign into your mailing list. This isn’t all that easy. People do not readily give up their information, so the incentive that you offer must be very enticing. We will discuss this in more depth later. The cost of an autoresponder is about $20 and the cost of the incentive varies but let’s say you can get one for $20. We’ve got $160 left.

3. You will write and submit articles to article banks so that they can be reproduced by other website owners and E-zine publishers. Cost for this is $0.

4. Write and place PPC advertisements. (Google, Yahoo, etc.) Cost $80 (you will set a $8 per day limit)

5. Register with Clickbank and submit an affiliate program for your product. Cost $49 ( We still have $31 left.)

6. Find blogs and forums that are related to your product and start posting. Cost $0

7. Place E-zine advertisements. Cost $30. (Hey…you have a dollar left!)

8. Find link exchange partners. Cost $0

9. Do a press release announcing your product. Cost $0

10. Make a plan for continuing to grow and thrive. Cost $0

By employing the methods that have been outlined above, you will be building targeted traffic for your website. You will be placing advertisements where your best prospects will see them and even be putting yourself in direct communication with them.

As another advantage, which you most likely haven’t even thought of, you are going to begin establishing yourself as an expert…a guru…in your field and that is absolutely invaluable in the world of Internet marketing in whatever form the marketing takes. You will also be increasing your value as a joint venture partner in the eyes of other marketers.

Remember that you are going after targeted traffic…not just garden variety traffic. You want the people to visit your website who are planning on buying what you are selling from somebody and you want that somebody to be you.

We are not going to take any ill-advised shortcuts and we are going to work hard but in ten days you are going to see a dramatic improvement in the targeted traffic on your website. All of the steps that we are going to take may not come to fruition in 10 days but they will be out there waiting to come to fruition. You will have laid a solid foundation that will product red-hot targeted traffic…and it won’t just last for a brief time. By continuing to use the methods and techniques that you will learn, you will continue to drive this targeted traffic to your website for years to come.

#2 – Autoresponder (Cost $20) Find Incentive for Opt-In List (Cost $20)

Autoresponders:

It’s true that you are on a very tight budget and it’s also true that there are free autoresponders out there on the Internet to be had. You might opt for one of the free ones. In that case you will have an autoresponder that isn’t going to serve your needs and that will make you look cheap but you’ll save enough money for a couple of hamburgers. It hardly seems worth it. Taking short cuts and/or doing important things on the cheap are not viable options in a good business plan.

You want to get an autoresponder that will serve your needs today, as well as, into the future after you have grown into a large and profitable business. Moving names and email addresses from one autoresponder to another can be done but it is a time consuming and tedious job that you can avoid by simply signing on to the right autoresponder service in the first place. Determining the right service means determining what is right for you and your business.

You need a service that has a personalization feature and one that allows you as many autoresponders as you need. You will want a separate autoresponder for each product and for each campaign.

*Note…the free autoresponder services usually only allow you one autoresponder, often do not have the personalization feature and always put an advertisement for their service in each and every email that you send.

Each autoresponder service has a slightly different set of instructions for the installation of their programs on your website but all of them are pretty simple and the instructions for all of the ones I’ve seen are clear and easy to follow.

Now the only question left is where to put those opt-in boxes on your pages.

Opt-In Boxes:

The placement of opt-in boxes on your pages is a vital decision and one that is going to have a direct effect on exactly how many people do, in fact, opt-in to your list. What information you ask for is an equally important factor in your opt-in success.

The information that the opt-in box asks for should be ONLY the first name and the email address of the customer or potential customer. This is important. People are very leery about giving out their personal information in this day and age of identity theft. If you ask for too much information, they will not opt-in no matter what assurances you give them about not sharing their information. They are not going to give your their first and last name, there home address and their phone number so just don’t ask. If you do, you won’t get their first name and their email address and this is really all of the information that you require at this point.

Your opt-in box should always make a guarantee of privacy and a promise that information will not be shared with third parties.

Do you see that scroll bar on the right side of this page? The one that allows you to roll a page down to see what is there but not yet visible on your screen? We refer to everything that can be seen without scrolling down as being ‘above the fold’…we stole that phrase from the newspaper publishers. In newspaper lingo it means what can be seen at the top of the first page…the headline and what is under it down to the center fold. That is always the most valuable part of print real estate and Internet marketing real estate as well.

Your opt-in box should always be above the fold…always! There are no exceptions. The most fortuitous position for your opt-in box is in the upper left hand corner of the page. This is where the human eye naturally goes first when presented with reading material. Centered either on the left or right side of the page is a satisfactory position as well.

There should be an opt-in box on every page of your website… there is no exception here either… and every one of them should be positioned above the fold.

The Opt-In Incentive:

I have frequently heard this referred to as ‘bait’. That is a term that just seems a bit crude. You are not fishing or tapping wild animals…these are your customers and potential customers that we’re talking about so we will call this an ‘opt-in incentive’.

People do not turn on their computers and go in search of places where they can give out their email addresses. No, they are very stingy with that information. For you to convince them to hand over their name and email address to you, you are going to need to give them a reason…a good reason.

There are a couple of things that just about every computer user has in common with all other users…they hate SPAM and the REALLY HATE ADVERTISING! That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is one more common trait among computer users…they LOVE information and the REALLY LOVE FREE INFORMATION.

If you have your own E-book that relates to the topic of your website and pertains to the products that you sell, then use it as your opt-in incentive. If you don’t have your own E-book, you can buy one. We allowed $20 in your budget for the purchase of on opt-in incentive. Look at PLR (Private Label Rights) sites to find E-books that will satisfy your requirements. You can buy the rights to an E-book, legally claim authorship of the work and use it as your opt-in incentive. Remember this; the more valuable your opt-in incentive is, the more people will give up their names and email addresses to get it.

E-books are not, of course, the only possible opt-in incentive out there. You might offer a free utility or another piece of software that your potential customers would find of value.

*Note: If you do have your own E-book opt-in incentive, apply the $20 you didn’t have to spend on it to raise your PPC advertising budget. We will be talking about PPC advertising on day 4.

#3 – Write Articles and Submit Them…Free

Writing:

Writing and submitting articles to article banks has been proven to be one of the most effective of all traffic generating techniques. You may not actually generate any real traffic for your website in the next few days by learning to write and submit articles but this technique will serve you very well and it is worth the effort to learn how to do it and use it to your fullest advantage.

You may think that you have no writing ability at all but you are probably wrong. You might not be ready to write the ‘Great American Novel’ but you can write articles about the topic of your website and about the products that you are selling. You just need to know the rules for making them effective.

The first and most important few words of your article are in the title or the headline. The title MUST contain the key words that relate to the topic of your website and to the products that you sell. This is the first thing that other website owners or E-zine publishers will look at when they are deciding whether to reproduce your article on their websites or in the publications because they know that the key words are what search engines use to determine the results of searches.

* Note: The search engines are the method by which people find products or information that they are looking for on the Internet. To find those products or that information, they type key words into the search boxes of the search engines. For example; they might type in ‘fish bait’ or ‘fishing lures’. The results that the search engines provide are based on the key words that the searcher uses.

The other thing about the title or headline of your article is that it must be attention getting. You can’t just title your article ‘Fish Bait’. You have to make your title interesting enough to entice the reader to keep reading. ‘Fish Bait that Works’…that isn’t very good either. How about, ‘Fish Bait from Heaven’ or The Fish Bait the Fish Can’t Resist’? Either of those titles would entice the person who was looking for information about fish bait to keep reading.

The second most important few words in your article are in the first line of the first paragraph. Internet surfers have a notoriously short attention span and rarely actually read anything word for word unless it is information that they believe will serve their needs, solve a problem or make life better in general for them. So…the title…and the first line are the bait and the hook that you use to entice a reader to actually read the article. The first line needs to contain the key words, as well, and it also need to be attention getting. ‘The fish were begging for more of this fish bait after my first cast!’ If you were a fisherman, you would keep reading.

Another thing about writing articles that you plan to submit to article banks is that they need to be short. Very short! They should be a maximum of 400 words and closer to 300 would be better. It’s easy to get carried away and suddenly have an article that is 1000 words are more when you are discussing a subject that you know a lot about and are interested in. If you start writing and forget to stop, break long wordy articles down and make three or four articles out of the one long one.

Use short sentences and short paragraphs. Remember that short attention span that we talked about? Don’t use big words and don’t use run-on sentences. Make you article easy to read.

Go easy on the exclamation points, as well. One exclamation point indicates importance or excitement… a half a dozen are just rude.

Your resource box at the end of the article is the part that is most important to you. Other website owners or E-zine publishers who download and reproduce your article are required to include your resource box. This box needs to contain your full name, your contact information and, most importantly, a link to your website. That link is the little thing that is going to help increase traffic for you.

Warning! Do NOT word-wrap this link! Type it out in full, http://www.whatever.com. All email programs that E-zine editors use to send out their newsletters and E-zines do not support word-wrapped links so you can defeat your own purpose by word-wrapping the link to your website.

Submitting Articles:

You can find article banks and article repositories on the Internet by simple doing a search for them using your favorite search engine. When you have located them, you must submit your articles according to the guidelines that each site sets forth.

You will likely be told that there is software available that you can use to automatically submit your articles to banks and repositories…and there is, in fact, such software. The problem with the automated submission software is that most of the larger (and more effective) banks and repositories don’t accept automated submissions. So, while this software can in fact save you time by submitted to the smaller sites, it isn’t going to help you much with the bigger sites.

Yes, submitting articles is time consuming and tedious (not to mention boring) work but it is work that can provide your site with a lot of targeted traffic. Each person who reads an article that you have written will also be exposed to the link to your site. If the article is good and if it provides good information, these people will visit your site. They may buy what you are selling or they may opt-in to your mailing list… or maybe they will do both.

*Note: If you really feel totally incapable of writing your own articles, there are services on the Internet that will ghost write articles for you. Additionally there are services that will do article submissions for you. You will find these sites listed in Day 10.

#4 – Write and Place PPC Ads (Cost $80)

PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisements are probably one of the better-known ways to advertise a website or a product. These advertisements are the ones that people see as results when they do a search using a search engine. The name pretty much tells you how you are charges for these advertisements. You are charged each time someone clicks on your advertisement and visits your website.

There are a lot of different search engines on the Internet and all of them have PPC advertising available. Prices do vary somewhat. Google and Yahoo Search are the two biggest players.

Google is the best known and most used search engine on the Internet so that is the one that we will be using here as an example, however, all of the search engines are effective and none should be completely disregarded. Google’s PPC program is called ‘AdWords’.

It would be nice if you had been born rich instead of so darn good looking. You could simply hire a professional to plan your PPC advertising campaign for you. Unfortunately, you are going to have to do this for yourself.

The most important words in your Adwords advertisements are the key words that relate to the topic of your website and to the products that you sell. You can find millions of words that have been written on the subject of key words. The fact is this; key words are the words that most people type into the search box of a search engine when they are looking for products, services or information. They are really based on just plain old-fashioned common sense. There are variations of key words, of course, and there are common misspellings of words that also constitute ‘key words’. But, if, for example, you are selling fish baits…then ‘fish bait’ is your main key word. Variations of those words are key words as well, such as bait for fish, deep sea fish bait, fresh water fish bait, fish ‘bate’… remember misspelled words are also key words.

The headline of your advertisement needs to contain your key words. That isn’t rocket science. The other words in your advertisement need to be well though out and each one needs to point the reader toward your website. Don’t waste words using descriptive words like ‘great, wonderful, fantastic, etc.’

Using words like ‘free, bonus, or instant’ will help get a lot of clicks but since your advertising budget is very small it isn’t a good idea to include those words in your PPC advertisements in the beginning. You are looking for paying customers or potential customers who are interested in buying what you are selling.

Keep the wording of your advertisement direct and to the point. Don’t make any wild promises or statements that will provide clicks by those who are just looking for something for nothing. Direct your advertisements toward potential paying customers.

You will have an opportunity to set your advertising budget in each search engine. It will probably be in your best interest to limit your PPC advertising just to Google and Yahoo Search right now. You can expand as time goes on. Your advertising budget is limited to only $80 for 10 days and this total includes ALL PPC advertising. That means that you are going to have to set a limit on the clicks that you will pay for at about $4 per day for Google and for Yahoo Search. That isn’t a very large budget.

However, it IS advertising and you will reap some benefits from it. You will most likely receive email from both Google and Yahoo search telling you that you need to increase your advertising budget because you are reaching the limit you have set every single day. Great! That means that what you are doing is right…and you can raise that budget just as soon as you can afford to spend more on advertising. Remember that this isn’t the only way that you are getting your name and your website address into the hands of the people who are most likely to become your paying customers and you still have a lot to learn about SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

The best way to write your PPC advertising is to look at the advertisements that are appearing in the top 7 or 8 results that you get when you plug your own key words into a search engine search box. Those top 7 or 8 results represent your main competition. Analyze the competition’s advertisements. See what it is that they are doing that works and then look for ways that you can do it better or fill in the gaps that they are leaving. There are ALWAYS gaps.

It is true that PPC advertising is going to account for the largest single amount of your total $200 budget but it will be money that will put your name and your website address in front of the greatest number of people, as well, so it will be money that will be well spent.

Creating successful PPC advertising campaigns is something that could be described as an art or a science or maybe a combination of the two. SEO is a subject that is discussed at great length by many of the top Internet marketing gurus. You won’t master the subject overnight or even over many nights. There is a great deal for you to learn about both PPC and SEO. The other things that you are going to be doing to increase your website traffic will have a great deal to do with both… and we haven’t even started to discuss search engine spiders and PageRank yet.

For now… the best thing that you can do is to write your advertisement according to the suggestions that you can find made by the search engines themselves. Be sure that you use your key words in your headline and be sure that you make each word count and point the reader toward your website.

#5 – Register with ClickBank (Cost $49)

There is an old saying that applies here. “Half of something is better than all of nothing.” Maybe you have a really great product that is easily worth $100. It really does provide enough information or will be of enough help to those who need it to be well worth that price. That’s great!

Now, how much did it actually cost you to produce this valuable product? If it is an E-book, they your answer has to be that it cost you nothing but time and that there was no actual monetary cost involved. You might say that the $100 that you are charging for your E-book is all pure profit, right?

If you have developed a software program that will be beneficial to a lot of people, then you do in fact have some real monetary out of pocket expenses to produce it and get it into the hands of those who buy it. Now…based upon the cost of the actual production and delivery or the product that you are selling, what is your real net profit on each unit that you sell? That is the first question that you must answer before we can move on.

Let’s assume that what you have is an E-book and the only investment that you have in it is your time and your knowledge. When you sell a unit, you make a $100 profit. Great! But you have limited website traffic. If you offer other marketers who have large lists a chance to sell your product and make $50 for themselves, you will still make $50 but you will be making a lot more $50 profits than you can possibly make $100 profits by selling them yourself. Not only will you be making more money, but you will be creating a great deal more website traffic for yourself in the process.

Visit the Clickbank website (http://www.clickbank.com) and just look around some for yourself. You will see that there are many affiliate programs that are offered. There may even be a great many under the topic which your product relates to. You will see that some of the affiliate programs only offer a small percentage for sales made by affiliate marketers. Others will offer larger percentages. Some affiliate offers include payments for leads and some don’t. There are a great many variables between affiliate marketing offers.

The higher the percentage that you will or are able to offer others for selling your products, the more ‘takers’ you will have. If you offer only a very small percentage, you might get a couple. On the other hand, if you offer a 40% or 50% percentage of a sale to affiliate marketers, they will see their own potential for making money and you will have a lot more people sign up to become affiliate marketers for your product.

Each affiliate marketer who signs up to sell your product for a percentage of the profits will advertise your product to their lists. Some of these affiliate marketers have impressively long opt-in lists. Each time one of the members of their lists clicks on a link that is provided they will be directed to your website where they will buy the product and, if you play your cards right, sign into your opt-in list. Your product will most likely be advertised on your affiliate marketer’s websites, as well, providing even more opportunity for people to see the advertisement, click on it, buy your product and perhaps sign up for your opt-in list.

Remember that half is something is always better than all of nothing and sometimes the half that you get can be more valuable than the whole. Building a list is one of those side effects of offering an affiliate program that is potentially of more value than the product that you are offering in the first place. It is a well known and undisputed fact that selling to an existing customer (and these are your existing customers when they have purchased your product) costs five times less than getting a first-time customer.

You will gain a lot of website traffic and the possibility of getting a lot of people to opt-in to your mailing list, as well. Actually offering an affiliate marketing program is one of the most cost effective and just plain effective ways of gaining website traffic.

Affiliate marketing is a whole Internet business unto itself. There are many people who make very nice livings off of doing nothing but selling products for others for a percentage of the sales. These affiliate marketers build massive opt-in lists. They become known as the ‘go-to’ guys and gals of the Internet. If you offer an attractive enough affiliate program to them, they will increase your website traffic by the thousands everyday of the week.

Registering with Clickbank (there are other similar sites but Clickbank is the best known) will cost you $49. You will be guided through the process of listing your affiliate program with step-by-step instructions.

Clickbank monitors sales, collects commissions and pays affiliate marketers for you. It is, however, in your best interest to contact and keep in touch with your affiliate marketers. You never know…you might just run across a super affiliate marketer…one that you will be very interested in doing a joint venture with in the future.

Joint venturing is a whole different subject and one we are not going to be discussing here. We are only talking about the first 10 days of a website launch but joint venturing is a topic that you will need to explore on your own in the near future.

For now… write a good affiliate marketing offer. Make it as generous as you can possibly afford to make it… 40%… 50% or even more is not an unreasonable commission to offer. Pay Clickbank their $49 fee and list your offer. You should get several affiliate sign-ups with-in days or maybe hours of your listing being published.

#6 – Find Blogs and Forums and Post…Free

For every subject that you can possibly imagine and probably a few that you would most likely never want to imagine, there are people gathered on the Internet on blog and forum sites who are discussing it… at great length.

You can bet that no matter what the topic of your website or what product or service that you are selling that somewhere (and probably a lot of somewheres) people are discussing it right now as we speak on blogs and forums on the Internet.

Whatever your product or service is, there is a specific group of people who are the most likely to buy it. These are the ones who are gathered on blogs and forums discussing a topic for which your product or service is an answer to their problem. I use the word ‘problem’ rather loosely here. ‘Problem’ covers anything that a person wants but doesn’t have… whether that ‘thing’ is a new pair of jeans, a cure for cancer or anything in between. ‘Problems’ are simply things that people want but don’t have…and your product is obviously one of those things…at least for some of them. Now…your mission is to find these people.

Go to your favorite search engine and in the search box type in your key words followed by the word ‘forums’. Hit search. You will be amazed at the number of forums on which your potential customers are discussing the topic that you are most interested in and the one where your product can actually be of service.

Repeat the search using the word, ‘blogs’ behind your key words. You will likely get just as many hits using that term.

Now out of these two searches that you have done, choose the top 4 or 5 sites of each search that come up in the results. Visit these sites and determine if they are in fact discussing the topic that your product relates to. Choose three or four of the most active forums or blogs. ‘Active’ meaning those who have had the most posts made to them in the last 24 hour period or who have the largest number of members listed. Join the sites.

Remember that posting to blogs and forums is a time consuming task. It is an important task and it is a task that will help to drive traffic to your website but, I assure you, it IS time consuming. For each and every blog and forum site that you join, you will need to post 3 to 5 times each week and each post will consist of at least 300 words…probably more.

This is important! Do NOT start out posting blatant advertisements for your product or for your website. Think of each blog and forum as a neighborhood that you have just moved into. The people on each site will most likely know one another well and you will be the ‘new kid on the block’… so act like it.

Posting advertisements for your product or for your website is just rude. They will likely be removed by the blog or forum administrator as will you be removed from the membership list. Advertisements are generally banned from all blog and forum sites.

What can and should do is include your website address in your signature tag. That is not considered advertisement. It is simply a part of your identity and is viewed as such by the administrators as well as the members of blogs and forums.

You are going to have to go slow here. Introduce yourself to the group. Take your time to get to know each of the members who are the most active and who exert the most influence within the group.

Remember that your posts need to be thoughtful, considerate and helpful to other members and must never EVER appear to be advertisements for your website or for your products. You can suggest your products as solutions for problems within your posts but they must not look like advertisements. They must appear to be of the ‘friend-helping-a-friend’ variety.

You may be tempted to use articles that you have written as blog or forum posts and sort of get more bang for your buck so to speak…don’t. Articles and blog or forum posts are two different animals…and they are not interchangeable. The other reason for never using an article as a blog or forum posts is that search engine spiders may well identify one or the other as ‘duplicate content’. Duplicate content is NOT a good thing. Just don’t do it.

Never include links to your website within the body of your posts to blogs and forums. This can be construed as advertising and it can get you tossed out on your ear. You must be satisfied with the link to your website that will appear just below you name in your signature tag at the end of each post.

You can safely rely on the human trait of curiosity to insure that the members of the blogs and forums will click on the link to your website in your signature tag. Most people come with a healthy and built-in supply of curiosity. They will not be able to resist clicking on the link below you name at least once.

If they find something that will provide them with an answer to a problem while they are visiting your website out of curiosity, they will return time and again.

We haven’t discussed your website content and we don’t have time to now but let me tell you that content really is king when you are talking about website traffic. You must not use articles that you have submitted to article banks and you must not use your blog or forum posts as content for your website. Be sure, however, that your website is loaded with a lot of good and relevant content.

Posting to blogs and forums who’s topics relate to the topic of your website or to your product or service is an excellent way to create website traffic and do it for free.

#7 – Place E-Zine Advertisements (Cost $30)

E-zine advertising is one of the most cost effective ways to drive massive amount of traffic to your website. E-zines are one of the things that the Internet has provided for just ordinary people that the print media never did get right. Today magazines that you buy (if you do) at your local news stand are mostly filled with full page advertisements for products that you could care less about and that have no bearing on your life or your wants or needs… they are just advertisements. If you can find articles in them, at all, they are sandwiched between page-after-page of advertising.

People have come to love E-zines. They publications come to them on their computers and are directly related to their lives and the things that they are interested in. The advertisements that are in the E-zines are directly related… they don’t have to wade through pages of advertisements for denture adhesive and wheel toys to find and read about what they are interested in and what concerns them.

E-zine publishers are trusted by their subscribers. They have built reputations for being in touch with their readers needs and have proven that they can deliver timely information that their readers can actually use to solve their problems, meet their needs, make them look better or feel better, and answer their questions.

To find E-zines that have topics related to your website topic or to the products that you sell, you can look through E-zine directories online. Just type the words, ‘E-zine directories’ into the search box of your favorite search engine. Another way to find E-zines that relate to your product is to type your key words into the search box followed by the word ‘E-zines’. You will get a lot of search results no matter what your topic is. There are E-zines that are dedicated to just about every topic under the sun.

Because E-zine advertising is so reasonable, you can probably place advertisements in more than one and still stay well within your budget limit of thirty dollars ($30) for this ten day period.

E-zine advertising allows you to reach thousands of people…and not just any people… but the people who are most likely to become your customers. Remember that the idea here is not just to create website traffic…the idea is to create targeted website traffic by the thousands. Getting an advertisement into the hands of those people who are looking for a product or service that will solve their problem will drive them to your website in search of it if your product or service fits the bill.

It terms of effectiveness, as well as, efficiency, advertising in E-zines is the top contender for the number one spot in both. An E-zine that is sent to thousands of your best prospects will most assuredly be effective and having your advertisement sent to thousands of your potential customers for a one time cost of only a few dollars and a few minutes of your time is certainly efficient.

Most advertising venues available on the Internet are fiercely competitive.

For example; when you place PPC (Pay Per Click) advertisements on the search engines, you are competing with every other marketer in the universe who is selling the same or very similar items. You are competing with thousands of others for the same limited market share. Some of these competitors will have pockets that are a lot deeper than yours, too.

Advertising in E-zines is far less competitive than most other advertising methods.
E-zine advertising has the advantage of some staying power. E-zines are almost always archived and people frequently refer to past issues of E-zines when they are searching for information. As a matter of fact, archived E-zines are one of the most used research tools on the Internet. When you place an advertisement in an E-zine that is dedicated to a topic that directly relates to your product or service, you can think of it as advertising to future potential customers, as well, making it an even bigger advertising bargain.

The bigger and better E-zine directories will list the circulation number for each E-zine. Right now you need to choose two that have a circulation of about 10,000 subscribers each. Be aware that the larger the circulation, the greater the advertising cost will be. However, the cost is still very reasonable. The cost per line of advertising can be as low as $5 per line or as expensive as $25 dollars per line.

If you choose two E-zines with circulations of 10,000 people, the cost for an advertisement in both of them will be about $15 each… which totally blows your $30 budget for now. When you see just how effective E-zine advertisement turns out to be, you may want to route more of your advertising budget into it.

Write your advertisement being as efficient as you can with the words. Don’t waste line space on words like ‘great, fantastic, wonderful, exciting, etc.’ Make every word of your limited words point people directly to your website and to your product.

Publishers of E-zines have permission to send email to their subscribers. You don’t have that permission and even if you had the subscriber list, it would be illegal for you to email these potential customers about your product, service or website. You would be guilty of sending SPAM…which is certainly not a good thing. By placing an inexpensive advertisement with an E-zine you are, in effect, sending advertisements by email to your best prospective customers and getting targeted traffic to your website at the same time. You are also advertising to your most likely customers without being guilty of sending SPAM. It’s a win/win situation and a rather inexpensive way to win twice.

Spend the thirty dollars ($30) that you have allotted for E-zine advertisement wisely. If you believe that it would be better to advertise in only one E-zine that has a huge circulation rather than advertising in two that have smaller circulations, do so.

#8 – Find Link Exchange Partners….Free

Link exchanges have been somewhat maligned of late. There are those who think that anything that sends traffic away from your website is just not a good idea. It is true that link exchanges do create two-way traffic, but the idea here is to get more traffic coming than going… or at least an equal flow… and to let more people know about you, your website and your products or services.

The basic idea of a link exchange is that two companies who market to the same segment of the population but who market complimentary rather that competing products or services can help each other by exchanging links. The link exchange is free to both parties of an agreement. For example; a company that sells dog houses might exchange links with a company that sells dog health products. They are not competing with each other but they are both targeting the same buying segment of the population… dog owners.

There are complimentary but non-competing businesses in just about any niche market that you can think of and there are, without a doubt, companies that would make good link exchange partners for your website and for your products or services, as well.

There is link exchange partner software out there that will automatically submit your link exchange proposals for you without you lifting a finger. However, this software is mostly ineffective. Businesses that receive an automated proposal for a link exchange usually take a dim view of such proposals. You many even have received a few of these automated proposals yourself. They can be considered junk mail or even SPAM. Besides, you don’t have any money in your budget to waste on unhelpful software, anyway. You are going to have to do this the right way because you can’t afford to do it the wrong way.

You will also find link exchange sites on the Internet. Where, for a price, you can list your company as being interested in link exchanges and view lists of other website owners who are interested in link exchanges. The better of these sites can actually be very useful but you just can’t afford to register with them right now. They don’t have any information that you can’t find for yourself with just a little effort, anyway.

Here is how to locate potential link exchange partners. First go to your favorite search engine and type in words that would be related to your product or service. For example and staying with the dog theme; if you were selling dog houses, you might type in ‘dog health products’… or if you were selling an E-book about drawing up your own house plan, you might type in ‘home building products’. You get the idea. You want to find businesses that are targeting the same buying segment of the population but are selling products of services that are complimentary to what you are selling but not competing with what you are selling.

You will need to take the time to visit each website that you locate and consider to be potential link exchange partners. It would be great if you could find link exchange partners that have a PageRank of 7 or better in the search engines, but those that have a less desirable PageRank can still be useful. This isn’t costing you anything, remember?

When you visit each site, you can gather the information about who to contact. Look under their ‘contact’ link. In some cases you will find a name and email address. For these you send a link exchange proposal. This proposal should read something like:

Dear (name),

I have visited your website. It is very impressive. My congratulations! We both are selling to the same group of people and I feel that a link exchange could be mutually beneficial.

(You might briefly elaborate on how your products or services are complimentary rather than competitive)

Please visit my website at http://whatever.com. After you have reviewed my site and if you are interested in a link exchange, please contact me at

Your Name
Your Telephone Number
Your email address

Thank you,

Your name
Company name
Website address

Simply be brief and get to the point. These other website owners are not interested in your personal information nor your struggles to create an Internet business.

As you are visiting the websites and gathering contact information, you may well come across telephone contact numbers. If you do, use them and do so immediately. The website owners would not have posted telephone numbers unless they hoped they would be used. You might be able to work out a link exchange agreement on the telephone and do it sooner rather than later.

You are not limited by numbers but by space here. You can work out as many link exchange agreements as you are able to and have space on your website for posting reciprocal links. The more times your advertisement appears on the Internet, the better it is for you.

It is a good idea to limit your link exchanges to one per product. That is, if you are selling dog houses, you should only have one exchange with a company that sells dog health products but you could also have one that sells dog toys or dog sweaters. You don’t really want advertisements for companies that compete with each other even if they don’t compete with you.

A link exchange implies a recommendation. Having advertisements for companies that compete with one another makes you look like you couldn’t make up your mind. It also makes the owners of the companies that you are exchanging links with more than a little unhappy.

When you choose link exchange partners, choose the ones that have the highest PageRank for their key words. These are the sites that will have the most traffic and more people will see your advertisements and have the opportunity to click on your link, visit your website and, perhaps, buy your product or service and sign into your opt-in list, as well.

#9 – Get a Press Release (Cost $0)

It is always amazing how many people overlook the power of the news media. There is all of that beautiful blank space in newspapers before they are printed and all of that dead air in radio and TV until it is filled. Some of it can be yours.

Just filling up all of that blank space day after day is the responsibility of news people. They are looking for news worthy information to use and they are doing so day after day after day. That’s a lot of blank space…blank advertising space…blank traffic generating space!

Contrary to the popular opinion of computer addicts, people really do still read newspapers and magazines. They still listen to the radio and they most certainly still watch television. People get news from many sources but the local newspaper and the local radio station are probably the most underused and most often overlooked vehicles for website traffic generation.

‘Local Man (or Woman) Makes Good!’ is a headline that local newspapers and local radio stations just love. It is a headline that helps them to add to their subscriber list and they really like that.

As you go about building your contact lists (customers, potential customers, suppliers, etc.) be sure that you add a media contact list. The media can help you more than you realize and they can provide free advertising for you, as well as, help you to increase your website traffic.

Curiosity is a human trait that isn’t limited to a particular locality…everybody has some degree of curiosity, including those people who live in your hometown and read the local newspaper and listen to the local radio stations. You will find that many of these people also have home computers that they tend to spend a lot of hours on when they aren’t working or otherwise occupied. Your local newspaper reporters and radio announcers are your contact with these potential customers and website visitors.

First let’s discuss making contact with a media person or two or three. Do NOT phone them. It won’t do you any good to telephone media people. They are busy and they don’t deal in spoken word communication. You need to email them. Make a list of your local news reporters. This information is very easily obtained by calling the newspaper or by just looking at the newspaper to get their names. You can usually email them through the newspaper or radio station that they work for.

You introductory email should simply be used to introduce yourself and ask permission to send press releases to them for their consideration. You do NOT send an attachment in your initial email not in any succeeding email. Attachments will not be opened and the offending email will be deleted unopened and unread so save yourself the effort.

Email exchanges are quick. When you send an introductory email to a media person, they will most likely answer in the affirmative and they will do so very quickly… remember there is all of that blank space that they have to fill.

Media people will be helping you to create targeted traffic for your website and to announce products but you will also be helping them to fill all of that lovely blank space.
Press releases can be fairly long…between 600 and 1500 words.

Remember that when you write a press release, it needs to look much like a newspaper article that you see in your local newspaper. That is…the most important information is given first and the details concerning the most important information is elaborated on in subsequent paragraphs. You do NOT build up a story for a big finish…you start with the punch line.

For your first press release, you might announce the launch of a new product or an improvement to an older one. You might announce an upcoming event that you are sponsoring or a new partner joining your business. Anything that is news is news worthy and if the public in general doesn’t have the information, it is news.

There is a universally excepted format for press releases. The same one is used all over the world. Here is an example:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Information:
Your Name
Your street address
Your city, State
Your telephone number (with area code)
Your website address
Your email address

Your headline in bold type goes here. This headline need not be a complete sentence but it can be. It should read like a newspaper headline.

Your city, ST –The date—Begin your press release here by restating the headline or adding to it. Continue with pertinent information.

A press release can be between 600 and 1500 words long. The following is the accepted way to end a press release:

For Information: your website address followed by
Your email address

# # #

All press releases end with the three number symbols centered at the bottom of the release.

Press releases that are not presented in the correct form have a far smaller chance of ever being published or broadcast.

Remember two important things when you are seeking to have a press release published or broadcast. (1) Media people are busy (Some might say overwhelmed) and (2) they are looking for words and information to fill in the blank spaces.

Using press releases to advertise yourself, your website and your products to the local market is a wise thing to do. Not only is it wise…it’s free. ‘Free’ is good. A short press release to the local news media can mushroom and become national or even international news. The national newspapers and broadcast media have just as much empty space to fill as do the local markets.

A press release to the local news media can result in additional free advertising as well. The local papers often fun long articles with pictures in special Sunday editions about local people and their projects.

Make it your business to get to know your local media people and make use of this free advertising often.

#10 – Plan to Continue to Grow and Thrive

Over the last nine days you have made a plan for getting some red-hot targeted traffic to your website and doing it for $200. You have executed your plan and even have a single dollar bill left over. Good for you! You should be seeing a lot more traffic today on your website than you were seeing only nine days ago. Just imagine how much more traffic you can generate!

You now see the basic ways in which website traffic is generated. Generating traffic isn’t easy but it is well worth the time and effort (not to mention the money) that it takes. Now…whether you reap the benefits of that traffic is pretty much up to you.

Website Content:

In order to keep people (and people is what traffic is made up of) returning to your website again and again, you are going to need to have continuously changing and updated content on your website. If the same person returns to your website a second time and finds nothing new, you can bet that they won’t make a third visit.

It has been said time and time again that, ‘Content is King!’ It is true…content is the essence of your website. It is the very life blood of your business. It doesn’t matter what you are selling, the people who visit your website and who buy your product or service are looking for information that is related to it.

It is very difficult to write enough articles or reports yourself in order to keep the content of your website updated and constantly changing. You might well consider using ghost writers to help you. The service costs are reasonable and you have control over the content.

List Building:

List building is an ongoing task. It is one that will never be completed as long as you have an Internet business. You need to employ every method that you can think of or find to constantly be adding to your opt-in list. You might consider changing your opt-in enticement from time to time or just up-date the one that you are offering. You might, also, consider starting your own newsletter as a separate opt-in.

You might learn to use viral advertising techniques to enlarge your opt-in list and even learn ways that you can get your list to help build your list… such as offering coupons that they can share with their friends or family or sending a quiz that can be shared with answers posted on your website.

Joint Ventures:

Even well seasoned and well established long-time Internet marketers begin to drool when you mention joint ventures. New Internet marketers, who have been in business for more that a few minutes, know that a joint venture can launch their businesses into the stratosphere over night.

Joint ventures are directly related to list building and list building is directly related to joint ventures. One hand washes the other, so to speak. The longer your opt-in list is, the better your chance is for getting in on a joint venture and the more joint ventures that you can become involved in, the longer your opt-in list gets.

To get your first joint venture under your belt, you may well have to get nothing out of it but a longer opt-in list. That is…you may have to give away 100% of the proceeds of your product in order to gain joint venture partners who already have those coveted long opt-in lists. Don’t let that turn into an obstacle for you. Sometimes you have to give in order to receive.

Monitor and Test, Test and Monitor

You aren’t going to do everything right the first time. You are going to find better, more efficient and more effective ways to do everything.

For example: when you send out a marketing email to your list, try sending two or three different ones to different segments of your list to see which letter is more effective. Use the tools provided by your autoresponder to see how many of your emails are opened, how many times links are clicked on and how much follow through happens (read sales).

When you place your advertisements in E-zines, use different versions in each one. Monitor them to see which is the most effective. Some E-zines will allow you to test ads.

Test and monitor your PPC advertisements as well. If something isn’t working, try something different. Don’t get locked into a mind set. Be willing to change.

Make Good Use of Your Autoresponder:

The people who opt-in to your list are just that…people. They are not names and email addresses. They have given you permission to email them but they didn’t give you permission to bug them to death. Curb your enthusiasm.

Be sure that you format your messages as specified by your autoresponder service. Use only ASCII characters. These are the characters that you see on your keyboard. The easiest way to be sure that you are complying is to write your messages using word pad. Each line should contain no more than 65 characters. You can find software that will assure that your messages are formatted correctly for your autoresponder.

Avoid using all capital letters and too many exclamation points. Both are considered ‘shouting’ in the written word and are considered rude. Just don’t do it.

Be absolutely certain that every word is spelled correctly and that your grammar usage is impeccable. Misspelled words and poor grammar usage makes you look dumb. If you aren’t certain about grammar usage, have someone you know and trust to read your email messages before you send them.

Use bullet points to make it easy for the recipients of your emails to read them and to hone in on the important points.

Use These Resources:

Autoresponders

Aweber
http://www.aweber.com

Get Response
http://www.getresponse.com

Autoresponders Plus
http://www.arpros.com

Response Bot
http://www.responsebot.com

Formatting Software:

Ziney
http://www.kndata.com/ziney.shtml

Ghost Writing Services:

http://www.writingandtranscriptionservices.com

Article and E-book Submission Services:

Article Distribution
http://www.articletrader.com/distribution

Squeeze Page Generators:

Gateway Magic
http://www.gatewaymagic.com

The Squeeze Page Generator
http://www.squeezepagegenerator.com

DXaminer
http://www.dxaminer.com/squeezepage.html

OVERALL PLAN

#1: Business Plan and The Importance of Targeted Traffic

#2: Autoresponder (Cost $20) Find Incentive for Opt-In List (Cost $20)

#3: Write Articles and Submit Them…Free

#4: Write and Place PPC Ads (Cost $80)

#5: Register with Clickbank (Cost $49)

#6: Find Blogs and Forums and Post…Free

#7: Place E-Zine Advertisements (Cost $30)

#8: Find Link Exchange Partners….Free

#9: Get a Press Release (Cost $0)

#10: Plan to Continue to Grow and Thrive

All The Best,

Zai Adi