Well, we are all surfers though aren't we? We seem so buried in our sites that we forget sometimes that we are actually the people that create internet traffic to other sites. It is such a radical, yet simple solution to most of our problems, that because it is so simple, we forget about the thought. So we must think like surfers.



I know that when I search through the free engines (Google, directory sites, etc) I never search for techno. What! You may be thinking. Well, do you know how many sites are dedicated to techno? Millions, absolutley millions, and that is not a good sign. So what do I search for? Well I search for a type of techno, a group, etc.

This is a really fundamental fact that is generally forgotten, and it also has a drastic effect on your traffic, and what you actually produce. Honestly, I have seen someone write, "I want to make a techno site", and the reply has been..."well, what type of techno do you want to focus on?"..."ermm, there are different types?" came the reply.

My friend has made a rock band, and has produced some MP3s. They are cool, and so they are now housed on a general MP3 site, that has some traffic coming to it, listening to the free MP3s. The main problem comes in that why is he getting little traffic, and why aren't people downloading these great MP3s at a greater rate?

Well there is one answer that will answer both questions.

Why should they? They like the type of music, but do they trust the music to fully download it? Come on, 3.5 MB is nothing, but it is a chore to download. Also, there are different styles of rock music- punk, death, soft etc, so why should they pick his?

A technique that should be used is to pre-sell. This pre-selling technique should be used on any type of music, or software that you would like your surfers to download, if used properly it will lead to increased downloads. So how do we utilise this?

Well first off we must see what type of music we are producing. If it is similar to say the Prodigy well, make a few pages dedicated to the Prodigy style of music, give a mini bio, your favourite tunes and maybe even a step-by-step discussion and description of one of their tunes. By making a page dedicated to a style of techno who are your influences, you are then targeting the right type of people of similar interest, attracting those people who like your certain type of techno.

When you target surfers by this method, they really like the style of music that you are writing about. Remember the Internet is full of free information hungry surfers willing to devour any type of information on their chosen topic. You are preping the reader, getting them in the right frame of mind- preselling them. They are excited, curious and warm to your thoughts and views. Now within the text, or at the bottom of the page, you can recommend, free MP3s that the reader would be interested in- your download rate will increase. Because you have recommended something, subconciously the surfer goes "hmm, I like what he has written, it is true, and if they are recommending something free, well what have I got to loose?"

What else could you add? How could you increase your download rates even more? How about covers, remixes of the tracks that you like...freely available, and then state something like "if you are interested in these songs, take a look at these...that have a similar style and can be downloadd for free". You could even have loads of pages dedicated to many influences, and you could "capture" many targeted surfers with this approach- highlighting your MP3s on each page, as well as a main page linking to each of the influences, and to each other.

Now when people type into the search engines they will look for Prodigy MP3s, or Prodigy style MP3s, Prodigy remixes, your music and web pages will be placed higher, because they are much more relevent to the surfers question than before and your traffic will increase, likewise increasing your download rates.