Whether you are involved (or thinking of becoming involved!) in an online or an offline business, the ONE thing you ought to have, above all else, is TRAFFIC! Unless you have potential clients coming to your website/shopfront, it is impossible to succeed. So today, I'd like to give you information on some of the ways you can get traffic to your site.

Free Online Advertising

1. You can send e-mails to friends, family, any contacts you already have, and also to the members/participants of list companies, as long as you are a member yourself. This is by far the quickest way of getting a huge number of readers for your e-mails, so the first thing to do is JOIN A LIST COMPANY, (or better still, MANY!). If you have to pay a joining fee, then obviously the advertising is not exactly free, but it will be so cheap (your e-mails will go out to
thousands!), that you don't need to give it another thought. However, if you want FREE, there are also companies that offer this service, too.

2. You can write articles (as I have done here) to stimulate interest and generate traffic, and submit them to specialist sites, of which there are several, but go first for the top sites, because they have the biggest readership.

3. You can set up a facility on your website so that people who do come to it can refer it to their friends/colleagues. This is called Viral Marketing and is very effective (hence the name "viral") because it is a personal referral system.

Paid Advertising

1. Pay-Per-Click, i.e. where you set up a Google AdWords campaign and the advertisements show on Google pages when people search for related products/information. This is not particularly hard to get started in, but to be effective it needs to be learnt, and to be monitored, otherwise your return on investment can be poor. Having said that, you don't have to wait until you're particularly proficient in AdWords before it can be a very effective means of
generating traffic. Learn enough to get going and then subscribe to one of the AdWords experts. You should be able to find these easily enough online.

2. Electronic and/or physical postcards. These are a brief, to the point, message about your business, usually done in normal postcard size. The physical ones are actually printed and mailed out, so you will have to pay for all that (there are dedicated mailing houses which organize the printing and mailing for you). The same applies to the electronic postcards, the only difference being they are sent to people's e-mail addresses, not their street addresses, so these should be a lot cheaper to get out.

3. Classified ads, which are put into electronic (or physical) magazines/newsletters (you choose the ones appropriate to your market niche). These ads can be quite costly, so you want to find out what their readership will be compared to the cost and see if the ROI is going to be okay.

The information I have given you today is by no means exhaustive, but it will get you started in your quest for traffic. As with all things, keep in mind what your likely return on investment will be. Probably the best piece of advice I can give you is to choose ONE form of traffic generation and learn it and do it well, then move on to another.

The other thing that might be helpful is to get some ideas on how to write good copy. If you are unsure how to get hold of the information you need, do a search on your favourite search engine, e.g. if you want to know about list companies, type in "contact lists" or "list companies" and see what you get. If you would like a list of resources, send me an e-mail to valerie75@internode.on.net. To a
bright and successful future for you!