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How to Separate the Gold from the Trash; Finding the Best Traffic Sources for Your Product or Service Online.

by Carl Herold

All Traffic is Not Created Equal!

One issue that faces almost everyone in internet marketing today, is how to get your message out to the right people. Before you can reach your target audience, you have to know who your target audience is. If you have a clear understanding of the type of people who will buy your product or service, you have a much better chance of reaching the right people.

Many marketers make the mistake of thinking that any traffic is good traffic. This is extremely far from the truth. No one would go to a website that sells e-books and try to advertise television sets. There is a very good reason for this.

There is a particular type of person that is looking to buy a television, and there is also a certain type of person looking to buy an e-book. The two do not mix. If I were to go to a electronics store packed with people, and ask each of them to buy an e-book I would get nowhere. The same is true for online marketing. You cannot expect to obtain any real results online unless you are marketing to the right people.

The Truth about Guaranteed Hits, Traffic Exchanges, and other forms of "Junk Traffic"!

No successful internet marketer takes "junk traffic" seriously. When you see offers that promise you massive amounts of visitors for a small amount of dollars - do not buy into it! Yes, you will be getting visitors - but these will typically be visitors that could care less about what you are offering.

Junk traffic is like trying to sell television sets to people in a pet store. You are randomly grabbing X number of people - and hoping that a certain small percentage of those just might buy from you. The truth is, you do not 'buy traffic' - you obtain traffic from existing traffic sources that deal with your industry. I will go into this in more detail later.

The key point here is, you cannot advertise your product or service to just anyone. You absolutely MUST construct an image of who your ideal customer might be, and then locate them specifically. Create as many different "ideal customers" as you would like, and determine a specific marketing plan for each of them.

In internet marketing, the logical way of thinking is "Ok now I have my website, so I will go and buy traffic!". If it sounds too easy to be true, it probably is. Yes, you can obtain good traffic from the internet, but you have to do it right! One of the main purposes of this article is to show you the right ways to get good traffic to your website. You get what you pay for.

Determining Your Ideal Customer.

Lets for a minute imagine the people in the electronics store. Why are they there? Lets draw a mental picture of one of these people and thereby better understand marketing as a whole. First, someone who is in an electronics store might fall into several categories.

In your mind, think for a minute what those categories might be. Be creative, try to find at least four different types of people who would be in an electronics store. For example, a person might be there because their television broke and they want a new one.

Before you even begin marketing your product or service online, you absolutely must do the following: First, grab a paper and pen, and write a description of someone who would buy from you. Cover as many details as possible. Here is an example when it comes to the electronics store we talked about:

"My ideal customer would be a person who was sitting at home watching television, and for some reason their television set broke. They have an average job, but they have not included a new television in their budget. They now come into my electronics store."

In your mind, if you knew this about the person, how would you try to sell them a new television? Would you try to sell them a ten-thousand dollar plasma, or a lower end model and work out a payment plan with them? Marketing involves a great deal of psychology. You must know what your prospect is looking for, and you must find the best plan which will benefit them the most.

Understanding Internet Traffic Flow.

For a moment, think of all of the people on the internet right now. Think of the millions of people surfing the web and checking their email. Imagine all that traffic as a massive river flowing through all the different websites, e-mail newsletters, and so forth.

Most people begin their internet routine by visiting websites they are already familiar with, especially search engines. From here, they seek to expand their horizons and find new sites of interest to them. They will sign up for newsletters, ezines, subscriptions, and so forth when it comes to their particular fields of interest.

Do not ever think that you will "create traffic." That is impossible. You do not create traffic out of thin air, you do not "cause" visitors to suddenly start visiting your website, your domain, your affiliate link, etc. So many people expect that once their domain.com is online, that people will somehow magically appear and visit their site. It does not work this way at all.

So how exactly does it work? Traffic is not created, it is redirected. To drive traffic to your site, you must cause existing traffic, either web or email based traffic, to choose to go to your website. Lets go back to the river analogy for a minute.

Think of a massive river flowing through one site, lets say a search engine. Now, that traffic is going to be divided into many smaller rivers - each pertaining to a particular field of interest. You will now find "smaller rivers" pertaining to just about every field of interest from people looking to start a business on the internet, to people looking to buy televisions, and so forth.

Each smaller river is good advertising ground for companies who deal with that particular field of interest. Your job, is to find the river (or rivers) that deal with your interest, and then to "tap into" the existing traffic to cause it to redirect to your own website.

How to "tap into" Existing Traffic.

As we talked about, success online is not achieved by "creating" traffic. Success is achieved by redirecting the right kind of traffic in your direction. You cannot expect to build an online business in a dry desert and expect people to come flocking in. You must build where there is water, where there is existing traffic. Then you must tap into that traffic and make it possible for some of it to go to your website.

To understand this process, you must first understand where the existing traffic is. There are two main types of traffic online: email, and web. E-mail traffic represents opt-in lists, newsletters, ezines, and other periodicals people receive in their email pertaining to their interest groups. Web traffic represents all people that visit a website. Every website is a source of traffic, and every ezine is a source of traffic.

In order to tap into existing traffic, you must deal with the "owner" of that traffic source. Every internet based traffic source has an "owner" (usually a company). Every traffic source owner wants a way to make more money from their existing traffic. These two facts are the best friend to any successful internet marketer.

Once you have a clear idea of who your ideal customer is, your next step is to put yourself in their shoes. You have to imagine that you are your own ideal customer. Where do you go? What websites do you visit? What e-mail newsletters do you read? Every single traffic source you visit during this little experiment, is a traffic source you want to tap into.

Become Your Own Customer!

It is very important that you put yourself in the shoes of your ideal customer, and NOT in the shoes of someone trying to sell them. To put this in perspective, I would not go to a search engine and type in: "Where can I find people who want to buy a television." Instead, I would type in something like: "Where can I buy a new television?".

Do you see the difference? You have to imagine that you are someone who can buy from you, so that you can better understand where your ideal customers go, and how to reach them. Once you understand who your target market is, and once you understand which "watering holes" they visit during their internet activities, your next step is to start setting up opportunities within these watering holes for people to visit your website.

For example, picture in your mind that I am selling television sets. Now, suppose I know of a website that gets a million visits a day, and that website deals with electronic items. If I can convince the owner of that website to place even a small link to my own site, I now have traffic coming to my site.

As another example, there is an email newsletter that publishes reviews on different electronic goods. If I can place an advertisement in that newsletter for my television, I have just done the same thing as in my previous example. I have provided an opportunity for people to visit my website through an existing traffic source. It is that simple.

How to Conduct Business with Existing Traffic Sources.

How do you find the best places to advertise? Become your own ideal customer, and pretending to be them visit the same websites, newsletters, ezines, - type in the same search words, etc as that person would. You are now presented with hundreds of thousands of different places you can reach your ideal customer.

Next, simply contact these websites, ezines, newsletters, etc and come up with an arrangement that their visitors can go to your website. This arrangement does not always have to be dollars up front. If you do not have a large budget to work with, there are many alternative routes you can take when dealing with these potential traffic sources.

Remember, the traffic source owners are just like you - they want to make money. They want to work with you to find the best arrangement which benefits both you and them. Here are some examples of ways you can avoid spending money up front:

1. Work out a deal where they get a percentage of what you make from advertising with them. For this to work, you must be generous. No one will do this if they get 10% of what you earn. Shoot for the 50% range.

2. Try to arrange payments. If they charge you $300, and that is too much for you, try to see if they will do $100 a month, or $50 a month, or whatever will work within your budget.

3. Try to get them to do a "test" with you. A smaller, cheaper ad that will reach fewer people but will allow you the opportunity to know if this ad is going to be worth it or not. For example, an ad might cost $1,000 but they might do a smaller ad for $200.

4. Be creative! The end result is you want something that works for you that they will agree with. Use your imagination and don't be afraid to negotiate. They want your business just as much as you want to advertise with them.

In addition to what was just said, here are some suggestions to help you obtain the best results from your efforts:

1. Do not be afraid of "selling them" to let you advertise. They are going to be the ones trying to sell you to pay the most possible. They want you to advertise with them, and they will be the ones doing the selling - not you.

2. Do not be afraid to contact them on the phone, in fact I would recommend it. On the phone you can talk to the right person and quickly finalize an arrangement.

3. Shop around! Do not get sold by one company to take up your entire budget. Be diligent and talk to many different potential traffic sources and only deal with the ones you feel are best. Even then, do not go "all out". Always start small, and if small ads work - try larger ads.

4. The easiest traffic sources to find, are always going to be the more expensive to deal with. If you have a small budget, find small websites to work with. If you have a large budget, find large websites to work with.

5. The first results in a search engine search typically have the most traffic (and are the most costly to work with). If you skip those, and go to search results in page 10 or so of the results, you will find websites that are much smaller (and least expensive to deal with).

Pay Per Click Advertising, and Search Engines.

No article on traffic generation would be complete without covering search engines and pay per click advertising. The truth is, many people would have you believe that without a good search engine placement, it is impossible to succeed online.

You must remember what we have already talked about - search engines are nothing more than an "existing traffic source" just like every other website, newsletter, etc. Getting a search engine to list you is - in principle - no different than convincing another website to put a link to yours.

The key difference is, search engines represent the point at which most internet traffic begins. If you are selling television sets online, and someone types in "television sets" in a major search engine, there is nothing you would rather have than to be the first result.

Unless you are a large company with a large budget, free search engine placement is likely out of your reach. However, you can still use search engines to your benefit through one of two different ways: First, you can pay to have your site listed on the first page. This typically costs a certain dollar amount for every time someone clicks on your site, and can be a fantastic method of obtaining targeted visitors if you have the budget to support it.

Secondly, you can make advertising arrangements with websites that have high rankings, and leverage their traffic to your advantage. In this way, you are still benefiting from the search engine traffic. You are simply catching that traffic later.

If you are starting out online, do not depend on search engines. By all means, if you can afford it, pay the fees to have your site listed on the major search engines, but keep in mind that it is far easier to deal with already successful websites in your industry, than it is to carve out your own market share with your bare hands.

Separating the Gold from the Trash

At this point, you have a much better idea of the processes to obtain traffic from the internet. Now, you need a way to maximize the results of each ad you run in order to pay the least amount of money possible.

For example, if you are running two different advertisements, and one is generating sales and the other isn't - you should stop paying for the ad that is not generating sales and pay more for the ad that is getting sales. This is the formula through which success online is achieved.

Clickalyzer is a system that makes it easy for you to easily and accurately determine which ads are working, and which are not. Rather than focusing only on which ads get traffic, Clickalyzer looks at everything about your advertisements.

You will know every action that every visitor takes, which ad they came from, which ads are resulting in signups, sales, subscriptions, and so forth. You will have a clear understanding of which keywords and search engines are generating sales, and which are generating useless traffic.

Once more, you will know exactly what you need to do in order to turn more of your traffic into sales, and to easily separate the "bad traffic" from the "good traffic."

Even more amazing, you will be able to do this even for affiliate websites that you do not personally own!

So, what do you do now?

To summarize, the successful internet marketers use Clickalyzer to give them an extra advantage. One of the best ways you can start reaching the levels of the “gurus” is to use Clickalyzer in your online business.

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