If you are looking for an immediate increase in your website traffic, and you don't want to shell out a lot of money for pay-per-click search engines, I'll let you in on a secret that has helped me make many sales and build large lists very quickly with zero cash up-front: it's called "OPT" (Other People's Traffic). Other website operators have the targeted website visitors you need right now - you just have to convince them to funnel some of it your way. Your mission is to find people who can refer you their traffic either for a percentage of the sale, a flat fee, a trade for services, or on a per-click basis. NOTE: I prefer to pay people a big percentage of the sale - as much as 50% - because it has the lowest risk for me as the merchant. I only pay when a sale is made and, therefore, I make it well worth someone's while to work with me. That's the whole idea behind a successful affiliate program. The quickest way to find people who can refer you traffic is to take inventory of whom you know. Who operates a site drawing the type of visitors you need? For example, if you have a website that sells fishing lures, then you want to find ezines, websites, and discussion groups dealing with fishing rods, tackle boxes, fish hooks, fishing trips, fishing supplies, etc. Get the picture? Once you have exhausted the list of people you know, go to the search engines and do a search for the keywords that would bring targeted traffic to your site. Make a list of the websites that rank well in those searches and approach those individuals with related, but non-competing sites about a traffic deal. To continue the above example, that means go to the search engines and do searches for "fishing rods", "fishing trips" and related keywords to your site to find others who already have the traffic you need, but who don't directly compete with you. Try to work all your agreements on a traffic trade or per-sale basis first so you won't have to pay any cash out of pocket until after a sale is made. If you don't have any traffic to trade, or they don't want to get paid by the sale only, then you should negotiate a per-click or per-signup deal. Paying by the click or by the signup means you only pay when a visitor comes to your site or signs up to receive your newsletter or other information. With this structure you only pay for performance and don't waste any money on advertising that doesn't directly result in bringing visitors to your site. You have 3 main choices for funneling another site's traffic to yours: endorsed mailings, pop-up windows, and link trades. 1. Endorsed Mailings Endorsed mailings are by far the best way to funnel traffic from another site. A well-written endorsement letter by a website operator who already has a relationship with people who can buy from you is often worth its weight in gold. An effective endorsed mailing can result in traffic, sales, and money in your pocket within just a few hours of sending it. 2. Pop-Up Windows Focused "pop-up" windows represent the next fastest way to funnel traffic to your site. When used incorrectly, pop-up windows create an annoying distraction for web surfers. Make sure your pop-up windows are relevant to exactly what visitors came to your site for in the first place! My experiments have shown that a "pop-under" works best. This is where your website pops behind the other person's page. Go to http://www.7dayebook.com for an example. You'll see my other ebook, "eBook Secrets Exposed," pop *under* the 7 Day eBook site. When the visitor is finished viewing the main page and closes it... your page is right there! TIP: For maximum sales, make sure that your page is closely related to the page that is referring traffic to you. 3. Link Trades The next way to funnel traffic from other sites is using "Reciprocal Links" - which is a fancy way of saying trading links with someone. Make sure you negotiate a high profile spot for your link on the other person's site. Creativity is key when negotiating with other websites to steer some or all of their traffic your way. Show them how sending you traffic will make them money through affiliate commissions, how their readers will appreciate being introduced to new and valuable products (yours), or how you can open a new stream of income for them by paying them a few cents for every unique visitor they refer to you. They win by making extra money and making their customers happy. You win by attracting traffic to your site that is focused and highly targeted to your offers. Creating win-win scenarios like these will cause people to jump at the chance to work with you and send you all the "OPT" you can handle. |
