If you are serious about doing business online, it’s important to learn how to do online business advertising. Whether the traffic source is free or paid, if you do not understand the basics of doing online advertising, the traffic you’ve generated will be wasted.

Recently a ‘rich’ surveying company advertised with us. When I looked at the ad, I almost fainted. It was a simple sign up form, expecting people to sign up without telling them anything about the company or the offer. Isn’t it common sense to ask oneself “will I act on this ad?” before one spend money advertising the ad?

In today’s discussion on how to do online business advertising, I’m going to share with you 3 “MUST-HAVE” elements in your ad before you even start thinking where to advertise it.

Hope that helps.

1. WIIFM “in 5 seconds”

WIIFM stands for “what’s in it for me”.

If you don’t tell people what’s in it for them, they are not going to be interested in your ad, not to mention taking action.

The problem with many advertisers is that their WIIFM is scattered all over the sales copy. One has to seriously read through the sales copy to identify them. Unfortunately, most sales copies are not read and thus the WIIFM message is not delivered.

For effective online business advertising, your ad must address the question of WIIFM within 5 seconds after a prospect first look at your ad. If not, you are losing them, period.

This means your headline, subheadline and the first paragraph of your sales copy play an important role in deciding whether a prospect will continue reading your ad or simply leave the page.

2. Become their friends “in 10 seconds”

Once you successfully capture their attention with WIIFM, you next objective is to gain their confidence in you and/or your offer.

Common ways to achieve this include the follow tricks:

- adding testimonials, especially ones with photographs;
- showing your own photograph and disclosing your name, email address and even contact number;
- showing other proofs such as earning screenshots, samples of completed work etc.

3. “Impossible-to-miss” call for action

Lastly, you must tell your prospect what to do next.

The problem with many advertisers is that their call for action is hidden somewhere in the sales letter. If it takes even 10 seconds for the prospects to search for the call for action, most of them would rather click the close window button.

The 3 elements above are the bare minimum that you must have in your ad if you want to do any online business advertising.

In additional to these 3, try to build a list regardless of what online business you’re advertising. The main advantage of online advertising vs offline advertising is that it’s easy to capture clients’ database. In the world of business, winners are those who own the customers. Think Walmart vs wholesaler. Think Ebay vs its sellers. The ones with huge customer base win. Regardless of what business you’re in, you are in the business of building customers.

This is not the first time I get members asking me how to write text ads. There is a simple formula that I use to write text ad or almost any other types of ads. Today, I’ll share this formula with you.

My Simple Formula To Write Text Ad

Writing text ad is an art. Different marketers have different style of writing.

For me, I follow a simple formula. My formula is:

A-E-A

A - Attention
E - Expectation
A - Action

Most text ads are made up of a headline (or title) and a text body.

The objective of the headline is to grab Attention.

The objective of the text body is to build Expectation and call to Action.

For example, I may write an ad like this:

I Made $6K in my First Month
Learn Exactly How I Did It.
Free Download.

Can you see how I use the A-E-A formula in this example?

How To Write Attention Grabbing Headline Or Title?

There are many ways to write a headline or title that grabs attention.

For example, you can ask a question that invokes curiosity. You can also tell a story like I did in the example above.

One simple way is to use some power words that can capture people’s attention.

Some of these power words include: How To, Secrets, Free, Download, Exposed, Save, Amazing, Time-Sensitive, Proven, Step-By-Step, Shocking Truth, Cheap, Urgent.

Why Build Expectation?

Once you grab the prospects’ attention, you need to tell your prospects what they can expect from you after clicking your ad.

This is the hardest part and if it’s done right, 90% of the battle is won.

To build an expectation is to create a desire. As you know, once a person has a strong desire for something, he can do anything to satisfy that desire.

In this case, once you successfully build an expectation, your prospects will be motivated to click on your text ad to get what they’re expecting.

Again, there are some power words you can use to build expectation. These words include: Learn, Discover, Find Out, Increase, Reduce, Eliminate, Save, Loss, Gain, Heal, Change, Transform.

Call To Action - The Final Push

Many marketers put too much emphasis in the call to action. My view is, the most important element is Expectation building. Once the expectation is built, call to action is simply a final push.

Call to action is for the subconscious. What I mean is subconsciously, our hand react to some words.

For example: Click Here, Download Here, Instant Access, Start Here, Get It Now, Buy Now, Watch It Here, and … (i.e. ending your ad with …)

Anyone Can Write A Text Ad Like A Guru

No one is born an ad writing guru. Every ad writing guru I know has a habit of keeping a library of ads that they think is good.

Whenever you come across a good ad, keep it and refer to your collection whenever you need to write an ad. It’s just a matter of time before you become another expert in writing text ad.

Today, we’re going to discuss about identifying scam programs and making money through Pay Per Click marketing. It’s in reply to a members question.

Here’s his question:

“There is a lot of money making program out there, how to know it is not scam? I am thinking of Pay per click, how to start with it?” - Alvin Leow

Hi Alvin,

Frankly, there aren’t that many scams out there on the internet. The only thing you should really avoid is Ponzi scheme.

A Ponzi scheme is one that typically makes money from newcomers and use that money to pay the existing members.

There are quite a few Ponzi schemes out there, but it’s very easy to identify them.

When choosing money making programs, don’t look at the income potential. Instead, study the business model and ask yourself whether the model is sustainable. If it’s not sustainable, or you have doubt about the model, don’t join!

Alternatively, you can avoid all these get rich quick programs all together and simply focus on the mainstreams of internet marketing, which are things like affiliate marketing, Adsense marketing, Ebay marketing and providing online services.

You mentioned about Pay Per Click marketing. The idea of Pay Per Click marketing sounds like an easy way to make money online. But it isn’t.

Let me explain……

Many people associate Pay Per Click with affiliate marketing. The idea is this: “Pick a Clickbank product, post a PPC ad, get instant traffic and make sales”.

That sounds easy. But the truth is even the best Pay Per Click marketing expert needs to spend a couple of hundreds to test their ads before they can strike gold.

Pay Per Click marketing has evolved so much that it is getting harder for newbies to get involved.

Why?

Because there are many spying tools that can help Pay Per Click marketers to spy on other people’s ads and find out which keywords and ad phrases are profitable. As a newbie, without such tools, you are searching for gold in the dark and that can be quite costly.

I don’t mean to discourage you but it’s the fact.

The good thing about Pay Per Click marketing is that once you hit some ads that are profitable, they can be your cash cow for quite a while.

My advice is if you want to make money through Pay Per Click marketing, make sure that you follow the right guide and run different campaigns in at least 5 different niches. If you simply want to run an ad and test the water, you need to be superbly lucky to hit the jackpot.

Today I’m going to share with you two simple online advertising strategies - one is pretty common and the other one is hardly known!

I call the first strategy “Review And Compare”, and the second strategy “Review And Complement”.

Online Advertising Strategy #1 - Review And Compare

This is the most common strategy used by many online advertisers.

The idea is to pick 2-3 similar products and compare their pros and cons.

You probably have seen such online advertisements before.

There are two approaches to deploy the Review And Compare strategy. One works better than the other.

1) “Independent Review” approach

In this approach, you simply provide an independent review of the 2-3 products that you’re comparing. Many online advertisers will give some star-ratings to the products and ‘purposely’ award more stars to the product that they support.

This advertising approach has been overly used and to be frank, it is not as effective as the second approach below.

2) “Personal Touch” approach

In this approach, instead of writing an independent review, you position yourself as the user of both products that you’re comparing.

The idea is to share your personal experience with the prospects and tell them which product works better for you.

For example, if you are promoting a make money online product, your story can be something like this:

“My name is blar blar blar. I’ve been struggling to make money online….(tell your sad story). Finally I decided to try out product XXX and product YYY….(describe the two products). With product XXX, I made $. But with product YYY, I made $$$. Since product YYY made me more money, if you want my recommendation, I will recommend product YYY. But to be honest, both products have their pros and cons. Here’s my full review of the two products…..”

In your online advertisement (a.k.a. your presell letter), you should include your photograph and email address so that people know that you are real.

The gist of this “personal touch” approach is to appear real and honest. You want to do everything you can to deliver the following messages:

- I’m a real person and I’m reachable.
- I experienced the problem that you’re experiencing now.
- I’ve tried and tested both products.
- Here’s the result I get after trying both products. If you follow what I do, you too should get the same result.

I hope you can see why this advertising approach is more powerful than the first one.

This approach is the basis of our second online advertising strategy…..

Online Advertising Strategy #2 - Review And Complement

In the Review And Compare strategy that we discuss above, your objective is to compare different products and help the prospects to decide which one is better. Using this strategy, the prospects will buy at most one product.

On the contrary, in the Review And Complement strategy, your objective is to recommend a line of products that complement each other.

If done correctly, instead of getting people to buy just ONE product out of the few you’re comparing, you may end up having people buying the whole line of products!

See how powerful this advertising strategy is?

To use this strategy effectively, we need to use the “personal touch” approach, i.e. tell your own story.

Your story can be something like this:

“My name is blar blar blar. I’ve been struggling to make money online….(tell your sad story). Finally I tried product AAA and I made $A. With some initial success, I decided to try product BBB. The beginning was tough. I was struggling to find traffic. Then I came across product CCC that taught me how to get traffic to my website. I followed the instructions and it worked! I also joined website DDD and EEE, which further boosted my web traffic. Eventually, I started to make money from product BBB. Then I tried product FFF, which is a very lazy way to make more money online and I love it. Now I’m making full time income online and I continue to test different products. If you want to keep yourself updated with all the different products I’ve tested, opt-in to my list here….”

Can you see how all the products are linked? You’ll be surprised that people will simply follow your recommendations and buy every product you recommend, including opting into your list!

It’s like killing all the birds with one stone!

To be honest, I didn’t invent this method. It was shared to me by one of my advertisers, who have been using this online advertising strategy with great success.

The reason I’m sharing these online advertising strategies with you is because I’m still seeing many members advertising the product sales letters directly. This is not the best way to sell affiliated products. If you want to be a successful online advertiser as well as a successful affiliate, you should use one of the two strategies above.

So, what is the most effective online advertising? Is it banner advertising? Is it social networking? Or could it be LeadsLeap advertising?

My answer is - none of them!

The most effective online advertising is not about the advertising tool or media that you use, but how you use them.

For example, some people say that banner advertising is not effective because people are ‘banner blind’ nowadays. I disagree. To illustrate, some of you may know that I’m crazy about link building for SEO. So whenever I come across a banner ad about new ways to build backlinks, I’ll click on the banner to find out more.

From this illustration, you can see that the key here is not about the tool or media that you use to advertise. The key here is whether you are advertising to the right target audience.

That brings me to an important conclusion:

“The most effective online advertising is one that is the most targeted.”

Some Web 2.0 gurus nowadays keep touting about how they can get tons of traffic and make money through social networking. It may be true for them. But you must understand that many of them are selling products teaching people how to make money through social networking. So their products will appeal to many social networkers.

On the other hand, if you are selling a niche product, spending hours a day in Facebook or Myspace may be a waste of your time.

I’m not saying social networking is ineffective. But you need to find the correct social networks for your niche.

For example, if you are in the “Make Money Online” niche, you can participate in social networking sites for internet marketers like this one.

Some new members ask me what kind of ad they should put up in their LeadsLeap account. What is your answer?

LeadsLeap provides a free online advertising platform for internet marketers. We generate fresh traffic through our blog (the blog you’re reading now), and our blog discusses about internet marketing stuff. This means our traffic are people interested in internet marketing and online advertising. Knowing the profile of our traffic, what do you think would be the best ad to advertise? It’s definitely not some Jewellery Offers or Sports Shoe Sale!

In conclusion, the most effective online advertising can be achieved through highly targeted advertising solutions. The challenge is to identify the right places where you can find your potential customers. Once you identify these places, you can use all the advertising tools available to direct the traffic from those places to your website.

Nowadays, it is getting harder to get high response rate to online advertising. I am not scaring you but merely stating the fact, from experience.

In the past, a simple squeeze page consisting of a headline, some tips and an opt-in form can easily get an opt-in conversion of 10%. But now, the conversion of such a squeeze page is hardly 5%!

I am utterly surprised that some professionally designed squeeze pages are getting the response rate that I expected.

Is online advertising dead?

I don’t think so. I’m still seeing advertisements with good response rate.

After studying some of the online advertising sales letters with good response rate, I realized that the fundamentals of online advertising has not changed.

The only problem is that the days of short opt-in squeeze pages are gone. Prospects are getting immune to the idea of opting in. Nice graphic and squeeze page design can no longer impress the prospects.

Things have pretty much gone back to the basic.

What is the basic?

A simple and decent sales letter showing your photograph and using the 3 ‘F’s and 1 P strategy to promote your offer.

What are the 3 ‘F’s and 1 ‘P’?

3 ‘F’s stands for Feel, Felt, Found and 1 ‘P’ stands for Proof.

A ‘back-to-the-basic’ sales letter essentially conveys the idea that “… I understand how you FEEL…. I was in your position before and I FELT this way too…… but I finally FOUND something that works …… Here are all the PROOFs that I have….”

The idea is trust, which is the fundamental of success in online advertising.

To increase the response rate to online advertising, you ought to make your prospects feel that you empathize with them, have gone through what they went through and that you are the best person whom they can trust because you are real.

One last secret that will increase the response rate to your online advertising is…… Keep advertising!

I hope you are not thinking that I am trying to hoax you into spending more in advertising.

Have you heard of the famous saying “it takes seven contacts to make a sale”?

Let me tell you a secret. Experienced marketers keep posting the same advertisement to the same group of prospects and eventually see more and more people accepting their offers after seeing their advertisements repeatedly.

Sad to say, this secret is stopping many newbies from experiencing online advertising success. Most newbies post an ad and quit for not getting the expected result. And they never try again.

I know you don’t like the idea, but it is how things work. Repeated exposure to your advertisement will build people’s trust in you. If you want to increase the response rate to online advertising, you have to keep advertising.

“Help! Where can I get fresh home business opportunity lead?”

With so many home business opportunities sprouting, it seems that the only problem is where to find fresh leads for YOUR opportunity.

In today’s blog, I’m going to show you how you can use LeadsLeap’s FREE system to solve your “lead” problem.

I don’t dare to say LeadsLeap is the ONLY solution, but after reading the methodology, you decide if it’s a sound solution for you……

LeadsLeap is designed to help you get fresh home business opportunity lead through its two-prong approach.

Approach #1 - Proprietary Lead Generation System

LeadsLeap is essentially a lead generation system where you can build a network of leads that you can advertise to.

If you are a LeadsLeap member, you know that I’m not referring to the traditional safelist advertising where you email your ‘n’ levels of downlines and flood each other’s inbox.

I’m not going into the details. You can read more about the lead generation system here.

What I do want to show you is an interesting example of a member’s referral statistic.

Below is a recent enquiry I received from Chris:

Why are my stats so distorted? What happened to my levels 1-3??????

Level 1: 6
Level 2: 0
Level 3: 2
Level 4: 332
Level 5: 355
Level 6: 111
Level 7: 15
Level 8: 0
Level 9: 0
Level 10: 0

Can you see what is happening?

Chris has personally introduced 6 people to join LeadsLeap. Out of the 6 people, probably 1 of them introduced another person to join, but that person quitted for some reasons. That’s why Level 2 has 0 member. But before the person quitted, he introduced 2 people to join LeadsLeap (as shown in Level 3). This is where the magic happens. These 2 members bring in 332 people to LeadsLeap (as shown in Level 4), who in turn bring in 355 people and then 111 people and finally 15 people at the 7th level.

I have no doubt that this is not the end of the story. The network will continue to grow.

So to Chris, his initial effort of bringing in 6 people to LeadsLeap has brought him 821 prospects whom he can advertise to.

In the months to come, even if Chris doesn’t do anything, he will continue to receive hundreds if not thousands of fresh home business opportunity leads.

That’s LeadsLeap system in action!

Approach #2 - Content Network Advertising System

At LeadsLeap, we also allow our members to post their ads in our blog (yes, the blog you are reading now).

How does it help?

Simple. LeadsLeap blog receives more than a thousand visitors a day, majority of the traffic are fresh leads from the search engines.

After more than 5 months of hard work, LeadsLeap blog is now well positioned in the search engine, appearing in the top 10 results for many highly searched home business related keywords.

We planned to make it happen several months ago, and it’s happening now!

For example, the keywords “types of advertising techniques” is searched 169 times a day!

Check out our ranking in Google.

LeadsLeap ranks #2, just below Wikipedia, which is seriously a tough guy to compete!

As a member, since your ad appears in our network, you will get to share the pie.

This is another secret weapon that we use to help members to generate endless fresh home business opportunity lead.

That’s the two-prong approach that LeadsLeap uses to generate fresh home business opportunity lead for its members. If you are an existing member, I hope that after reading this post, you can better appreciate the system. If you are not a member yet, well, join us. It’s free anyway.

Many people are confused by the different types of advertising techniques online. In today’s blog post, my aim is to classify all the techniques into 5 main types. I will also discuss the key to success in each of them.

Ready? Here we go……

1) Content Advertising

The first type of advertising technique is content advertising. It basically uses content to draw visitors’ attention. It is the main type of advertising technique because the entire internet is made up of content (or information).

The following traffic strategies all fall under content advertising technique:

- Submitting articles to article directories
- Posting articles to Squidoo, Hubpages or Blogger
- Posting articles to your own blog or content website
- Press release
- Paid reviews at other people’s website
- Yahoo answers
- Social bookmarking at Digg, Propeller etc
- Post videos in video sites
- Posting comments in forums

In content advertising, you draw traffic from 2 sources. You either get the traffic from the website where the content is posted or from the search engine.

Existing traffic from the website is given. There is nothing much you need to do other than making sure that your content is good and your title is interesting.

The real challenge lies in getting traffic from the search engine. Your aim is to get high ranking in the search engine and direct the traffic from the search engine to your content and then to your website. This is done through careful keyword research and search engine optimization.

2) Link Advertising

This type of advertising technique typically uses a short link with some description to attract the visitors directly to your website.

The following traffic strategies all fall under link advertising technique:

- PPC advertising
- LeadsLeap advertising
- Classified advertising
- Submission to directories
- Link exchange partnership
- Banner advertising (image version of link advertising)
- Craigslist advertising
- Email signature

In link advertising, you draw traffic from just 1 source, that is the existing traffic from the website where your link is posted.

The key in link advertising is your OFFER.

Many advertisers expect people to click on whatever link they post. When no one clicks, they wonder why people are not responding.

Remember, people are NOT AT ALL interested in your ad. They are only interested in how they can benefit. If your ad fails to convey the idea that you have something good for them, they simply won’t click!

3) Viral advertising

This kind of advertising technique is similar to word of mouth advertising in the offline world. The idea is to encourage your existing traffic to bring more traffic to your website.

The following traffic strategies all fall under viral advertising technique:

- Offer your products’ affiliate program, including finding joint venture partners
- Place a “Tell-a-friend” script on your website
- Distribute viral screensaver, software or ebooks

Success in viral advertising depends a lot on your ability to create a buzz in your community. You need to package your product into something that is unique and interesting so that people are interested in spreading the words for you. Viral advertising can hardly work for a “me-too” product.

4) Incentivized advertising

The forth type of advertising technique is incentivized advertising where the traffic is rewarded to visit your website.

The following traffic strategies all fall under incentivized advertising technique:

- Traffic exchange programs
- Auto-surf advertising
- Paid to read advertising
- Safelist advertising

Success in this type of advertising depends mainly on your offer and the way you present it. Most advertisers who fail either do not have a good offer or they fail to deliver the benefit of their offer across to the target audience.

5) Obtrusive advertising

The last type of advertising technique is obtrusive advertising where the traffic is forced to view your ad. The most typical examples are popup and popunder advertising.

The first rule in obtrusive advertising is to avoid untargeted traffic, which happens to be quite common in this kind of advertising. If your ad is shown to a pool of people who are not interested in your offer, you are simply barking up the wrong tree!

If the traffic is targeted, your success in obtrusive advertising depends mainly on your offer and the way you present it, similar to incentivized advertising.

Final note……

As you can see, online advertising is not as complicated as what it seems to be. I hope that by understanding the main types of advertising techniques, you can be better prepare your advertising campaign. All the best!

In today’s blog, I’m going to share with you how to get good response from safelist advertising.

Many gurus will tell you that safelist is a complete waste of time and to certain extend, I agree. But if you know the tricks, it can be a good source of traffic for you.

Without further ado, here are the tricks to get good response from safelist advertising.

1) Don’t sell. Build list!

Safelist traffic seldom buy stuff on the spot. Don’t advertise your business opportunity directly or sell your product upfront. It won’t work.

Instead, your main job is to give. Give away free gifts, free info and/or arouse their curiosity so that they opt-in to your list.

After they opt-in to your list, you can lead them to a one-time offer using the strategy I shared with you earlier on. If the offer is good, they will bite.

To illustrate, when I advertise LeadsLeap program, the sales page I use is this. (You can use the same page to build your leadsleap team by simply adding your referid at the end of the url).

As you can see, I’m giving away more than 1000 minutes of internet marketing videos. The opt-in conversion is good. After prospects opt-in, they will see my one-time offer. About 5% will take up the offer, but bear in mind that it’s not the end.

Safelist traffic are usually newbies of the newbies. Once they opt-in to your list, if you can feed them with great information and show them the way to make money online, they can be your best long term customers.

2) It all started with a catchy email subject.

Safelist members receive tons of emails a day. Wanting them to read your email is very tough and that’s why most people fail to get much traffic.

(Usually, when you join an individual safelist program, the response is so low that it can be a waste of your time. For better response, it is wiser to use a safelist submitter that allows you to submit your ad to thousands of safelists at one time.)

As I’ve said, safelist members receive tons of emails everyday. When they browse through their list of emails, the only thing they see is your email subject. Therefore the only way to capture their attention is through your email subject.

There are 2 important tips on writing email subject:

i) When writing your email subject, focus on giving and don’t try to sell or hype.

Email subjects such as “Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot” will not work because people know you are trying to sell something.

Instead, email subject like “Free Report: How I Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot” will get some traffic to your squeeze page.

ii) To further increase the response, you MUST make your subject stand out VISUALLY.

This is the main secret, so pay special attention to this.

What I’m saying is you should add some special characters that can make your ad quickly recognizable from the list of email subjects.

To illustrate what I mean, look at the list of email subjects below and tell me which one captures your attention.

Still Reading Commercial Emails For Free?
Start to Increase Your ClickBank Sales Today!
The Gas Alternatives Report : Up To $2000 Monthly!
### Free Report ### How I Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot
You won’t believe this is free
THE LIGHTNING RESULT SAFELIST - FREE TO JOIN - FREE TO EARN!!
3 Reasons You Should Consider

If you browse through the subjects above, you should see that “### Free Report ### How I Make $3000 A Month On Autopilot” stands out from the rest.

The trick is to use some special characters to increase your chance of having your email subject being read.

Some tricks you can use include:

### Free Report ###
**** Urgent !!! ****
[Unadvertised Bonus]
FW:
RE:

I’ve also seen people starting an email subject with characters like these:

(¯`*
L@@K HERE >>

Be creative and think out of the box when using characters to capture attention.

But remember, this trick can ONLY capture people’s attention. Eventually, it’s the words that determine if they want to read your ad. Remember to give rather than to sell or hype in your email subject.

Email subjects like this

**** Urgent !!! **** Start to Increase Your ClickBank Sales Today!

will not get you much traffic, but email subjects like this

**** Urgent !!! **** 6000 Free Leads For You At $0 Cost

will.

To sum up, effective safelist advertising begins with 1) a VISUALLY powerful email subject, 2) an irresistible email subject that offers something that one would be crazy to reject and 3) a squeeze page that can get people to opt-in to get the offer, and finally 4) a good follow-up system that lives on the principle of “give and thou shall receive”.

Last but not least, remember that the success of any advertising campaign does not lie in the source of your traffic (so long as the traffic is targeted). More importantly, it lies in the amount of charcoal you have set up.

Helping you to increase your web site traffic has always been my top priority and today, I’m going to share with you my best kept secrets to increase web site traffic from scratch.

Like many of you, I started my career in internet marketing with little knowledge, no JV partner, no internet marketing friend and I didn’t pay thousands of dollars to attend any seminar on internet marketing. I started from scratch, learning the ropes by reading tons of ebooks and email newsletters (blog wasn’t popular when I started online).

So I believe whatever web site traffic strategy that works for me will work for you.

My Most Important Web Site Traffic Strategy

My most important web site traffic strategy is viral marketing.

Viral marketing is a huge topic by itself and it encompasses many different strategies, including viral ebook, viral software, affiliate program, tell-a-friend system and even list building.

Before I even start thinking about the details of any new web site, the first question I will ask myself is “How can I multiply my initial traffic into more traffic?” If I can’t get a good answer to this question, I will not build the web site at all. (Clarification: I’m referring to mega web sites like LeadsLeap, not those little Adsense or affiliate web sites that rely on search engine traffic.)

The whole idea of viral marketing is that you want people to tell other people about your website.

You may think all you need is an affiliate program. If you do, you are dead wrong! Just because you are having an affiliate program doesn’t mean that people will start spreading the words. In most cases, they won’t!

The key in viral marketing is to create a buzz in the community. You need to position your new web site in such a way that there is some novelty in it, something that will make people say “Hey, it sounds interesting” or “Hey, this is something new”. If you can do that, together with a good supporting system such as an affiliate program, your web site will spread like wild fire.

Next, You Need Web Site Traffic Starter

I derive the term Traffic Starter from Fire Starter. When you set up a fire, you need fire starters. Similarly, if you want  your website to spread like wild fire, you need a traffic starter, which is the initial traffic to your website.

Can you imagine what will happen if you burn lots of fire starters but you fail to put some charcoal around them? Yes, you get some initial fire but it soon dies.

In the case of web site traffic, the charcoal is the viral marketing components. That’s why I say viral marketing is the most important web site traffic strategy. You MUST have that in place before even thinking about where to get your initial traffic.

Am I clear on this point?

Ok next, where do you get the initial traffic?

Frankly, it really doesn’t matter where you get the initial traffic, as long as the traffic you receive are targeted.

When finding the initial web site traffic, an important question to ask yourself is “Where can I find people who are interested in my web site?” Whatever answer you get, go there and find ways to channel the traffic to your website.

It could mean you have to pay some money to advertise. It could also mean you have to write to some website owners and strike out some JV deals.

When I first started, I had no JV contact and I got all my initial traffic from advertising. I spent quite a bit on advertising (5 figures to be exact), but I soon earned back the money because I put a lot of “charcoal” around my traffic starter. Get the idea?

That’s really my main secret to increase web site traffic and I hope you get the gist of it.