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The problem Today, search engines are overloaded, and quickly getting greedy. Most would accept free submissions, and now they ask for $199 for a "Express Submit Fee". There are thousands of new companies advertising "Get listed in 3,000 search engines" or "Do you need more hits to your website?" Everyone has the same problem. Everyone wants to know what the best method is, to get lots of traffic and sales on your website. The wrong approach Search engine ranking is one of the last places you should attempt in your marketing campaign. To prove this, go to your favourite search engine and do a search for a keyword, like "shoes". Make note of the results. Wait 7 days, go back, and type in "shoes" again and see how the results have changed. Other than the paid or sponsored ads, you should notice the free link results have changed. Search engines purposely mix up the results so that it is nearly impossible to dominate the search engines by fooling them into pointing to your web site. (There are thousands of companies promising high search engine position rankings, but very few of them actually deliver). This week you could rank high, and next week, you could be no where. How can you run a business with such crazy exposure? A common myth Today, there are millions of small businesses on the internet that seriously believe that a website's job is to find and obtain new business leads. The truth A website is a marketing tool, as is your 1-800 number, as is your fax line, as is your logo-painted company vehicle. A website should primarily be used to educate prospective customers about you and your products, and help facilitate a purchase. The customer can either obtain "How to buy" information on your website, or even use an e-commerce online method to make the purchase. You should never depend on your website to find its own customers. It is up to you to invite people to your website through conventional means. Yellow pages, TV, radio, magazines, press releases, etc. How to get people to your website We realize that most new internet businesses are working with small advertising budgets, and TV commercials is out of the question. What about being interviewed by your local newspaper for a new product you are selling? Or distributing your own press release? Result-based-advertising is one of the best forms available. Below are 3 methods, and there are many more. If you were selling shoes on the internet, and followed these 3 methods, you would earn $7,937.50/month of pure profit using the example figures we've chosen. Pay-Per-Click Method: You make an initial $50 investment. You bid and obtain #3 on the search engine ranking for the keyword phrase "buy shoes" at 15 cents/click. This means whenever someone types in "buy shoes", your listing shows up as #3. If someone clicks the link, they deduct 15 cents from your $50 investment. $50 investment, 15 cents/click yields 333 visitors to your website. 333 visitors, and 1 in 50 makes a purchase, you sell 6.6 pairs of shoes. If your net profit per pair of shoes is $15, you earn $99 for the 6.6 pairs you sold. Your pay-per-click campaign cost $50. If you deduct that from your $99 profit, you have a total net profit of $49 from your campagin. Now do this 100 times, and your $5,000 investment returns you an initial profit of $9,900. After your campaign expense of $5,000, you have $4,900 of net profit in your pocket. Once this campaign starts to work for you, it is just a matter of re-investing into more pay-per-clicks, and selling more shoes. With the web, it is even easier, because your webpage can take all the sales orders for you, 24 hours a day. Discussion Groups: By participating in some online discussion message boards about fitness and running, you add your input related to the discussion. The benefit, is that you are allowed 2 lines as your "signature" text, which can be something like this: To: fitness-running@egroups.com From: john@shoeworld2001.com Subject: Re: running on pavement >>I was wondering if running on pavement could cause >>long term damage? Thanks, Fred I'm a runner myself and try to run on grass instead of pavement whenever possible. John Doe Shoe World. Visit us at www.shoeworld2001.com 500 people read that contribution to the discussion, and 10 of them are interested enough to go take a look at www.shoeworld2001.com out of curiosity. That's 10 visitors a day, or 300 visitors a month. 1 of the 50 makes a purchase, and you just sold 6 pairs of shoes, whichs equals $90 of net profit. Now write 10 postings a day, instead of 1, and you get 3000 visitors a month. That will net you $900 worth of profit/month Reciprocal Links: www.fitness-runners2001.com runs a mailing list, has links about the latest marathons, who's who in the industry, etc. It's fitness site that has a couple of banners, but is mostly run for fun. You talk to the owner of the site, and offer to link to his site, if he will do the same for yours. You also mention to the owner, that all fitness-runner2001 visitors automatically get 5% off their shoe purchases. The owner likes the idea, and posts a link to your site. You only get 25 visits a day from fitness-runners2001.com, as a result of the link, but that is 750 visits per month. If 1 in 50 buys a pair of shoes, that's 15 pairs, with a profit of $225. It costs you 5% of the $225 in discounts, so you earn a total net profit of $213.75 Now do this with 10 other websites and you earn a total net profit of $2137.50 per month. A last note: Hopefully this gets you thinking about all the possibilities. What the real internet marketers are doing, is not just run 1 website for $7,937.50/month profit, but instead, they have 10 websites going, giving a net profit of $79,375.00/month! When people say "but the search engines aren't giving me enough hits!", real internet marketers just think you haven't been creative with your marketing campaigns.