366 Ways to Get Web Visitors –

I have decided to release a list of 366 Traffic Methods all at once. So now, you can’t ask me how to get traffic for a WHOLE YEAR.

Go away!

Okay, I’m just kidding.

Really.

The great thing about this guide is that it’s rebrandable.

You can just put your own link on the front page, or you can do that AND join the free affiliate program and load affiliate links in it with the rebranding kit, a zip file you can find right here or on the last page of the guide. I have committed Mac treason and created a program that only runs on Windows, (XP or Vista). Please refrain from flogging me. I will do my best to help if you have a Mac that doesn’t run Windows, just reply below.

(And… btw… HOW DO YOU LIVE? I was without Windows on my MacBook Pro for two weeks and almost drown in my own tears. Anyway.)

(You can get your 366 Traffic Methods here if you are reading this via feed and can’t see the embed above. That’s a PDF link so don’t hurt yourself!)

If you own The Evergreen Traffic System or Traffic Reality and are signed up at my site, there’s an affiliate link in your member area that will give you an extra 10% bonus, so please use that one instead of signing up twice.

Oh, and of course I forgot to mention in the guide that the cookie the affiliate code drops is good for a Year.

That’s right, even if it takes a year for someone who signs up to our newsletter at the site to buy, or even if they don’t sign up but you were the first person to tell them, it will be a year before anyone else gets to make a sale through them.

So. Uh. You might want to grab the rebrand kit and get your copy out there before everyone else.

And if you need hints as to how you can do that?

It’s a guide to generating web traffic! So you can use the traffic generating guide to generate traffic to the traffic generating guide. Lots of the methods are free, too. (See what I did there?)

By the time this is published, it will indeed be my birthday on the East coast, where I’m currently located.

And I definitely wanted to take some time out to celebrate that, so I’m planning on not working at all tomorrow. Yay me!

What does that have to do with you? At some point in one of these videos I tell you exactly what you can do on my birthday to make me smile.  

Okay, seriously though, what this has to do with you is that every year, on my birthday, I’ve sent out a special newsletter, blog post, birthday gift to all my pals, something.

This year I’ve decided to be naked. 

Yeah, that’s drama, and kinda hype-y. But I bet you want to know what it means, doncha? 

If you don’t, you can always just leave.

.

.

.

Still there, huh? Thought so.

What it means this year is that I’m going to, right now, for the first time, give a video peek into the stats of my site. Not  a picture of last year’s stats.

Not a screenshot of last week’s stats. 

My web site stats for 2009, from the first three months of the year that I wasn’t promoting… and a look at the dramatic difference it made when I am actually well enough to promote this year. 

Where does nakedness come in? That’s how it makes me feel, totally exposed. But I’m comfortable being this open with you.

Of course, I can’t give it all up – I’m not THAT easy, LOL!

The one thing I didn’t share, that I’m only telling folks signed up to Traffic Reality is what links send me traffic. It’s surprising information that I also keep close to my chest.

But I show

• what keyword phrases send me traffic, and how much,
• what kind of traffic Google has sent me this month, 
• exactly how many unique visitors I’ve had this month, and,
• how my traffic tripled about two days into turning my promotion machine up from low to medium.

I’ll also point out how you can tell that this isn’t Bot traffic – at least 89% of my traffic is from real human people looking at my site.

I’m sure most of you remember this time last year that I was physically unable to work and couldn’t promote my site…  But the traffic kept coming, because of the way I have set up my sites.

That was shocking to some people, that you could keep having traffic for months or up to a year without manually promoting your site every day, with no spammy software, and no virtual assistants.

But if you think that was a shocker, wait until you see what it looks like after a day or so of me just doing a BIT of promotion. This is not full strength, now. 

Meaning none of this traffic is from JVs or affiliates, StumbleUpon, Digg, press releases, podcasting, video sites, link campaigns or any offline promotion .

This is just from search, blogging an average of twice a week, RSS traffic, one article published, a few Tweets, two newsletters sent, and very light auto-pilot promotion on Facebook.

Here’s the first video where I do a quick overview – look in the upper right corner at the time – this video was recorded live and just published a few minutes ago. You can see the time changing in my taskbar in the upper right – it matches up with the video, this video is unedited.

You may want to view it full screen for the full effect. Or you can see the first stats video here if you’re reading via the feed, or as this is republished on Facebook.

And here’s the continuation in the second video. Again, notice the time. The only reason there’s even a break is due to Jing Pro’s 5 minute limit per video.

Again, you may want to view this full screen for the full effect. Or you can see the second stats video here if you’re reading via the feed, or as this is republished on Facebook and other sites.

Now, why am I showing you how much traffic I get to this site?

1. Because it’s the one thing web site promotion professionals and marketers Will Not do whether they know what they’re doing or not, because the results are so often taken out of context. 

   For example, the amount of visitors I got to this site this month pales in comparison to traffic I’ve generated for clients and for some of my other sites.

   However, given that the majority of people online have absolutely no interest in a site about web site traffic? It’s pretty darn good.For the average online business person or marketer, it would be phenomenal.
    

2. To show you that those results are possible for everyone.

   You’ve heard my story, most likely. If not, go to the Evergreen Traffic sales page and read it. The bottom line is, yeah I’m an expert at this, but the methods I use are easily boiled down from rocket science into steps anyone can follow.
    

3. For me. To give myself a much needed pat on the back for still having “it”, 11 years after my very first website went online. 
    
4. To get you to give Traffic Reality a try.

Traffic Reality is my new membership site. Well, it’s my new, old membership site. I set it up to show people how to get better traffic results to their site back in 2006 and had to take it down. 

This year, with help from friends, I put it back up. If you’ve heard of Evergreen Traffic, in which I showed three simple traffic techniques and showed you how to combine them to multiply their effects, then you’re familiar with my concept of blending different traffic methods into a system in order to magnify their effect. 

For example, search marketing and article marketing can go well together if implemented properly. Try shortcuts or mis-judge how to blend them, and you’re courting disaster. 

In Traffic Reality, I

1. start you off with one traffic method, and teach it to you in bite-sized pieces,
2. show you how to put it on auto-pilot or semi-auto-pilot, then,
3. add another traffic stream. 

By the end of the second week of implementing the steps you see your first incremental traffic increase. The next month I teach you how to maintain those resuls while simultaneously increasing your traffic with another method, broken down into about a dozen of lessons, sharing literally hundreds of traffic tips, methods, techniques and sources.

So essentially, it’s Evergreen on steroids, split down into pill size. 

These are the exact same tactics I use to promote my sites. And a site like this one is in a difficult spot – almost every business is at least twice as easy to generate traffic for than mine is.

Until my birthday ends, the price special that expired last week is on. So, if you want to get into Traffic Reality at a 20% discount price that you’ll be locked into forever, you want to join today.

Oh yeah, all members can also sign up for the affiliate program. It’ll be a while before we introduce it to Clickbank – they have to approve the site and everything, it’s not like with a product. 

Current members, look for an incredible bonus at the end of each week of lessons for the next 9 weeks. One hint: if you’ve seen all the main pages of the site, you already know what it is.

I’ll be back with more birthday madness later on in the day.

I’m sure you remember our last traffic tip, where we learned how to use slideshows to attract visitors to your site. If you’re stopping by for the first time, it may help to read that tip first.

What we’re doing now is taking that tip and with a few slightly more technical tweaks, take it to the next level. That next level is slidecasting. 

What’s Slidecasting? 

If you want to be technical, it’s podcasting but with a slideshow instead of a regular video. Since a podcast is an RSS feed with enclosures or attachments (most commonly audio), technically a slide with audio doesn’t qualify. But we’re going to go with the general use of the term, which is an audio-enabled slideshow. 

So how do you create a slidecast?
 

It’s surprisingly much easier than it seems with the tools we have available. All you need is a slideshow (have a look at our last slideshow article if you don’t know where to start), and an audio to go with it. Then you can create the slidecast by synching the audio to your presentation with free online resources, or you can invest in programs to help make a slidecast that’s ready for even wider marketing.

Getting Your Slidecast On (As Talking Slideshows)

The first option is the easiest: record an audio to go with your slideshow separately, and sync it to the existing slideshow using online tools. Few mouse clicks and – Bob’s your uncle. 

(Your uncle, not mine – have you SEEN my name? I have no uncles named Bob, trust me.)

SlideShare can help you do this, MyPlick supposedly has a similar feature, and Slideboom even supports your efforts to do this within PowerPoint before you upload. I hear their plug-in is neat, too.

Getting Your Slidecast Out (As Video Presentations)

Okay, now we’re getting a little more crazy with it. You can also make the Slidecast into a video. 

Why would you want to do that? 

Because it’s an easy way for the camera-shy to get in on that whole video marketing thing. For all we know in ten years, the web will be mostly video. If you think I’m crazy, remember that the internet started out as as ARPANET, just a bunch of shared text files on a handful of computers, then NSFnet in 1986. 23 Years later? 

YouTube.

God, I’m old. 

Anyway.

Now is the time to start producing videos (well, two years ago was the time but you’re still good). And this is the easiest way to get your foot in the door if you either don’t want to be on camera yet, or feel that your information is best conveyed in pictures. You can either use a program to do this, or record your synched audio slideshow made at one of the sites above with screencasting tools or screencast software.

Adding audio to Keynote isn’t as easy as Apple makes it sound, but it’s not like it’s harder than doing it in Powerpoint. However, if you can afford it, Camtasia works with Powerpoint to create a video version of your slideshow. (there’s a free trial), a PowerPoint plug-in will help you, or if you’re on a Mac, use a program called ProfCast, which will let you record Keynote while it’s playing, as you narrate in real time. It exports the result as an MOV file, which makes it perfect for uploading to any video site, or creating a video podcast to promote.

Or, you could just do it the easy way and use Amit Agarwal’s tutorial on using AuthorStream to create your slidecast video. It’s called How to Convert PowerPoint Presentations to Video Files (with Sound).

Yeah, yeah, I know, why didn’t I tell you the easy way first? 

Well, what fun would that be?

In the previous article, we talked about how you can use the model of incentivized following in social media to create a contest that can help you gain publicity and leads for your business. Here are a few tips specific to running the contest.

1. Set up clear, easy rules for entry and giving away the prize. Keep it as simple as you can – the more rules there are, the fewer entries you’ll get. Do just enough to prevent someone from cheating.

2. Dedicate a page to describing the prize in as tempting a way as you can, almost like an information/sales letter. Then at the end let your readers know they could win this item and how to enter. Publicize that page when promoting the contest.

3. Eliminate as many negative experiences as possible – as we mentioned in the contest traffic tip, some may not enter because they think talking about this in their status updates may be spam, or at least irritating. 

Of course, some people have the kind of audience that won’t care, but give the others an alternative way to respond. Perhaps they can send you a link to where they saved your contest page in Delicious via DM for you to verify.

4. Give reasonable odds to win. If you have an audience of 20,000, limiting the contest to the first 100 entries can condition your group to respond fast, pay more attention, and see more value in participating the next time around. Fewer people enter contests that they see as a shot in the dark. Think about what you did with your last Publisher’s Clearinghouse Sweepstakes letter.

5. Give a second prize to everyone who doesn’t win. Sometimes I don’t even announce that there’s a second prize until after they’ve entered, or even after the contest is over, in the interest of under-promising and over-delivering.

6. Publicize the contest on Twitter, Facebook, your blog, or whatever venue you chose, while it’s happening, but don’t make it the ONLY thing you ever talk about. Try adding it to your bio, or mentioning it just twice a day, when you sign on and off.

7. Announce and congratulate the winner in public and make sure they have no problem getting their prize.

This is a much easier trick to pull in the Techology sector online and you see it often. Someone hires a programmer to make a tool that tells you where you rank in Google with some unique twist. Their target market is people who are watching their Google positions and need more traffic. Match made in heaven.

I wonder though, why I don’t see these in other areas.

If I had a cooking site for busy parents, I’d have a random Ten Minute Dinner Recipe Generator.

If I was in business travel, I’d have a best last-minute Business Flight Rate Finder.

If I was in Language Translation, I’d have a tool that measured how close an auto-translated document online was close to the real thing.

If I was in Niche Marketing, I’d have a Niche Brainstorming Tool.

If I was in do-it-yourself website promotion, I’d have a frequently updated traffic tips tool that anyone could add to their iGoogle home page.

Wait. I am in Website Promotion. Imagine that. Is this the part where I tell you to add our Traffic Methods to your iGoogle page?

Follow the daily changing link back here when you have questions.

This is part of the point I was making with High Profile Article Marketing before I retired that product.

You see, gone are the days when you’re an expert online just because you claim to be. Even if you, you have to prove it somehow. You’ll need either:

1. Social Proof
2. Applied Proof, or,
3. The “Proof” of Popularity

Get the trifecta (that’s all three of these winning horses in that order), and you’ll never be broke again.

How do you achieve such a thing? The exclusive content angle can take you through all three of these if you’re diligent.

First, write a list of all the online and offline publications in your industry. The online ones will probably be easier to get into.

Second, go find out more about all the editors. Follow them for a while and find out what they read.

Third, see if you can get into publications they read, or, failing that, get widely syndicated on a topic they read about.

Fourth, give it a week or so and see if they come to you. It’s most awesome when an editor asks for your work.

Fifth, if after a week you aren’t noticed, well hey, folks are busy. Think of some way that you can give to this editor and help them with their mission. Then, ask how they most like to accept submissions – having been an editor of poetry and business resources, I can’t tell you how many submissions get rejected for being in the improper format. They may be good but if they’re too hard to re-format, they get trashed and often, a less impressive article goes in its place.

Exclusive, time-sensitive, well-written work gets the most exposure.

Sixth, follow up.

This does not mean harass.

This means, after at least a week, maybe even up to a month has passed, if your work hasn’t been accepted or published, find out how your work was received, and if there is anything you need to work on.

If you did get published, bravo. Can you get on their staff or write another piece? Do it!

Writing benchmark, high quality work for a wider audience will first gives social proof of your expertise – you can’t be a chump with no clue if you’re writing for About.com, right?

If you include tips, it provided applied proof – you tried my free tips and they worked, didn’t they? Now you have a basis upon which to invite them behind the curtain.

When that publication gets read by thousands or tens of thousands more people than you do? Popularity proof. I don’t like this one as much, because I’m of the mind that is everyone is jumping off a bridge, they should be doing it because I did it first. I’m a skeptical follower, and prefer to investigate, then lead the crowd.

However, the reality is that most people are waiting for someone to follow into battle. Often, it’s with good reason. The thought and action leaders take all the bruises and scrapes, and find out what the safe path through the wilderness is. Sometimes it’s smart to be the one following.

Easy enough, yes? Good. Remember that “publications” has a wider definition online. If you can be a guest blogger, or have the following to create a publication, they count too.

Why don’t I consider leaving comments a traffic method?

Because commenting isn’t meant to generate traffic, it’s more of a by-product.

And yes, there are some things we can use to generate traffic, even though that isn’t their purpose, but only when it’s ethical.

Leaving comments for traffic alone isn’t ethical.

You’re trying to take something from a community that worked hard to get it, instead of getting credit for sharing something with a community that you belong to, and reciprocating when it’s given to you – these are two different things.

I wish there was a plug-in that let me keep people from leaving links until after a certain number of comments, and to turn their links off if they stopped participating.

Andy told me on his ultimate dofollow list about Lucia’s plug-in, which paid commenting may force me to turn to this evening.

Think about how you’d feel if someone did that to your blog, everytime you want to evaluate a traffic method related to blogging. If you wouldn’t mind and allow it at your blog, then knock yourself out, because whatever you are doing to others is about to happen to you.

Commenting to get traffic is also inefficient.

Why?

Let’s say you leave one comment.

That comment will probably only bring you traffic as long as that post is new. When it fades into the archives, you won’t get much traffic from it.

Let’s say it’s a DoFollow comment, and you’re getting link juice.

Sure, your link will get followed by the search engines, and counted among the number of links to your site, which may give you a little boost.

But wouldn’t it be better not to have to share that link juice with the other commenters?

Wouldn’t it better to have a whole post dedicated to your site?

Wouldn’t it be great to get a Permanent link to your site from their Blogroll, on a page that has more weight than a single post?

Wouldnt it be cool if someone discovered you by your link and then shared your link with other people?

So how do you get that kind of action?

Let’s look at it logically.

Good Bloggers tend to make posts about:

• Quality tools, content, services, & products that will serve their community.
• People who are doing innovative, interesting, creative things that will interest their community.
• Quality tools, content, services, & products that will serve their community and make them money.
• News of interest to their community that will either save them from doing a full blog post or help them to do a full blog post.

.. just to name a few.

It follows, then, that if you want a blogger to blog about your site, to share your site with others, or to add you to their link roll, you should :

1. Make comments that will both help and intruigue the blogger and his/her community, which make a good introduction to you.
2. Form a relationship with that blogger on the basis of what you have in common that could serve their community.
3. Form a relationship with other commenters in that community.

In other words, comment to give, not to get. If you get the same amount of love back from comments you make, then great. If you don’t, that’s fine too, at least you got a link, and if you stick to it, you’ll get that love elsewhere.

As far as how to apply this to your comment routine, that will depend a lot on your own preferences.

This is what I normally do.

My Seven Step Method of Commenting to Form Relationships

If I comment on your blog, it’s for the sole purpose of getting a link.

I can buy links, earn them, submit for them, write articles, win awards, be written about, publish a press release, create a podcast…. so what the heck do I need you to link to me for?

It would be nice but…

A link is a consolation prize, not an end in itself.

If I comment on your blog, it’s my way of saying hi, a precursor to a relationship. If we were to use the metaphor of dating, the first comment is the stage where I decide if you’re worth asking out.

Step One – Stalking.

I read a blog for at least a week, looking for common ground, and seeing if the blogger writes in a style that leaves a place for replies other than “good job”.

The content has to speak to me, so that I want to say, “fantastic job”, “thank you”, or “and you know what else”, or “I respect you but you’re SO WRONG about this.”

You can’t expect people to write their most compelling work every day, but if I don’t see at least one memorable shot after a week or so of hanging around and reading archive posts, I’m off.

Because if I’m not electrified, and I’m looking to market to people like me, well, they’re not going to be electrified either.

Sometimes I ignore this rule if their audience loves them for some reason I don’t understand, mostly because some of my readers have the same mercy on me.

Step Two – Introductions.

I comment once, leaving my full name, and making a concerted effort to truly contribute to the conversation. (I make an effort every time, but this first time, I want to be noticed, maybe even impressive.)

Usually the first comment is without leaving my link unless the browser fills it out for me.

If comments are moderated, I may come back if it’s really important to me and I remember. (If your template allows it, enable a subscribe to comments plug-in. Ours doesn’t, one reason I want to change it.)

If not, it’s a quick way to lose my attention, which is why I try to only moderate comments when we’re all on vacation, or if key members are out sick.

Step Three – Flirting.

I comment twice. This time I’m looking for a response from the publisher within a few days.

If the person who writes the posts isn’t responding to me, but is to other people in that thread, I think that’s BS.

Every contributor is important. I don’t want a relationship with a sometimesy person, which also means I’ll probably never, ever buy from them.

If you won’t reply to my comments, you won’t reply to post-sales emails if I need help.

I’ll probably still read though, because you can’t judge the sum total of a person on their flaws.

If the person doesn’t comment at all, either because they have a high traffic site which always produces 25 or more comments per post, I will cut them a little slack.

But I’ll probably read less often, and stop bothering myself to comment, unless I observe interaction between commenters.

Step Four – Yes, I’m asking you out on a date.

I comment three times.

With this third comment, if I make it this far at that site, and they respond or their community responds, I’m moving them up to my priority list to read, link to, write about and reference.

Step Five – I Talk About You All the Time

I share my favorite reads. I may share their posts on del.icio.us, Digg, Sphinn, PlugIM, BUMPzee, StirredUp, Stumble Upon, Facebook, anywhere I’ll see them more often.

Step Six – We Fall In Like

I bond with my new friend. We might poke each other on Facebook or email each other. (Rare for me because I Loathe email.) We may have our own inside jokes on each other’s blogs.

My motives are simple – make a new friend.

If anything else comes out of it, that’s great. If there is something I can do for them, even better. If one day, they do something for me too, that’s awesome. It doesn’t always happen that way, and that’s okay with me.

If it doesn’t, I still get credit when I comment, which I’ll do in bursts of frequency, and at the minimum, traffic and/or links will come from it, and the community that posts there often may post over here, and if they do, I’ll mention them from time to time on my blog and add them to my links.

Who knows, that friend might lead me to another friend who wants the same serious business relationship I’m looking for.

If it does work out, it’s magic.

They’ll write about me, they’ll link to me, they’ll reference my posts, they’ll add me to their Blogroll, they’ll thank me in public, they’ll write me privately to set up partnerships, and I reciprocate or initiate the same with them.

Which results in much more traffic, much better links, an increase in both our audiences and in sales, as well as, a new friendship.

Step Seven – The Mutual Appreciation Party Begins

I Repeat steps Five and Six as much as time allows.

Again, thinking about this logically, what would you be willing to do for a person who was doing that for you? I’ve had people do those things for me, and I’d bend over backwards for them anytime, even if they only got to step five.

Successful businesses are built on good relationships. You don’t have to be best friends with everyone – in fact, I’m really big on not working with people who expect something for nothing, abuse my time, or think that because I’m well-known in an area they want to be popular in, that I somehow owe them something.

However, every good blog traffic method is built on being a good neighbor in the blogosphere. No blog is an island.

Thanks to Isotropic.org for letting me know how many days are left until the end of the year.

Free Traffic Method #6 :: Ezines

They say the money is in the list.

“They” aren’t lying.

Just because you’re using RSS successfully, doesn’t mean you necessarily want to abandon email. Some things are more appropriate for email, just like some conversations you have with your clients are better on the phone, and others might be better addressed in a mailed letter.

Ezine Day

Free Traffic Method #7 :: Forums

In stage one of “expertizing” yourself, you’ll probably want to start with a grass roots effort. That first level will involve visiting forums that are in your topic area and helping, or even lurking to find out what the pains of your prospects are.

Forum Day

Free Traffic Method #8 :: Freebies

Using free downloads, software, reports, coupons, giveaways, and the like, are great ways to draw attention to your website. If you do it the smart way, and create a relationship between your site and the freebie you feature, you can get a lot of newsletter sign-ups this way as well.

Freebie Day

The First Step to Learning About Feeds – Feed Subscription Made Easy
http://freetraffictip.com/firefox
http://freetraffictip.com/pluck
http://www.opera.com/download/

The best education you can get about what web feeds are and how to use them is to start reading the web with a browser that is feed capable, or using online tools you’re already familiar with.

Firefox

Mozilla’s preview release of its latest browser update, Firefox, comes with an easy feature for feed readers called Live Bookmarks. When you come across a site that has its AutoDiscovery tag in place, you’ll see an orange RSS button in the lower right-hand corner.

You can click that button and see all the feeds that site has available, and add the feed to your list the same way you would a bookmark. It creates a folder that has the posts you haven’t read, and the option to open them all in multiple tabs or just click on the headline that interests you.

Some veteran feed readers find the interface too simplistic, but if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to start exploring the feed world and to get automatic updates of your favorite blogs, this tool is perfect for you.

Publishers can take advantage of the growing (and passionate!) Firefox fan base by including the AutoDiscovery tag in the head tag of their pages.

(When am I going to shut up about Mozilla? When you pry my laptop from my cold, dead hands. Or when you download it and fall in love yourself.)

Pluck

If you’re still in love with IE, and you want feeds in your browser, Pluck is your solution. It plugs right into IE, is easy, quick and sophisticated enough for people who are power users already.

Opera

The latest version of the Opera Browser comes with a feed reader, too, and you can download it directly from their site. 6 million users can’t all be wrong.

If you’d rather try feeds out first to see if you like them, you can try adding feeds to your “My Yahoo!” page, or using the free service at Bloglines.com . Either one will help you get a feel for them pretty quickly.

Thank you all for your warm wishes. I never realized how popular this site was, stats aside, until I got this outpouring of caring. I am truly overwhelmed.

I begged the doctors to let me try another course of action for the time being. I’ll be re-evalated in two weeks, and I’ll let you know then.

And yes, Dr. Mani, I’m resting. I’m not even typing this myself. You happy? ;-D

Because I’ve been given strict orders about resting, the long descriptions I was going to write about free tools to help you work as if there was no tomorrow will have to be filled in later.

So, Number One – Free Crash Course on Ezines – free only you if you hurry, last I checked there were only 30 spots.

Okay, you’ve got a tracking system, and you have your pages prepared to test, now what?

For our example, I’m going to use the article that was recently republished on Site Pro News. Using this method, when I get published for free in a major publication like that, it’s as good as money in the bank. And they’ve been gracious enough to publish me five times just this year.

If you take a look at the article – 5 Reasons Why Your Site Needs To Publish A News Feed – you’ll see that there are 3 major links leading back to my site in the article, the one in my resource box, that points to my blog, my feed (after the link for Pluck, which really leads back to the Pluck downloads page – it’s just a forwarder for easy subscription, so that one doesn’t count), and the one minute tutorial.

Each of these links addresses my audience in a different way, and leads them to a different method of using my site, and ending up as part of my audience.

The first link in the article will give anyone who cares to learn more about me the subscription link to my feed. They can use it to check me out, and decide if they like my content enough to join my audience. In the article, I even tell you how to use it.

If they get so engaged in the feed, they’re already subscribed and can come back to the rest of my content later. Great.

The second link in the article leads to the one minute tutorial. These are the people who my book would really help the most. When they get to that link, they can read through the instructions, but at the end of my post is a link to my free five day ecourse.

The last link at the bottom is just a link to my blog. That day I had an alternate way for people to sign up for my eCourse with a longer explanation of why they’d want to have a news feed and a few hints on how easy it is.

So how can this work for your site.

It’s a little concept I like to call the garden path.

People are busy. They won’t always feel like they have time to read your whole site, and most people skim the Net, they don’t read it avidly as often as we’d all like to think when we’re creating our entralling content.

So how can you make this fact work to your advantage.

In every traffic campaign I begin, whether it is free traffic or some that I paid for, I set up my in-coming traffic to meet three objectives.

First, I want to provide enough value to create a return visitor.

Second, I want the person who comes to the site to sign up to be contacted again. They can join the members resource area, subscribe to one of the feeds, sign up for the newsletter, or purchase a product.

Third, I want to spark some form of interaction between them and my site.

With the garden path, every time I promote or market, I make sure that the target page (the page they land on) gives them the opportunity to chose to come back. The next step will let them see the products I am offering, with incentive to decide now.

If they reject that opportunity, that’s fine. They’ve already said they’d be back. We’ll find out if I can help them later.

If they accept, I want them to be engaged, I want them to get as much value out of their decision as possible. Then we’ll both be happy – I made a sale, they made an investment in their business they can be proud of, that will produce the results they desire.

So when you set up a campaign, you’ll want to make adjustments to the landing page so that that it’s focused on the action you want them to take. If you want them signed up to your newsletter, the only thing that should be on that page is information about it, and quick, easy sign-up. If you’d like to make a sale, in my experience, the page they land on should capture their information and Then lead them to your product.

This is because conversions for getting a newsletter sign-up are typically much higher than they are for making a sale. So instead of converting, say 3% to a sale immediately, you can get that 3%, plus whatever percentage of the 30% or so that signed up for the ezine to buy later.

I’m writing a more specific guide for this in my upcoming book, and due to space and time limitations, I can’t really go into details now.

But for the moment, as you set up your next campaign, think about it, what do you want your prospect to do when they get to your site, and how can you set up your pages to lead them to your desired course of action?

The rest of the day will be focused on extras. The sun is shining out here in Nevada, which means it’s almost time for me to take a break.

Until I see you next, have a happy day!