Stuck In Traffic…

Okay… so it’s Erik Stafford here, and this is my first blog post. Well… I suppose this blog is going to be all about me, my business, Internet Marketing, and all that stuff… but where do I begin?

Well, I suppose I may as well start with whatever is on my mind, and tonight, as I sit here at my local dive with a Vodka Martini and my laptop, the thing that is on my mind is driving traffic.

Growing my business. Exposing my products to as many people as possible.

There are probably three thousand ways to drive traffic to your website. Obviously, Joint Ventures are great (Working with someone who has a list of prospects, and is willing to promote your product in exchange for a percentage)… but you are not going to get those without a product. Without a product you would have better luck trying to get a drop of water out of a rock, and even with a product it can be very hard to convince people to promote you.

I am running into this problem with The Faster Webmaster right now: my numbers are good, the feedback on my product has been amazing… but people are busy, and they tend to want to work with people they have already worked with in the past before they will work with you. That’s the bottom line. Successful Internet Marketers are a small, tight-knit group. If I didn’t have a few very solid connections when I walked into this business I wouldn’t be where I am at.

But there are other ways… from pay-per click, search engines and blog posts, to forums, MySpace, eBay, and article writing. Do these methods work?

Yes, they do… if done the right way.

Do they take time? Absolutely.

I suppose my advice to beginners would be:

• Get a website up an running. The bottom line is that people are much more likely to take me seriously if my email address is erik.stafford@thefasterwebmaster.com… instead of erik_coolman12-1345@yahoo.com.
• If you are just getting started, and you have a product, focus on setting up Joint Ventures with people. Don’t send emails: write letters instead, or use the telephone. Do a little bit of research so that you stand out.
• If you don’t have a product you should probably focus on blogs, forums, and articles. Make sure that the posts/articles are intelligent, and offer something… and point people through your website at the end of the post or article. Drive people to your website and force them to opt-in to receive information (tips, tricks, whatever) and then market to them on the backend in the followup emails.
• Above all: be patient! It is going to take time, period. You need 500 people on your list to get roughly 100 of them to open, read, and click-through to whatever offer you are promoting. Of that 100, a typical sales rate is 3%… which means that if you promote a $50 dollar product to list of 500 people you can expect to make $75 dollars or so (1/2 of the total sales). It takes time.

To your success,

Erik Stafford
http://www.thefasterwebmaster.com