Here are the 5 strategies I use:
Strategy #1.- Place classifieds in high-circulation ezines.
This simple but highly effective strategy can easily jump-start your business the very same day the classified is run. Ezine ads (when crafted properly) can bring in large ammounts of pre-qualified traffic to your mini-site... and using the killer mini-site formula you learned from this course, you'll be converting a large percentage of those visitors into paying customers.
The trick is finding high-circulation ezines that target your niche. An invaluable resource I use for this task is Jerome Chapman's TopEzineAds.com. If you've never heard of his site, visit it right now. Of course, his service costs a little bit, and you can do your ezine research on your own when starting out... but trust me, the price is well worth the time you'll save by using it.
Strategy #2.- Start an affiliate program
Starting an affiliate program is another great way to generate thousands of hits to your mini-site. And the great news is that you don't *need* to have your own merchant account to do it anymore... you may use a third party processing system like iBill.com or ClickBank.com and still be able to do it.
You need to keep in mind one thing. If the product or service you are offering from your mini-site has a high price (Usually $100 is a high price for mini-sites), you can offer a 40-60% commission for it... however, if your product has a low price within the range of $20-$40, you'll need to offer affiliates an ever higher commission payout -- you'll earn big money trough the volume of sales you'll generate and your program will be very popular. A good but not very used practice is to open up your affiliate program to your paying customers only... it's up to you to decide wether this would work with your mini-site.
The script I use to handle my affiliate programs is called "The Ultimate Affiliate". It is an excellent script developed by Steve Miles and I'm very happy with it... You can find more information about it at www.groundbreak.com.
Strategy #3.- Give away a freebie
Giving away freebies is one of the most effective ways you can make your visitors come back to your mini-site. The best freebies are special reports or booklets that provide useful information to the user... and contain links back to your site of course.
Giving freebies away can benefit you, but there are smarter tacticts for giving away free stuff. Here are the four that I like the most:
- Start your own newsletter and offer the freebie to new subscribers. This gives you a chance to contact your prospects any time you wish and make announcements of your other products.
- Use one of those "Tell a friend" scripts and ask them to tell two or three friends before getting the booklet. Using this technique may cause your traffic to explode exponentially.
- Get them to bookmark (or even better, to create a shortcut) to your site in exchange for your freebie. This is done with an *excellent* product I just found out exists called "See you again shortcuts". Visit their site now and sign up for a free trial... you'll soon see why this will soon become a well-known killer strategy.
- Ask them to enter their email address and use it to send them your autoresponder sequence... this will raise your sales a lot.
Strategy #4.- Join and participate in discussion groups
In my opinion this is one of the most underestimated traffic-building strategies ever. When you join and participate in forums and discussion groups related to the niche topic, you are in the eyes of *everyone* who reads that group.
Just one good post with your signature file is all it takes to make hundreds of prospects interested in your site. Plus you've got to remember two things:
1) Forums are composed by hundreds, sometimes even thousands of individuals, but only a few of them participate... be one of the top percentage to take advantage of this interesting tactic.
2) Once you post your thoughts, your posting will remain there for months... so any newcomers to that group will still be able to read it. I can't think of any other advertising method that lasts so long online.
Strategy #5.- Create joint ventures
Find any online businesses that target your same niche but don't compete with you directly and talk to them. Create a venture where you are going to promote their products to your customer list and have them do the same for yours. Both parties can track each other's ads and see how profitable this kind of venture is.
The real power behind joint ventures is a personalized and honest refferal. You will tell your customers how the products of XYZ company have helped you out and offer them a few tips on how to use their products better. When a recommendation is personal and honest, people tend to pay much more attention... don't sell to your prospects... just tell them about it.
