by Jim Turner

A Web site gives you an online identity. It establishes a place where prospects and customers can find you. It allows you to establish a portion of cyber real estate to display your products/services.

It's really your World Headquarters or Branch Office. Prospects and customers come and visit at all hours of the day (or night), 24/7/365, to get information in your area of specialization or your Theme. While they are visiting, you could be sleeping, vacationing, having fun with your family or any other activities that you desire to be doing.

The Internet is becoming more crowded everyday. Web sites number well into the millions. Trying to stand out in the crowd is going to mean that you will have to be more diligent and persistent in bringing attention to your Web site. The need for the right kind of promotion is becoming more urgent everyday. The following tips should help you in getting visitors to your site and causing them to want to come back again:

(1) Become a Valuable Source to Your Prospects And Customers

What do you have a lot of knowledge about? What do you like to do? Do you have certain hobbies or extracurricular activities? Who would be interested in the knowledge that you have?

By answering these questions you have defined a Theme for your Web site, as well as defined who your prospects. These are the folks that you want to become a prime source of information. You can satisfy their need for information. You may help them by creating a Web site that is loaded with tons of information that causes these prospects to see you as an expert. This will lead to them being repeat visitors and referring your site to others.

Here are some things that you could do to make your site an information oasis or portal:

a) Refer them to other useful sites that are not in competition with what you have to offer. For example, if your theme is snowboarding and you sell equipment for snowboarding fans, you may have links to fabulous places to go snowboarding in the US. You might even set up some special vacation packages with the owners of these locations.

b) Provide information to help the visitor improve their skills. Sticking with the snowboarding example, you may provide interesting articles on perfecting your visitors snowboarding skills, how to maintain snowboards for maximum performance, avoiding injury while being a snowboading daredevil. If you provide this type of information your visitors will continue to come back looking for more opportunities to improve their skills.

c) You may provide advice to your visitors. Everyone in your Theme area is constantly looking for advice. Most of the feedback that I get from subscribers to this newsletter, is from online marketers wanting advice on the "how to's" of Internet marketing. Therefore I made the decision to add a discussion board to my Web site. Not only will they be able to get advice from me, but also from others who visit the board. The discussion board, http://talk.webprofitsource.com is open for you to post your questions and comments now. Decide how you can become a better advisor and draw visitor to your Web site.

(2) Make Your Prospects Want to Visit Your Site

No matter how magnificent your site is in your own eyes, you've still got to get visitors there in the first place. Simply stating what they will find there is not enough. There are hundreds of other sites that can say the same thing. What can you do to make you stand out? Try some of these freebies to get them there:

a) Offer a FREE e-book related to your Theme
b) Offer a FREE Specila Report on your Theme
c) Offer a FREE newsletter or ezine
d) Offer a FREE Web site review
e) Offer a FREE hour of your time over the phone
f) Offer a FREE sample of your product
g) Offer a FREE ad in your newsletter
h) Offer a FREE teleseminar
i) Offer a FREE e-mail seminar

(2) Make it Easy for Prospects to Find You

Visitors are eager to learn, if they know about you and all the information that you have for them. You are more than happy to help them. So, how do you get to meet each other? There are many ways. Try these:

a) Exploit your sig file or tag line. Do not send an email from your desktop without your sig file on it. There is something about sig files that just makes me want to click on the links and at least find out what the person is promoting. I have run up on some very profitable tips by clicking on links in sig files.

b) Describe your website and your services in search engines and directories. This takes a bit of time, but the payback can be huge.

c) Exchange links, not with everyone, but with sites that offer products that complements yours. This is best done by visiting the Web site of others and sending them a personalized email asking for a link. Be sure to compliment the owner and tell them how he can benefit from linking with you.

(3) Earn Your Prospects' Confidence

Let's face it, the Internet can be a cold place to do business. You can't see who you're dealing with, neither can you hear them. So why should you trust them? And even furthermore, why should you give them your hard earned dollar$?

As a Web site owner, you will *have* to gain the confidence of your prospects and customers. One of the easiest ways to do that is to establish a series of communications with the prospect, preferably in a non-threatening way. A newsletter is a perfect way to stay in touch with your prospects.

HOT TIP: If it were not for my newsletter, my online profits would be very miniscule or non-existent.

I attribute it to the fact that you keep hearing from me on a weekly basis providing you with tools, techniques and strategies to make money on the Internet. Yes, I make offers to you, but they are for items that will help you in your online endeavors.

The newsletter is delivered to you every weekend with original content on how to become an Internet success story. When you send me an email with questions, you get a response within 36 hours, most of the time within 24 hours.

I make it a rule to thank you for responding and offer to help you in any way that I possibly can. These kind of behaviors build trust. You must show your prospects and customers that you do care about them before you can build a long-term relationship based upon trust.

HOT TIP: If you want to learn about starting and publishing a profitable online ezine or newsletter, join in with me and 400 other online publishers on The Publishers Only List.
pubsonly-subscribe@topica.com

Closing

By following the tips above, you should begin to see your hit counter coming alive and your bank account beginning to swell. Both are very welcome to any Internet marketer who is looking to become an Internet success story. So get busy turning your Web site into a cyber magnet.

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