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The Catch-22 of Internet Marketing
By Laura Wheeler

So how many articles or eBooks have you read lately that promise to tell you how to get traffic to your site FAST, which start off by telling you to build a list, or engage in a joint venture, or to use an eBook for viral marketing? You have been bitten by the Catch-22 of Internet Marketing, which is simply this:

You have to have a customer base in order to build more customers!

Here are tactics which are commonly recommended for newbies, which do NOT work:

1.Build an eZine list. In order to do this, you must market your eZine, or something else in order to get people to subscribe. If you could do that, you could market your product or site just as easily! An eZine list is a nice way to gain sales from an existing customer base, but it is not, in itself, a way to GET customers, unless you first market IT.

2.Joint Ventures. Well, the whole point of JV is that you leverage your customer base with someone else's customer base, for mutual benefit. If you have no customer base, you have nothing to offer. A great idea is rarely enough.

3.eBook Marketing. Same problem as eZines... You have to have someone to market it TO in order to get it to work for you.

4.Viral Marketing. In order for viral marketing to work, you must plug your item in to a large number of people, who will then spread it around for you. If you have no existing customer base, again, you can expect little result.

5.List Builder Programs. Problem with them is, they want you to make referrals of people... you have to market THEIR program to benefit from it. If you had people to market to, you would not need them!

So what DO you do? If you have no money to back up a campaign, then your options are going to take time. There is no way around it! But they do WORK, and they work well once they gain momentum.

1.Business cards. Be the business. Hand out cards to any one you think might be interested.

2.Register with search engines. This is a no-brainer. Optimize your site, with Title, Keyword and Description Metatags, Alt Tags, and good content with reasonable use of keywords before you register it, or optimize it and re-register it. Don't go overboard. Just use the most important words in your content, and put 1-3 keywords into your alt tags and description, and the most important keyword or phrase in your title.

3.List your site with niche directories. There are more of these than anyone knows. Searches for your keywords will find some directories, and about half of them have an easy way to submit your site. These are not the same thing as Free Classifieds or Free For All sites, which are bad news and ineffective.

4.Get link exchanges if you can. Make sure they are related to your site if you can, and they will help you some.

5.Attend events. Online events, and local events both. Set up a display, have a product to sell if you can, but if you cannot, at least have information that people can take home with them. Events let someone else do the marketing for you to get your name out there, and if you do it right, you can then retain some of the contacts.

6.Join Trade Associations. Look for ones with advertising benefits that do NOT just go to members. You want to reach beyond the trade association, unless you are in a B2B market where your customers are other merchants. Don't bother with traffic exchanges or safelists, because either one just puts your ad in front of other people who are more interested in marketing their own product than in buying yours.

7.Look for low cost ads on sites with reasonable traffic, or place ads in successful eZines. Target them to your potential customers or they won't work.

8.Market with articles. Write articles and submit them to article directories. This is one of the better ways to market, if you can write.

9.Start a Blog, and submit it to Blog directories. Link the blog into your main site. Blogs get indexed faster, and if you update it regularly, it will get spidered more.

10.Submit your eZine to eZine directories. Don't expect a flood of subscribers from this, but you may get a few.

11.Get links not just to your website, but to your freebies, viral marketing items, or eZine. Eventually you'll want to use these items, and direct links to them when appropriate can help you grow your exposure.

12.Once you have a subscriber base for your eZine of about 3000, you'll have some options for using more rapid methods for leveraging those subscribers for faster marketing techniques.

Once you HAVE a customer base you have options. Until then, there really is no alternative but to do it the hard way, one ad, one link, one contact at a time. Consistent effort though will pay off, and once it gets going, it will grow in multiples instead of singles.

About the author:

See Laura's business instructions at Skinny Shoestring http://www.skinnyshoestri ng.com/. Laura has been writing, and producing websites for more than 5 years. Laura is a busy mom of eight, homeschooler, and home business owner.

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