So the way people have used the web has dictated to a large extent how they enter and leave your sales funnel. A note of caution here. There’s a myth among people that sales and marketing starts when a prospect reaches your site and sees the first firm and completely owned representation of you.

NO… this works differently. The process of selling starts at first contact – your first ad, the first ever article you publish, the first ever request to make a click, the first tweet you send with a link. There’s no second time lucky in the game of sales. And traffic is closely linked with all this. If you’re pulling traffic without the intent to convert it, then you might be causing your website to die a slow death!

And to get this intent communicated right, it is important for you to understand how people’s usage of the web is building up web trends. THAT is where you’ll get the priceless answer of how to get traffic like the pros in any niche do.

So let’s get started. I’ll go over different traffic segments and tell you in specific how the trend develops in each, which will lead us to the medium we use to get traffic – finally a process to generate that traffic:

# 1 : SOCIAL MEDIA

Okay, quite frankly, people are wasting a lot of time on social networking these days. What’s seriously alarming is that even in corporate offices, guys are trying to find ways to get those blocked facebook and twitter URLs to open up. THIS IS NUTS!! But it’s good news for you. This overt need to connect and escape from life’s binds in a virtual world is a powerful grenade of traffic and to a large extent decides whether or not people will be spending time checking your site out.

How??

Well simple… most people when connecting are logically inactive and psychologically on peak. This means in their submissive minds, they’re filling up a register of thoughts about whatever visuals cross their way (this is also why guys get addicted and interested quickly on seeing beautiful girls’ profiles). I don’t say that you go trying to get people’s attention by hosting attractive pictures on these sites.

What you really need to do is to develop a good karma establishment that gives people guidance in the direction of your product by leveraging their own comments and views on the network. For example, if you come across too many people demanding a certain solution they can’t get easy access to and which they’re willing to pay for…you simply draw them to your site’s page or community. That way, they’ll discover that you have an answer and that you’re willing to offer it up. At the same time, encourage them to comment and talk about it to have more people experience what it is they get out of you.

This makes them assign a higher number against your business in their heads and the web trend in social media is that, the more a thing gets talked about the more the people that check it out and the more it’s “social” value rises. So again, the cycle continues and it builds more traffic. It takes time, but it’s lethal!!

Here are the social networks that obey this trend the most:

> FACEBOOK – Simple Direct Response

Right on top, facebook allows you to create a fancy page within minutes. Now, keep one thing in mind. A page is different from a profile. The profile has a limit of 5000 people that it can connect with. The page has UNLIMITED. Then there’s no ruling that says you can’t have more than one page. So ideally, you want a page for your business, a page for your product and a page for yourself!!

Link them all up too. The more you have (and the more well managed they are), the better. Put out your page as a link on related pages. the best bet is to place a little youtube link and comment your page over it. Else, just get 25 people to like it and use facebook as your page. Then visit another page as your page and be socially active. people start to visit.

> FACEBOOK – Advertising

Facebook ads are the paid traffic side of this network. What’s good is that if your ad copy isn’t tricky and you’ve researched your target prospect well, then you can use facebook ads to target demographic areas, age groups and people with interests (yeah – those activities and interests you have on facebook dictate the ads you see). Doing such targeted advertising elsewhere will cost you a fortune!

You can either use your ad to transfer the user to your landing page or simple redirect them to the URL of your like page. Note that you won’t initially get too many clicks, but when people do click, it’s high quality traffic.

> FACEBOOK – Farmville

That’s one of the most underused and high potential traffic sources. It’s been shown a couple of times by different social media geeks that farmville is the most played game on facebook and one of the most indulged apps.

Now, it’s true that you can use this for a whole host of other apps, but since testing shows that farmville targeting can be the most profitable, I’ll give you enlightenment on that. You see, McDonalds went to the extent of purchasing an entire set of plots inside farmville to represent themselves in the game, but that’s more of brand building. You don’t have to get that far. Most facebook apps have popups associated to them. For a decent price quote and rate of average clicks you can secure a popup for some of the farmville users that lie in your target age group.

Now the trick here is to associate your product to increased coins and bonuses in farmville. They’ll be happy to at least give it a try. When they do click, be just and give them the bonus credit and also redirect them to your site. But be sure to do your fair share of keyword research first and opt for ad copy that relates more to farmville.

> TWITTER – for your list

Twitter is a more free-flowing social network. So you can’t expect too much of a buzz until you have a sufficient number of people following you and regularly checking out your tweets. but while you’re at it, here’s a cool trick:

Whenever someone decides to follow you on twitter, automatically send them back a message saying thanks for the follow. Tell them that you’re happy to follow them back. And include a link in your message saying there’s a free gist you left them. And then ask them to keep in touch.

Redirect them to your relationship-friendly squeeze page (no hard selling on this one). Build your list.

> YOUTUBE – Viewership concentration

First off, if you’re wondering why I placed it under social media, well you tube is in effect a video sharing “social network”. The best part about youtube videos is that they can easily go viral, thanks to it’s integration with facebook, g+, twitter, stumbleupon, reddit and a whole host of other platforms. But what’s even better is that it’s easier to compete with videos in online searches, than for individual webpages because search engines do value video search results and give those a top spot quickly. What’s more is that your competition in video sharing is mostly clueless. most people using youtube videos to get traffic are NOT professional videographers and many do not have an in-depth understanding about how the consumer’s mind works. That’s a big advantage for you.

Now here’s how to enhance traffic from youtube. The web trend at youtube is shaped by it’s visitor’s viewing selection.

This means:

1. If you have a lot of decent videos for your site at youtube, you’ll garner better rankings.

2. If you have better rankings, you’ll get better traffic to arrive at your videos. Then, if you have more and more videos showing up in the related videos, even if they take more than one shot of persuasion to check you out, you can have them see more videos from you, CONSECUTIVELY.

3. If you have more tags of what the viewer selects as a search term, you’ll start showing up at the top of the searches. What this means is that you need to be on youtube right now! Go search for your niche, say you’re into hardware MCU so go an search on youtube for “hardware MCU” – type it out and DO NOT hit search or enter yet. Youtube will have an automatic drop-down giving you possible suggestions for MCU to search for.

KEY HERE : It takes a bazillion amount of searches to get the term in that drop-down and users are actively looking for videos with those suggested keywords!! Use them.

# 2 : SOFTWARE GIVEAWAYS

Giving away small pieces of solution specific software is a killer way of building a list. It is ALSO an awesome way to get traffic. Here’s 2 places that have given good results and the traffic comes after they use your software and are satisfied with it. Better yet – give a manual covering partially most of the uses of that software and reserve the special uses for a booklet they can download at your site to make sure they visit. And it is a must to have that linkback WITHIN the software!! people are lazy to search for manuals though they’d give everything to solve problems they are already facing. Oh yeah, the 2 sites to give it away:

www.giveawayoftheday.com
www.software-giveaway.com

Contact their webmasters if you face problems with distribution. Go ahead and ASK!! They’re running sites for this very purpose. And yeah, do good research before getting your software made. It must be deeply related to the problems your market faces. And hire a programmer wisely. usually you can get it made for pennies on the dollar unless it’s very heavy coding. but again, avoid heavy applications when starting out.

# 3 : AFFILIATES

Now since most newbies in this game really haven’t made a dent in making cash online, they’re more than likely to hit the affiliate marketing bandwagon. This is a common trend and you need to cash in on it.

But of course, when you roll out your own affiliate marketing system on your website or use something like infusionsoft to manage your affiliates, it’s a high toll on your hosting and managing work AND your pocket as well. So to make sure your efforts go into fruit that tastes good, submit your product/service announcements to where people who really work hard gather.

Over time as a newbie learns, he manages to find these resources to keep his affiliate marketing business pumping and also is in a state to pay a bit for it. Okay, so these are places whgere future superaffiliates start making gold:

WWW.JVNOTIFYPRO.COM – The place where Joint venture notifications arrive months in advance and affiliates begin conquering search engines for these notifications.

WWW.JVME.COM – This is the highest traffic sending network of affiliates out there.

You may have to pay a bit for these, but again even those who launch VIP ventures have to pay. Proves they’re not broke and have cash they earned out of what they did promoting others!!

# 4 : MONO-AFFILIATE CENTERS

The previous one was actually for more JV focused traffic needs and is advanced for newbies. As in, if you need an army of interconnected affiliates planning and bringing you hoards of traffic for a launch operation, then JV affiliates are great, but if you’ve already launched or didn’t think about doing a launch and need more of individual personal stream focused affiliates then consider these:

>CLICKBANK

>PLIMUS

>LINKSHARE

>SHAREaSALE

>COMMISSION JUNCTION

The advantage with these is that they all have huge arrays of affiliates who’re looking to create their own products in the future. Also they have excellent competition measuring metrics and statistic reports, right there with your affiliate offer. So the people who opt to promote you will:

a) be looking to test a market out and hence put in some effort to see if they can in the future do it for themselves (even though that’s competition later on, you can use these affiliates to help you make a killing right NOW!!)

and

b) send traffic from their individual lists instead of JV groups even though you’re not offering a peak boost of sales that happen in launches. So you’re covered for having just normal everyday traffic needs

# 5 : POWER BLOGS

Most people already know how blogs are big for driving traffic. But what a lot will miss out is how to make a blog build a mini sales funnel within itself. This is key to pulling traffic that CONVERTS. A self liquidating blog is what I call a “power blog”.

Simply put, a power blog is one which appears to be a regular blog but is made with the purpose of building a lead funnel at the back end and only attracts visitors after thorough filtering. What this means is, you will need to set up a chain of link throughs hinting a solution available somewhere for a particular search term in your niche. Then, at the end of that chain, present your blog with that solution and relieve the person. Make sure this blog has a optin form – and possibly a “pay to opt-in system”. This means you are a legit person and you’re providing quality content which the consumer was desperate for when he got there. So a small $1 or $2 contribution would be great. And after all, you had to put in some effort in filtering them to this place.

If you’re having heart palpitations at the suggestion of charging for an opt-in, consider this:

Which person is going to be a better buyer – the one who fakes an email address OR the one who went through the trail of clues desperately and paid a little bit to receive more communication from you? Seriously, who is more interested??

Also, after you get quality opt ins, get to work! Start conducting short surveys for your product and have them come back for a couple popularity polls that you can build for your niche. It not only builds trust in the person behind the curtain who is working hard, but also keeps your leads engaged.

# 6 : MARKET OTHERS

You don’t need to have a super product to start getting traffic. If you plan to use affiliates when you launch, why not be an affiliate for someone else while they launch? What I mean is you can get traffic from a crowd that may be interested in someone else instead of you at present. In the dating arena, we call this “stealing the rockstar’s girlfriend”.

It’s simple, build up your bonus giving site for that launch you think is going to crush it in your niche. Now know this, there is NOTHING known as a dedicated customer. Yep, consumer trends after a lot of studying show that people buy from one person, get addicted to the advice and then come back for more. that’s why a lot of consecutive launches when planned properly go successfully. the consumer is already engaged.

So hand out your bonus and build a list off someone else’s guarantee to satisfy the crowd. That way, even if he does get the traffic, you still have first shore contact with them. Just make sure to keep it that way by serving them more and higher quality information with the emails. They’ll buy from him and communicate with you and the next time they have a solution requirement, you’ll sense it first. Then, monetize this traffic with a product/solution that your competitor could not service and sell it with better marketing. So what was originally someone else’s traffic that you touched en-route, is now your traffic that’s dedicated to you.

The way people have used the web has dictated, to a large extent, how they enter and leave your sales funnel. A note of caution though. There’s a myth among people that sales and marketing starts when a prospect reaches your site and sees their first representation of you.

OH NO… it works differently! The process of selling starts at first contact – your first ad, the first ever article you publish, the first ever request to make a click, the first tweet you send with a link. There’s no second time lucky in the game of sales. And traffic is closely linked with all this. If you’re pulling traffic without the intent to convert it, then you might be causing your website to die a slow death!

And to get this intent communicated right, it is important for you to understand how people’s usage of the web is building up web trends. THAT is where you’ll get the priceless answer of how to get traffic like the pros in any niche do.

So let’s get started. I’ll go over different traffic segments and tell you in specific how the trend develops in each, which will lead us to the medium we use to get traffic – finally a process to generate that traffic:

# 1 SOFTWARE GIVEAWAYS

Giving away small pieces of solution specific software is a killer way of building a list. It is ALSO an awesome way to get traffic. Here’s 2 places that have given good results and the traffic comes after they use your software and are satisfied with it. Better yet – give a manual covering partially most of the uses of that software and reserve the special uses for a booklet they can download at your site to make sure they visit. And it is a must to have that linkback WITHIN the software!! people are lazy to search for manuals though they’d give everything to solve problems they are already facing. Oh yeah, the 2 sites to give it away:

www.giveawayoftheday.com
www.software-giveaway.com

Contact the webmasters if you face problems with distribution.  They are running sites for this very purpose…right? And yeah, do good research before getting your software made. It must be deeply related to the problems your market faces. And hire a programmer wisely. Usually you can get it made for pennies on the dollar unless it’s very heavy coding, but again, avoid heavy applications when starting out.

# 2 POWER BLOGS

Most people already know how blogs are big for driving traffic. But what a lot will miss out is how to make a blog build a mini sales funnel within itself. This is key to pulling traffic that CONVERTS. A self liquidating blog is what I call a “power blog”.

Simply put, a power blog is one which appears to be a regular blog but is made with the purpose of building a lead funnel at the back end and only attracts visitors after thorough filtering. What this means is, you will need to set up a chain of link throughs hinting a solution available somewhere for a particular search term in your niche. Then, at the end of that chain, present your blog with that solution and relieve the person of their problem. Make sure this blog has a optin form – and possibly a “pay to opt-in system”. This means you are a legit person and you’re providing quality content which the consumer was desperate for when he got there. So a small $1 or $2 contribution would be great. And after all, you had to put in some effort in filtering them to this place.

If you’re having heart palpitations at the suggestion of charging for an opt-in, consider this:

Which person is going to be a better buyer – the one who fakes an email address to get your freebie, OR the one who went through the trail of clues desperately and paid a little bit to receive more communication from you? Seriously, who is more interested??

Also, after you get quality opt-ins, get to work! Start conducting short surveys for your product and have them come back for a couple popularity polls that you can build for your niche. It not only builds trust in the person behind the curtain who is working hard, but also keeps your leads engaged, at that my friend is a beautiful thing!

I hope I’ve gotten your wheels turning, be sure to stop by for my next post in which I’ll be telling you how to get other people to build your list and sell your products for you. And that is a beautiful thing too!