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!