The Best Internet Marketing Tip

I was thinking what would be the best Internet Marketing tip I could give anyone, something that’s important in my own online business. And since traffic is the blood of Internet Marketing, that’s gotta be what the tip should be about. It’s rather simple tip, and seems straightforward when you know it, but you wouldn’t believe how many people miss the point.

First, I have to set things straight – you have to offer value. You can’t just have an affiliate link with a copy/paste ad and expect buyers to flood your site. If that’s all you have, you will have to work hard to get tons of traffic and even harder to convert it to sales. It amazes me how people put so little effort into their offer and then spend an enormous amount of time to get traffic which doesn’t even convert.

You need to provide value in exchange for the money people would give you. Whether it’s a unique product or a unique review of an affiliate offer. The key is to answer to something that people are asking for (that’s why it’s also a good idea to check Yahoo! Answers, not only to drop your links but to get ideas). The more you give the more you get in result.

Now the tip I was gonna talk about is how to drive the traffic to your wonderful offer. There’s one thing to understand here – people who are interested in different niches hang out in certain places online. Google is not be all and end all. Yes, ranking your site for your niche keywords can be enough to make your business, but it can be a long and/or expensive process. That’s not the tip I have in mind.

The best tip I’ve ever got was to find those places where your potential buyers hang out. It’s simple, it’s common sense, but I had never quite put my finger on it until I was told. The best example is forums. There are forums probably in any niche and you can put your link in front of all those people freely. Well, there are rules to follow and you must not spam, but compared to SEO and PPC it’s nothing in terms of effort and expenses.

Here’s a possible plan of action:

• Find out the #1 problem that people in your niche have and put up an offer to address it. It best works if you give the solution away for free (though it’s not always possible) and adding them to your sales funnel.
• Join the most popular forums in your niche and add a link to your signature, if the rules allow.
• Join in the conversation, post helpful and interesting posts.

I’ve tried this many times with different offers and signature copy, and while you have to find the best headline through experimenting, if you find something that the community is interested in, the traffic explodes. You don’t have to make a lot of posts either – you will be noticed as long as your posts add value.

The next step would be establishing yourself as an authority by answering people’s questions. That can really ramp up your click through rate as well as the conversions, once you become a known and respected figure in the community. It takes time, but it’s very well worth it. I’ve seen many folks through the years coming up with ideas, bringing them to life an ramping them up to success all on the forums where they’ve once joined as complete newbies.

All this applies to other websites that people in your niche visit – social networks, authority sites where you can submit your articles, and most of the time it doesn’t cost you anything except the time you would be spending for participating in the community of your niche anyway.

So that’s the Internet marketing tip I wanted to share. It’s simple but very underrated and often misused, however understanding it well can bring tons of targeted traffic to your offer almost effortlessly.