In the January issue, I covered some of the internet marketing tools that don't work very well - they'll end up costing you more than the business you gain. For those of you who missed the January issue, the methods we looked at that don't work are:

A) Buying Bulk, Untargeted Visitors
B) Traffic Exchange
C) Bulk Email (not the same as opt-in email)
D) Banners & Pop-Ups - can be a waste of money if enough care isn't taken

So what does work?

A) Search engines - Getting a good ranking in the major search engines is not as hard as it may seem, provided your sight is correctly optimised for the search engine. Most sites find that over a third of their traffic comes from
search engines, with almost half of that coming from Google. Search engines are the best, free source of targeted visitors you can get on the net.

B) PPC - Pay Per Click search engines - This can also be a good way of getting tons of cheap, targeted traffic to your site - just keep an eye on your conversion rate. The biggest 2 providers are Google & Overture/Yahoo. You will find that you can purchase traffic or clicks from as little as 10 cents, depending on the keywords you are bidding for.

C) Opt-In Email Marketing - Have a newsletter sign-up form on your web site. A highly effective, free marketing tool.

D) Links - Get as many links to your site from other sites on the net. This doesn't have to cost a fortune. Many sites offer a free link exchange, but if you find a high traffic site you would like to place a link on that doesn't offer a free link exchange, you could try offering to write an article for them to use on their site. In return, they will give you a link to your site somewhere in the article you've written.

E) Affiliate Programs - Start your own affiliate program. One of the best ways of getting heaps of free advertising, without having to pay a cent for it, until you get a sale. You offer to pay your affiliates either a percentage of each sale they send you, or a dollar amount per sale. Provide them with the tools/ads to market your product, then they go out and do all the work for you. Sure you lose a bit of money per sale, but they are sales you most likely wouldn't have gained without your affiliate.