The most popular pay-per-click search engine is Yahoo! Search Marketing -- it receives the most traffic by far. However, there are many others worth considering, including Kanoodle.com, Enhance Interactive, and 7search.com.

While the less trafficked pay-per-click search engines may not drive as many visitors to your web site, you will be able to purchase top ranking positions much cheaper than you will in Yahoo! Search Marketing, so take this into consideration when choosing where to spend your advertising dollars.

Important Note: Please understand that I'm not suggesting that you start bidding $1 or more per visitor when you're just starting out. Focus on targeted keywords and phrases that your visitors will be using to find you in the search engines, but that are what you determine to be "reasonably priced" (what you are willing to pay to attract a visitor will vary depending on your business model, your visitor-to-sale conversion ratio, and your profit margin).

If you have a serious interest in increasing your site traffic using the pay-per-click search engines, then I'd highly recommend reading the following two articles before placing your first bids. Here you'll learn:

1. How to determine what a single visitor to your web site is worth -- know exactly (don't guess!) what you can afford to pay for advertising! Click here now to read it...
   
   
2. How to scoop up inexpensive and neglected traffic streams with strategic bidding strategies! Click here now to read it...
   

A really effective way to attract highly targeted traffic is by including quality content and information on your web site that will be of interest to your target market and then persuading other related sites in your industry to link to you as a resource for their visitors.

You see, a link is equivalent to a personal recommendation. A link from another well-respected webmaster establishes your credibility even before the visitor reaches your web site, dramatically increasing the likelihood that they will buy.

Think about it... When visitors arrive at their favorite web site and notice a link posted to your site, they automatically assume YOUR site must be credible! They know and trust their favorite site, and therefore trust this link as a powerful recommendation -- your credibility is established before visitors even arrive at your homepage!

For my Car Secrets Revealed site (http://www.carsecrets.com/), we spent two solid months locating high traffic car sites and convincing them (by e-mail, phone, and fax) to link to us. It was hard work, but now these links are generating over 22,000 visitors to our site every month!

That's over 250,000 visitors a year, for years to come. And all it took was a couple month's hard work. I'm sure you can imagine the profit we make from 250,000 targeted visitors per year!

Obviously, developing a linking strategy that directs a high volume of targeted traffic to your web site is not an overnight process. First you need to develop quality, in-demand content for your web site that's going to interest your market.

(If your site doesn't offer quality content, and it's just a blatant plug for an affiliate product, other webmasters aren't going to link to your site -- they're just going to go join the affiliate program and promote the product to their visitors themselves!)

Then, once your content is ready to go, it will take anywhere from two weeks to six months to secure the quality links you need.

While this might seem like a lot of work, I promise you that it's worth the effort! Once you have done the initial footwork, the links that are established will remain on these sites for years to come. It's a strategy that costs you nothing more than your time, and that can result in years worth of traffic and commissions!

TRAFFIC TRICK #4:
Place FREE Classified Ads

When approached with the right technique, online classified advertising can be a powerful way to attract new visitors to your web site and promote affiliate products to generate impressive commissions… all with very little investment!

Did you know that there are well OVER 2,000 Free Classified Ad Sites on the Net? It’s true… There are hundreds and hundreds of classified ad sites that will allow you to post your advertisement at absolutely no cost, giving you a cheap and easy opportunity to drive more traffic and more sales to your web site.

Of course, you need to be prepared to work at it because placing your ad on one or two sites isn’t going to generate much of a response.

While a classified ad site might receive a reasonable amount of traffic, there may only be a handful of people -- even just 1 or 2 -- each day who are interested in the category that you’ve submitted your ad to. So you might only have a few people read your ad, never mind click through it.

That’s why submitting your ad to the free online classifieds is a numbers game. If you want to generate the most sales and traffic, you need to submit your ad to as many sites as you possibly can.

To start placing your ads, just search "free classified ads" in any search engine, and you'll be swamped with sites that you can post your ads to immediately.

Actually, before you get started, I'd recommend saving your ad in a Word document on your desktop, so you can just copy and paste it instead of retyping it over and over again for each new ad site you submit to. That way, you can be sure you won't make typographical errors and save yourself a bit of time.

And of course, if the thought of placing your ads manually doesn't appeal to you and you'd rather find a way to automate this, I'd recommend that you click here now to check out Power Submitter, a powerful software that will submit your ad to the top 2,000 classified ad sites -- automatically.

The software is dirt cheap and can save you a ton of time, but if you're on a really tight budget, I wanted to make sure you knew that you could do this technique manually... at least to start with until your traffic and sales pick up and your time is more valuably spent on other promotions.

TRAFFIC TRICK #5:
Promote Yourself Through Online Communities

Look. I'm not going to kid you -- promoting your e-business through online communities is not an overnight moneymaker. This marketing technique takes a serious commitment to the long-term success of your business.

However, with hundreds of thousands of online communities to choose from, and with millions of people reading and participating in these worldwide discussions every day, online communities can still be a great place to...

• Kick-start your sales campaign when you're first getting your business off the ground by getting your name and URL in front of targeted potential customers.

• Develop your reputation as an industry expert by making yourself available to answer questions and provide participants with information that they will value.

... Of course, for this to work, you need to use the right approach.

You see, online community promotions are ultimately about selling yourself as industry expert with a wealth of knowledge to share. Gimmicky sales tactics and hype do NOT work! People participate in these online communities because they want to share information -- not because they want to be "sold" something.

So this means that you should be looking for opportunities to respond to questions with the exact information the poster is looking for in order to gain the respect of the community. The trick is to sit back, listen, and wait for legitimate opportunities to share your expertise.

Some good places to start looking for discussion boards and newsgroups related to your area of interest include...

http://groups.google.com/
http://www.talkcity.com

... but a quick search of "newsgroup directories" in any major search engine should also produce good boards and chat rooms to check out.

As well, if you'd like to try starting an online community of your very own, some other great places to look are:

http://www.yahoogroups.com
http://groups.aol.com

However, be warned! Online services like this don't take kindly to blatant advertisements. So make sure you provide valuable information in response to participants questions and use your community as an opportunity to establish your credibility; drive visitors to your web site by referring them to it as a resource that answers their questions.

Final Thoughts: