How Did They Find Your Site?:

The movie, "Field of Dreams", starring Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones, made this line famous: "If you build it, they will
come."  That idea worked great in the movie but it is a whole different ballpark when it comes to a web site or an email campaign.

The only way to attract traffic on the Internet is to PROMOTE.  And the key to successful online promotion is to know HOW your
traffic found you.  Why?

Because when you know HOW your traffic found you then you will know what is working for you so that you can not only maintain it, but also increase it.

With an email campaign, it is absolutely essential to code your mailings in order to discover which one is bringing you results.

The easiest way to do that is by the use of Auto-Responders.  There are a host of FREE Auto-Responder services that will allow you to acquire as many FREE responders as you need.  For a "List of FREE Auto-Responder Services", send a blank email to our Auto-Responder at: mailto:freeautoresp@emailexchange.org

For example, you are promoting a service that pays you 50% commission. You run one ad in a newsletter, another is done via your signature in posting to a business list and still another ad is exposed via FFA Link submissions (personally, the last advertising method is the least effective for our particular business - however, without analyzing your website traffic you'll never know the methods that work for you - which ones you waste time and money on & so forth).  Each business is different and must reach potential clients in different ways - what works for some, may not work for others - the same applies if your business chooses to use Autoresponders......This article is not intended to be a fit for every type of business operating online (just thought I'd add my comment - as usual).

You can code your ads simply by calling them ad001, ad002, ad003.  When you receive a reply to ad001, you will know it came from the newsletter, ad002 will be a response to your signature and ad003 will be from your FFA Link submission.  Use whatever code is appropriate for you but the important thing to remember to code it and know to what it pertains.

If you have your own web site, your hosting provider might already provide you with the tools you need to track your traffic.

All you would need to do is access your log info and review which web pages are getting the traffic and study where the traffic is coming from to visit you.  If you do not have a log file or statistical program attached to your website you can contact your web provider or hosting provider and see if they offer one (but pay attention to cost here!!)   

We recommend Indextools - this is the most detailed and affordable statistical tool you can get!   It is #1 Rated on the Web!  Best of all --- there is no software to install and they even let you try it first for FREE!!   Here are just a few of what Indextools will tell you:

Traffic - Hourly, daily, monthly and annual statistics for page views and unique visitors · Referrers - Learn what sites link to you and how much traffic they send, the search engines and keywords users search to find your site, and total traffic from bookmarks · User paths - See how users navigate through your site · User profiles (who are they?) - Find out the browsers, operating systems and screen settings that your audience uses and their language, country and domain. · 100s of statistics so you can track your advertising and promotion methods - see which ones are working for you - and which ones are not working at all......  

You may find that much of your traffic is coming from a search engine or directory like Yahoo, http://www.yahoo.com/ or Google, http://www.google.com/.   We suggest optimizing your site for each specific search engine and monitor your rankings regularly - this is very important because your site may be #5 one day on Page #1 and next week it could have dropped to #58 on Page #4!!  Why?  Because even as I write this article - 1000's of new websites are being submitted to the search engines - and depending on when each search engine indexes your site - will determine your ranking.   It is highly suggested that you educate yourself on the difference of "automated" submission programs and services (which many search engines now penalize your site for) and manual optimization and submission - making sure you know what each search engine requires, how they rank sites, etc.....At this point, it would be nice if there was a class at the local university for this one!  OR you could check out our Submit Ongoing (which is on sale until the end of January, 2003!)

You may also be pleasantly surprised to discover that a web site with related traffic has linked your site and is now sending you new visitors daily.

It would be a good idea to contact the owner of that new traffic generator and let them know you appreciate the link and even
offer to link back to them in return.

Once you know where your traffic is coming from to find you, it is important to maintain that flow of traffic and then try to find other sources that are similar.

Doing so will allow you to increase the visitors and leads you generate and hopefully, increase your overall sales.