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You’ve labored over your opt-in form, you created an offer that has value, and now you need to drive traffic there to see it. I know this sounds obvious, but the best offer means nothing if no one is stopping by to see it.

Using only one method to drive traffic to your opt-in page probably won’t get the job done. There are many different ways to bring people to your site that you should utilize as many as you possibly can. Using a variety of them will help you achieve the best results. Here are some of the most popular ones to help get you get started.

• Link to Related Posts – Travel the internet and collect links to post related to yours. Gather them all in one post and submit it to article directories. Don’t forget to link to the articles on your site and add commentary. It is always more valuable for your readers when you share comments. Share the link to your post with the people you’ve linked to as a courtesy.

• Guest Posts – Writing a guest post on a complementary blog is a good way to get your name out there. Everyone is always looking for fresh content. Especially, if it’s good quality and they don’t have to write it. These sites are easy to locate by doing a search or you can simply email your competing site owners and make the offer to write a post. The resource box with a link back to your site at the end is your reward for your hard work. Build those backlinks baby!

• Guru Interviews – Guru Interviews are a good way to expose your site to a lot of people who haven’t been there yet. New venues to share your information such as teleseminars, podcasts or email interviews can drive good targeted traffic from many people at one time.

• Contributors – Rather than having someone just write an occasional guest post, have them listed as a contributor. People love fresh content and a new person can give a new perspective on your niche and add substantial value for your readers. Again, the payoff for them is a link to their site in their resource box.

• Brandable Reports – A secret technique used by top internet marketers is to giveaway top quality information with links to their products. Once you develop products (or find affiliate products you can recommend) that have brandable reports as a marketing tool just give them away. Make sure they include your affiliate link (if it is an affiliate product) making the benefits two-fold. You have content for your readers and the possibility of making money through affiliate sales.

Your Goal – Discover what you market is looking for when they type in a word into Google and give it to them for free! This will drive a massive amount of traffic to your website and you will be well on your way to success.

The definition of “critical mass” for our purposes here is “a term to describe the existence of sufficient momentum such that the momentum becomes self-sustaining and fuels further growth”.

Don’t get hung up on the definition, just think of it as a ball rolling down a hill. Once it builds up enough speed it propels itself. This is where we want to take our businesses and the best way to get there is by building a warm list.

There is no good reason not to have an email list. In fact, it is one of the first things you should set up. You don’t even need your own product or service before starting to gather a targeted list. All you need is an autoresponder and an opt-in box on your website….that’s it!

The key is to get this going prior to creating a product or service (or if you already have a product or service, DO IT NOW). That way once you do create your own product or service, you’ll already have your list in place and it’s time to make some money.

As you build your list you can pre-sell them on your market authority and build their trust in you, not to mention already having readers who are interested in what you have to say. Plus, it will make it easier to sell things when the time comes due to the relationship you have developed with them.

Starting from the beginning your goal should be to build a targeted list of people who trust you and see you as an expert in your field. When you do this your chances of reaching success will skyrocket. In selling terms we call this “selling to a warm list”.

Any “guru” who has made millions of dollars selling online has done so because they sell to a warm list. There are other factors involved to be sure, but after the dust settles the main reason they are ultra-successful is they consistently build, develop, and sell to their “warm list”!

When a “guru” asks their list to “buy this now”, their list responds by asking “where do I sign up?” There is only one way for you to get to this point and that is to build a warm list of your own.

The best way to achieve this is to offer top quality content for free. The old internet adage “give your best stuff away for free” is more relevant than ever. Why? It accomplishes two very important things. It builds:

Trust

Authority

Building your warm list depends on building trust and authority. The best way to do this is by giving away quality content on a consistent basis. Help people solve their problems and they will not only follow you, they will spread the word about you to their friends.

Once you make this happen, things will start to get interesting. “The ball will slowly start to roll forward”. As you build momentum and speed you are creating a freight train that cannot be stopped easily. You are on your way to achieving “critical mass”.

Finding the right niche market can make the difference if you are profitable or not. It could be the life blood of your online business if done properly. It makes no sense to spin your wheels in a niche that doesn’t spend money nor has very little traffic. Conversely, it makes no sense to sell to a market that is too big and undefined.

In my experience, the more narrow the niche the more profitable the venture. People want to solve a specific problem, not everything under the sun. For example: if your dog has a problem with going potty in the house (yes…we have a new dog and yes, he goes potty in the house -:) you don’t want to purchase an ebook on total dog training and read through 200 pages only to find five pages of information at the back of the book on the BIG issue at hand?

I don’t need to know the history of dog training or the evolution of the Whoodle to solve my issue. As a customer, I want to find out how to stop the dog from messing up my living room carpet every day, not enhance my knowledge on how dogs came about. For you, this is where the profit comes in.

The more focused your product is, the more profitable it will be. Say you wrote that ebook on dog training referenced above. You might retail it for $47 or maybe $67 which would be a nice sale. People do this every day and hit a large market of people interested in the general market of dog training.

This type of product has good background information to “set the table” for you to have a better understanding of why the training will be helpful. It serves its purpose and there is nothing wrong with this, except, they are leaving a ton of money on the table. Humor me for a minute while I show you how to make more money by tightening your niche. “Niche it for Riches”.

Now let’s take that same book and niche it down a bit and see what we get. First separate each of the four categories in the book. Let’s assume each category is about 50 pages. Next, turn each one into an ebook on a more specific topic of dog training and sell each for $27 (which is a good price for a 50 page ebook). You now have FOUR ebooks which total $108 and you could bundle them for $97. It book will have a separate niche market and the market will respond better due to the problem being addressed is exactly what they want solved.

More profit, faster read, better results, happier customers. Does that sound like something you could build a business around? I have and know you can too!

Writing a good call to action takes guts! After putting all your efforts into writing a great sales letter, make sure you ask for the sale! A “call to action” is what creates customer action and that is what the entire sales process is about. Don’t make the horrible mistake of thinking your readers will recognize what to do next. Map it out for them step by step. Tell them exactly where to go or what to do next!

I don’t have exact figures on how many sales are lost due to a missing “call to action” but I am certain the streets would be littered with them if we had an accurate count. Unfortunately, after everything is complete some people make the dreaded mistake of second guessing themselves and the value of their product.

Thus, they are “afraid” to ask for the order or a proper price for their product or service. This is a surefire way to kill sales or never even get them off the ground.

A call to action can be as simple as giving them a link and telling them to click it. While they KNOW you want them to click the link, the chances of them actually doing it will improve if you give them instruction to do so. You set off a mental trigger when you actually tell them what to do and this leads to more action. Without that communication they are left to figure out what to do next and that always leads to fewer sales almost without fail.

Your email or sales page should flow like a story and good stories always lead you in the direction they want you to go. Could you imagine a story that sucks you in and then doesn’t give you an ending? (that is a topic all by itself) There is no doubt where they want to take you, that is stated right up front, but as they take you through the story the author tells you exactly what to do.

This is the same principal that you must use in your email and sales text. Ask for the order or tell them what to do next! Don’t be shy about it, just come right out and say it. Something like” After all this I am sure you would agree this product is worth its weight in gold. But since we don’t accept gold it will only cost you $$$. If you do this it will dramatically improve your sales.

The purpose of your sales letter is to grab and keep the attention of your reader. Once you have accomplished that step the next step is to get them to take immediate action. One way to accomplish this is by engaging your reader in a good story without finishing it. After starting the story, pause in the middle to tell them you will complete the story in a minute… but first you would like to tell them about _____.

For example, you may use something comparable to this:

“The next day Jack was shocked when he looked in the mirror. In just a moment I’ll tell you what he saw – you’ll be just as shocked as Jack. But first…”

Once again, you use curiosity to compel the reader to keep reading. But the other reason he’ll keep reading is for the same reason people watch movies all the way through – namely, they have to find out what happens. You can use that curiosity and desire to leave no loose ends to your advantage.

As referenced above, another effective way to guarantee to keep your reader engaged is to bring out their emotion For example:

• You can gently remind a person who stutters what it felt like to get laughed at in school.
• You may gently remind an overweight person how embarrassing it is not to fit in an airplane seat, and how humiliating it is to go shopping for clothing.
• You can gently remind a person how it feels to be stressed out all the time at work.

Notice I said “gently” in each case. You want to get your point across but with a great deal of sensitivity. You want them to realize you feel their pain and you sympathize with them. A good way to do this is to say something, “I used to feel my cheeks get hot every time someone laughed at me when I stuttered”.

The purpose is to make them relive the problem in their mind and create a sense of urgency to solve the problem. Then, highlight the positive benefits they will experience after purchasing your product. If you take your prospects through this process they will be much more likely to purchase from you more often.