Ever thought of expanding your business by adding on-line
revenue streams? Or creatng a new business on-line? If so,
there are many "gurus" around who'd like you to pay
them high fees for the intricacies of their expertise.
Some are very good...However you'd better know exactly what
kind of help you're going to need, or these fees will eat
into your profits long before you're even close to getting a
return on your investment.

Put simply, building an on-line revenue stream requires
skills in 2 areas:
1. Bringing the right kind of visitors to your web site
2. Persuading them to take the action you want

Let's take an example where:
- You sell a product at $100
- 1000 visitors arrive at your web site per month
- 1% of these buy your product

Then your short term revenue is found according to the
formula:
Product price x number of visitors x % visitors who buy
$100 x 1000 x 1% = $1000 per month

So to grow your revenue, for a given product price, you can
- increase the traffic to your site
- increase the % of visitors who buy (your conversion ratio)
- or both

But traffic and conversion ratio are not independent
factors. The type and source of your web site visitors can,
and will hugely impact your conversion rate.

So what options do we have when it comes to getting visitors
to come to my web site? There are probably only a few key
stratgies:

1. Buy Traffic
There are many ways to buy traffic. Some of these are
Pay-per-click (PPC), Banner ads, leads, or off-line
advertising. These are generally quick methods of getting
visitors to your site. But they can be expensive, and
complicated. Unneccessarily so, especially if you're
inexperienced, and make some of the mistakes common among
PPC buyers.

2. Build Traffic
This means optimising your web site to gain a high position
in the Search Engine Results. While this can be highly
effective, and deliver significant "free" traffic, it takes
time, experience, and ongoing management effort to acheive
and sustain an envied placing on the first page. And your
efforts can be quickly trashed by competition, or simply a
change of policy by the Search Engine. Unless you already
have the experience, in practice this means a steep learning
curve, or paying an SEO consultant to do it for you. So much
for "free" traffic!

3. Dig for Traffic
By this I mean using your own existing customer lists and
taking them to your new offer on-line. This can be an
excellent approach for those who have an existing list of
customers right for the new proposition. But what if you
don't?

4. Use Public Relations to bring Traffic
Another approach is to create opportunities to promote your
offer on radio, TV, magazines, or newspapers. Press
releases, articles, or "advertorials" can include your
website address for people looking for more information on
your topic. If you're smart, and have good media contacts,
this can be highly effective.

5. "OPT" - Other People's Traffic
There are literally thousands of on-line magazines and
newsletters with editors hungry for good, relevant content.
They may well have circulation lists with thousands of
subscribers. You can probably find several related to your
topic. If only they'd publish your article, or even your
advert, with a personal endorsement, to their list, you
might receive a tidal wave of visitors, which would soon
fall back, until you do the same again to another list, or
offer another article for publication.

But of course you can't do everything all at once! So what
sort of start-up sequence should you consider?

1. For a fast market test, buy traffic from a highly keyword
-targetted source. Test the viability of your niche, your
offer, and your advertising copy.
(Of course, if your exisitng client base is good for your
new offer, test first with current clients.)Provided buying
traffic remains profitable, keep this as a key part of your
on-going traffic strategy.

2. Satisfied your niche is viable? Established your
conversion rate or opt-in rate? Then you're ready to use
other people's traffic. Take your offer to your target
publishers and negotiate a good deal for both of you for
them to carry your article or ad. You should do this
regularly over a period of time, using publishers who reach
different market segments.

3. Of course your sales website should be built according to
the key Search Engine Optimisation rules. It should have a
clearly focussed theme, relevant content, growing in-bound
links, etc. Over time, as the site gains visibiity in the
major Search Engines, your traffic will grow.

4. As soon as you have something newsworthy, look for
opportunities for radio, TV, newspapers etc to carry it.

Finally, repeat for as long as profitable.

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