Once you have made your site the best that you can and you
have tested it to see if it sells at all... then it is time
to play the numbers.

No, this is not gambling where you have a bookie...but more
like taking some tried and true methods and using them to
decide where and how to advertise your product.

Let's take a sample site. Guy Seller, has tested his site and
had found with semi-random hits he is getting two sales out of
100 hits. He has also found out by testing, that if he targets
his hits..he gets 5 sales out of a 100 hits.

He has a product that sells for $27.00 and it costs him $92.00
to have a solo advertisement in an ezine that sports 9,000
readers in what he hopes is his target market...
so Guy Seller does the math.

9,000 readers.... 5 percent go to his site. 450 hits
That would work out to 9 sales. 9 x 27 ...well that is
obviously a profit. If he gets the 5 out of 100 sales...more
the better!

Let's say only one percent of the 9,000 readers go to his site.
90 people... Now it doesn't pay.... but he doesn't lose too
much money. But, if the ezine is targeted to what he is selling,
he may get four sales and he breaks even, or makes a few dollars.
(This example is low, because a person should really spend
a lot of time, making an Ad, that makes people Click!)

Meanwhile, he buys some key words for his product at pay per
click site such as goto.com and now these are a higher target
margin because people are searching for what he has to offer.
And, now he is fairly sure he will get 5 sales to 100 hits or
maybe even more.

He also has decided to start his own ezine and even if he doesn't
get any sales, he might get some sign ups for his ezine. Which,
brings him a prospective customer for a later offer. And, as his
ezine grows, he decides to trade advertisements with other ezine
owners. This can be very cost effective.

Next, he decides he should write a hot article on something that
is related to his product. Maybe he sells a great book on
how to buy a house with no down payment... So he decides to
write an article on the five danger signs to look out for before
buying a house.

He then puts his resource box leading to his "hot product" and
submits his article to every place he can think of that accepts
articles. (This is another cost effective way to get traffic
to your site)

So, with the above in mind, it is all a numbers game on how
much you want to spend in monies or in time to bring those hits
to your site.

One warning... when you see, guaranteed hits to your site,
$50.00 for 5,000 hits... remember, you generally get what you
pay for. Guaranteed hits, are generally forced hits from someone
getting a freebie from a site... and these figures, can really
mess up your sale's testing. If it were that easy to pay out
$50.00 and make the above tested results for getting 5,000
hits, then every one marketing on the net would be rich,
wouldn't they?

Teresa King
October, 2001

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Teresa King is the author of "What Did Mama Forget to
Teach You? http://www.tipsfortop.com/whatdid.html
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