With the help of others and my thread on the Warrior Forum the following is what I consider the top 5 creative, overlooked and underused ways to get people to your website. Some of them are fun, some are silly and others are just plain bananas. Take them for what they are:

1. Buy a pair of sandals; get your website engraved on the bottom and walk on the beach, stomp in the mud or play in the snow.

2. Go to baggage claim at a busy airport and put an empty piece of luggage on that has your URL on it. With luck, it will circle around and around as it won’t be claimed.

3. Find someone on eBay who is willing to tattoo your URL on a visible body part. For maximum impact, the forehead is the most highly desired location.

4. Print your URL on large pieces of sticky back paper and then stick it on the backs of busses and trucks, preferably at night.

5. And finally, go to the beach and as you’re walking along, drop stencils of your URL on unsuspecting sleeping sunbathers. Then they’ll get a nice tan of just your URL, and for the next week they’ll be walking billboards.

1. Email joint ventures This is the absolute best way because it is quick, and easy and can get you tons of target traffic which can make you a lot of extra money.

2. Article writing If you write ten articles and place them on ten websites with a link to your site, within a few weeks you’ll have thousands of inbound links to your site.

3. Search engine traffic Both free and paid search engines are a good way to get lots of traffic. It usually takes a little while to get free traffic from search engines, so if you’re just starting out, you might want to pay for it.

4. Online advertising This encompasses things like banner ads, ads in ezines, text ads, PPC ads and more.

5. Press releases Sending out a press release to the media is another great way to promote your site. Distribution methods are both free and paid.

If you’re going to be spending money to advertise, it only makes sense that the copy in your ads is better than good, it needs to be great. Let me share a secret with you: It doesn’t cost you any more to run an ad with great copy, than it does to run an ad with adequate copy. Not to mention the fact that you can multiply your results by 2, 5 or 10 times. Great copy attracts customers like a magnet.

Clients and prospects respond to tangible evidence that indicates the quality of your product or service. When you mail a brochure, hand out presentation materials or refer someone to your web site, your copy acts as a sales person delivering a message and influencing perceptions about your business, product or service.

The benefits you offer the consumer influence what the key messages in your copy are. The way you string your words together is often most effective when you clearly define the benefits you offer (as it relates to your target audience), and use motivators to elicit a response from your readers.

The 4 essential skills of writing good copy are:

1. Determine who your target audience is and speak directly to them
2. Create a Killer Headline
3. Convey your key messages to your audience
4. Paint a picture using power words that inspire action
5. Ask for the call to action (usually the sale)

Determining Your Target Market

Your target market is simply the people who are most likely to buy your products. Before you write any copy you must figure out who they are, so you can speak directly to them in a way in which they can understand and relate to.

You’ll likely define your target audience based on:

• Gender
• Age
• Income
• Marital status
• Level of education
• Hobbies
• What they read
• Where they shop
• What keeps them awake at night and so on.

Once you determine who exactly your target is, you must speak to them in a way that they understand. For example if your target audience is single men in their twenties or thirties who are computer programmers, you would want to use industry jargon that they will understand and are familiar with, then write in a way which they can relate to. Alternatively if your market is made up of retired couples, you would want to use that knowledge to convey your key messages.

Always direct your message to the right audience: those who want what you have to offer, will listen to your pitch and ultimately take action. The key is understanding your target audience like the back of your hand.

Create a Killer Headline

A powerful ad is one of the most important aspects of your success. The secret to a successful ad is your headline. You only have a split second to grab your targets attention. Your potential customer will most likely scan the ads and only read one if it catches their attention. Write your ads with passion, excitement, and benefits.

We all know the importance of a powerful headline. However, writing a great headline isn’t as easy as it sounds. An effective headline will literally force your potential customers to learn more. It will instantly ignite a certain emotion and intrigue them to read on. In order to write an effective headline, you must learn how to use specific words to achieve a specific reaction. This is definitely something that you’ll want to try, change test and track until you get desirable or better than desirable results.

Convey Key Messages to Your Audience

In order to write killer copy, you must have a crystal clear vision of what you offer is. What it is that makes you different from your competition? What’s in it for your customer? What benefits do they receive if they do business with you.

Features are nice, but if they don’t benefit the customer then they’re not really of much use. A feature is a characteristic of your product or service. A benefit is what that feature does for a customer. Benefits will outsell features ten to one. Some examples of features and the benefits they offer are listed in the chart below.

Feature vs. Benefit

Airbags >> Feeling of safety and security
Massage >> Stress relief and relaxation
Self Cleaning Oven >> Saves time, effort and is less hassle

Your job as a copywriter is to quickly explain what the features are, and how they would benefit the customer. This is your key message.

One feature can have lots of benefits, and one benefit can have lots of features to the same customer. One person may buy a mini-van because they need room to tote their kids; another person might buy the same mini-van because they like the comfortable ride and space. Someone else may buy a car that is very safe for their family, because it has a 5 star crash test rating, 6 air bags, and crumple zones. Remember, benefits are always in the eye of the beholder, which is why it is important to know who you are speaking to.

Before you start rattling off the benefits and features of your product or service, you should uncover the prospects wants, needs and interests. This way you can custom tailor the features and benefits as they relate to the prospect. The extra space for kids in a minivan is not of much use to a prospect with no kids. Talking about how your product or service may benefit the prospect also demonstrates that you care about what the prospect wants. Only bring up features that actually benefit your customer.

Some benefits are not necessarily obvious to your prospects. Remember, your prospects have a life outside of the conversation they’re having with you. Talking with them about benefits helps them see value in the way you want them to.

Many people learn to tell the feature first, and then describe the benefit second. It is often more effective to do it the other way around. This lawnmower is easy to use because it is self-propelled and mulches the grass so you do not need to dispose of the grass clippings.

Sometimes however, the benefit is best when it is implied, especially when you’re talking about benefits the customer’s image or ego. Many car ads do this and imply the benefit of enhanced ego or image. Coming out any saying, “Drive this car and your friends will think you make a lot of money” doesn’t work very well, but implying it does.

Sometimes companies talk about that are features that are not really features at all because they don’t really provide any inherent benefit to the customer. Having been in business for “X” number of years is not really a strong selling feature, nor is having “X” number of clients, or doing “X” dollars in sales last year. In fact, such features actually seem like you are boasting.

Though we can describe benefits in many different ways, they all fit into five main categories:

1. Convenience – saves time or effort
2. To saves or increase money/wealth
3. Provides peace of mind
4. Appeals to image or ego
5. Fun or enjoyment

Paint a Picture

This involves utilizing both the knowledge of who your target audience is, and the benefits that your product or service has to offer them. Describe how your offer can fit into their life and ultimately make it more enjoyable, make them more money and so on.

Using the minivan example from above, you can relate to the frustration of fitting a family of four or five in a car for a weekend camping trip. If the minivan you’re selling has safety features explain the benefits they offer, and why it might be safer then their current vehicle. If it comes with an optional DVD player and embedded headrest screens, paint the picture of their kids sitting in the back seat peacefully for a three hour trip watching their favourite movie. Any parent with young kids can easily relate to how nice it would be to be able to take a trip and not have kids fighting, and whining.

Ask For the Sale

This is perhaps the most important, and most overlooked part of writing sales copy. If you don’t ask for the sale, or ask for the call to action how can you expect to get it? A call to action might be filling out a survey, opting in for a mailing list, requesting more information or any number of other things. Just ask for it, it a way that will get results. Also create an urgency to act now.
This is something you’ll probably want to test, along with what the specific call to action is.

Above all, remember proper research is key and keep testing your copy against the results it produces. Do this and you’ll end up with a winner every time.

These telecom giants reason that since they provide the lines (copper, fiber optic or cable) that supply internet connections to consumers, they should profit from the data that flows through them. Here’s how it would work: Websites that pay a fee would be allocated the most bandwidth and thus load quickly, whereas websites that can’t afford to pay the toll, or simply won’t pay the toll, get whatever bandwidth is left over (i.e. the slow lane).

As internet marketers, it antes up the question: Would you pay? If you’re a larger company with deep pockets, and can afford to, you’d once again gain a competitive advantage over smaller online business owners that can’t afford to pay.

For the online consumer this means higher priced goods as website owners won’t silently bear the extra costs.

I just hope that a two-tiered internet never becomes reality, if it ever does, hundreds of thousands of at home online business owners will suddenly find themselves looking for a J.O.B.

1. Make sure your page loads fast. If it has so many graphics that it takes forever to load, people get bored, and will leave before they start.
2. Be clear from the beginning. Make sure that the very first words that people see are describing what your website is all about. Do not mislead them to try and get them to stay it’s a bad idea.
3. Proofread for spelling and grammar. Grammar and spelling errors scream amateur – if you want people to take your site seriously, make sure there are no mistakes.
4. Make your text easy to read. Small text is hard to read, yet if it’s too big, it looks like you’re yelling. Bright text is also hard to read and can look very unprofessional.
5. Use sub-headlines and bullets throughout your text. This breaks up the reading and invites people to read more. Also make sure that there is enough white space so it is pleasing to the eye.
6. Offer something free like an eBook or software, if they fill out a quick questionnaire. As they fill it out, they’re thinking about your product (this is also a great way to build your customer database).
7. Host a forum or chat room. Not only does this keep them on your site for a while, but it also gives them a good reason to come back. An ask the expert question and answer page also works well.
8. Remind people that they’re welcome to print your information and share it with others. A print-out allows people to revisit your product several times a day.

There are literally tons of ideas, you’ll just need to find what words best you’re your site and your content. Every time you come up with a website that you believe is put together very well, bookmark it. When working on your own site, reference those favorites. Making your website more appealing encourages visitors to stay longer. If a site is at all confusing or hard to absorb, you’ll lose your contact before you ever had them.