by: Oleg Ilin

We all love traffic, right? The more we have the better. Never can have enough of it.

And if we have free traffic, and an extra candy with it, such as the word "targeted" added to it, then we're in heaven (almost there anyway, because St. Paul technically has not provided us with a free pass to the Golden Gates, lol).

You can change St.Paul for Buddha and heaven for nirvana if you wish, or use another allegory which better suits your religion or belief. The fact remains the same - to succeed on the Internet, we need a truckload of targeted traffic, and it's much better if it's free or at least inexpensive.

So the real question is how we can achieve this internet marketing heaven. I'm familiar with several major "passwords" providing the pass to the Gates - Search Engines and Search Directories, Pay-Per-Click Search Engines, Joint Ventures, Auctions, Link Exchanges, Forums and Newsgroups, and of course Blogging, Pinging and other RSS-related technologies.

I love RSS, it's possibilities are endless. Old email system, sadly enough, is dying because of all the spam floating around. These days ISPs go nuts to stop anything that even smells like spam. Don't get me wrong. I am not encouraging spammers in any way, but legitimate marketing business suffers significant losses because of all these anti-spam filters. And RSS easily eliminates most of the problems... However, this time RSS is not our main theme of discussion. We sure will return to it later, again and again.

And I didn't mention List Building yet, did I? Well, actually, List Building, in my humble opinion, is not even a password to the pass - it's the only key to the Gate. No list - no game. Sorry.

All these techniques should serve one purpose - no, not to make a sale, but to help you build HIS HIGHNESS LIST.

Why? If you direct your traffic to a sales page, you may or may not close the deal. And even if you do close it, it will be one-time-only you-got-lucky-this-time event.

Even if you're selling high-ticket items, the life time value of your customer is much higher then the price of any particular sale.

You should treat your subscribers with respect, always giving them useful information, unique deals, discounts and freebies. Don't sell them crap only because you want to make a few extra dollars. List is your virtual "real estate", your most valuable internet marketing property.

Is there anybody else you should treat with even more respect than your subscribers? You probably think I would say "NO". But the answer is -"YES!". There is only one category of people to whom you should pay even more attention in your business practices. I'm talking about Your Joint Venture partners.

These are the people with whom you should communicate on one-on-one basis. No broadcasting, only personal e-mail, chat, forum, call, or whatever. They deserve to have each your new product free, they deserve the highest commission, and the opportunity to start market your product with a special pricing, the lowest you offer for this product. May be you even should allow them to market it a few days earlier, before you release it to the public, and even BEFORE YOU START MARKETING IT YOURSELF!

So who are those hand-picked people? These are recognized internet marketing experts who have the broad access to the niche market for your product, in most cases they already have lists of their own (or at least are building their lists).

Before starting your business relationship with them, you want to make sure that you're "on the same page" regarding ethical questions... I wouldn't go into much details here, we all know the ropes - are they trustworthy, team players or self-centered, focused on one time deals with you or on lasting relationships, and so on, and so forth.

Always be on a lookup for new partners, you never know when you can meet them. Efficient JV-marketing is one of the very effective ways to skyrocket your business.