I spent almost a year on the Internet before I turned my first penny of profit. Part of that time was spent trying to master the intricacies of Internet promotion, but 75% of my time was spent just learning about how the web works. I would gladly have paid $1,000 for a 'How To' guide back then. 

  Most of what I read taught all the roundabout ways to generate traffic to a website. Let's see, you were supposed to jockey for position in the search engines... link 900 ways to Sunday... give a lot of freebies away... provide good content... and then promote, promote, promote. You did everything in order to finally get your hit-counter jumping. And all of this in the hopes that, once the traffic was flowing, someone would actually buy something. 

  I couldn't figure it all out... so, after a few months of struggling with it all... trying to learn the difference between key-words and meta-tags, it slowly began to register... these methods were about the same as going all the way around the southern tip of South America to get from Miami to Hawaii. 

Why not just go through the Panama Canal? 

  So... having had experience in writing classified ads and sales letters, I decided to forget what all the 'Gurus' were saying, and try something a bit more direct... and INFINITELY more simple. I would find out where my best prospects were hanging out on the net... and get some powerful teaser ads for my products in front of them. And each ad would contain a link to a tested and proven sales letter... either delivered as a webpage or by autoresponder. 

  It worked like a charm... as soon as I went to this direct approach, the money started flowing, and it hasn't stopped since.

• Step 1 - You use small powerful classified ads to quickly and inexpensively sort your 'prospects' from your 'suspects'. Classifieds ads are cheap. And they're designed for just ONE purpose... to get your prospects to read your sales letter.

• Step 2 - Each little classified ad has a link to your sales letter... which is where the actual selling takes place.

  In 2-step direct marketing, each part of your marketing system is designed to accomplish JUST ONE FUNCTION.  If you put the parts together correctly, you will have a system that moves your prospect in small easy steps toward and through the purchase of your product.

  All the indirect marketing methods do work...  but they require a great deal of time to implement. Classified ads are fast, and if done correctly... VERY profitable.  The very first ad that I ran in an E-zine cost me $17.  But, within two weeks of it's publication, it had made me over $2,000!

Article by Gary White
of howtoguides™