Successful marketers use "warm 'em up first and make sale later" approach. They implement many strategies to drive traffic to their website, but if visitors are leaving without buying anything, they make one final effort to hang on to them for future sales. And 90% of time it works!

So what is it that they do? Capture their visitors names and e-mail addresses! They offer them something of value for free in exchange for their information.

Offer your visitors a free report or a subscription to your ezine. They're now a "warm" market for your product, and once they get to know and trust you they'll become your customers.

When you run ads using "hit and miss" approach you have just *one* chance to sell your product to each person who clicks on your link. If they don't buy right then, you've lost them forever. But when you "warm up" your prospects first you have a better chance of making sales.

So start warming 'em up, already! :~)

Denise Hall is the owner of Home Business on a Budget.com, specializing in free and low-cost tools and resources for all your home business needs. Subscribe to her weekly newsletter for informative articles, resources and fun. http://www.home-business-on-a-budget.com/subscribe.htm

That's kind independence and power you give yourself, when you're not totally dependent on any one entity. Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website. Here are a few suggestions:

Ezines, newsletters, forums, online magazines, sponsor listings on other websites, exchanging links.

Here are a few offline suggestions:

Magazines, direct mail, shopper newspapers, cable television, radio, flyers, hospital newsletters, card decks, trade journals and directories, bulletin boards, tabloid newspapers.

Here's what writer of another e-mail I received had to say:

"Wow! What a pleasure to read your article, Googles Trap, DMOZ's Nap, And Yahoo!'s Crap. Boy, I've been complaining about this type of scenario for at least a year. I will also include Overture with terrible trio. Overture has recently, with long standing pay per click program, decided that all your keyword phrases will be broad matched. The reason they gave was that it was too time consuming for user to manage their listings. Well, they forgot to mention that they will also receive more money because of change.

Also, they say that you can enter words in quotations or negative words against your keyword phrase so that you receive correct response. In other words, your keyword phrase will not show up when those negative words are searched for. Well, do you know how time consuming negative word process is? And, there's no way you can muster up all of possible negative words that could be searched for so that your listing will not appear. Absolute CRAP, to term your expression. The terrible trio you mention in your article plus Overture have gradually swung towards "God" like service providers. They have power and user is very much at effect. Well, that's my 5 cents worth. After saying all of above I am a user of these services but have been working for a long time now finding other ways and means of marketing and promotion so that all of our eggs are not in one basket. I have, in main, been exchanging links with other websites plus placing relatively inexpensive ads on websites that have similar services to ours."

I love getting e-mails like that! That tells me that some of you are finally starting to "get it."

Give yourself power! Claim your independence! Find alternative ways to attract traffic to your website. If you do that, one day you'll realize you really don't need search engines after all. I guarantee it!

Dean Phillips is an Internet marketing expert, writer, publisher and entrepreneur. Questions? Comments? Dean can be reached at mailto: dean@lets-make-money.net

Visit his website at: http://www.lets-make-money.net