3. Write articles

Web site and ezine owners are constantly on look out for articles, tutorials and other content they can use. Writing articles is one of most powerful ways to spread your marketing message at targetted web-surfers. All you need to do is allow people to republish it for free, as long as they include a resource box at end of article containing details of your web site, or even of your ezine.

If you want an example, take a look at articles I've written on my PopUpMaster.com site at http://popupmaster.com/articles, and notice resource box at end - these have already been published in various forms and in various locations across web, increasing traffic to my web site (and let's not forget this article as well of course). You'll also notice various articles by other people on site too, that I got hold of just by searching sites listed below - see how quickly and effectively your marketing message can be spread all over web by webmasters and ezine owners who need content!

For a start, you could try condensing a chapter or two from your ebook in form of an article, and then in resource box just state people should visit your web site for more information.

As well as posting articles on your own site, and distributing them to your own mailing list, there are also various places online where 'publishers' and 'authors' meet, i.e. you provide article, and other people publish it for you if they are interested:

Idea Marketers* http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Making Profit* http://www.makingprofit.com/mp/

Web Source* http://web-source.net/

Directory Of Ezines* http://www.hypertracker.com/go/WEBpro1/DOE/

Marketing-Seek* http://www.marketing-seek.com/

Yahoo Groups: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/

Dime Co: http://www.dime-co.com/

Ezine Articles http://www.ezinearticles.com/

Go Articles http://www.goarticles.com/

These top resources were kindly recommended to me by Kenneth Doyle at http://www.feedyourhungrymind.com. The resources with asterisks are particularly recommended due to powerful results they can deliver.

4. Affiliate programs

Most of successful web sites use an affiliate program of one sort or another, that encourage other web masters to partake in publicizing someone else's products or services in return for a commission on sale price. I'm sure we're all familiar with these.

I personally use ClickBank because they handle both affiliate program (so I don't have to manage it at all) and payment facilities, and it's all incredibly easy to set up. For more information:

http://zzz.clickbank.net/jmap/?m=popupmtr

5. Word of mouth

Many businesses grow through 'word of mouth' recommendations. Sure, 'Send to a friend'-type scripts and affiliate programs can help with this process, but often web sites are mentioned in other interactions between people. This can be a powerful mechanism, both offline and online, and should not be ignored.

From my own experience, my business has grown largely because of recommendations my customers make to others of products and services I provide.

You can encourage this process by providing highest quality customer service possible, and ensuring that any products you sell or recommend are of top quality. In your ebooks, always aim to 'over-deliver' in terms of quality of information you are providing.

You've heard phrase 'Customer is king' - I'd extend this to say you should treat every single customer as most important customer you have ever had, in this way you will easily impress them and attract more customers (perhaps very significant ones) through these referrals. The alternative is bad or unresponsive customer service and poor quality products - this will certainly get you bad publicity that will damage your business.

There are of course many other techniques you can try, but these are my top five favorites, so try them out and see traffic to your web site explode. It's hard work, but when you see results you'll consider it more than worth it.