1. Do you know what segment of population would find your web content interesting? What economical, political and social background are they going to come from? What's going to be gender, and age range, and educational qualification?

2. Are you aware of their surfing habits, their Internet awareness level? Do you know what's frequency of their business transactions through Internet? Are they first time service buyers or seasoned buyers?

3. What's hardware/software your audience is expected to use while logging on to your site? What's their surfing speed and connection speed? Do they have to pay a lot while surfing? Many surfers don't surf with ease because they have to bear heavy telephone connection cost in order to use Net as in Europe and Asia.

It's not sometimes technically and logically feasible to accommodate all points mentioned above, but as one evolves as a webmaster, things can continuously be improved, according to feedback garnered from users, day by day, week by week, month by month.

After you've designed and planned out your web site, you can take following steps to get traffic of your preference:

1. Define your keywords properly for search engines. You don't have to incorporate entire thesaurus for your product. The more you narrow down, more target audience you'll get. Limit yourself to 6-7 keywords if you want to target a highly focussed group. You can also do keyword bidding at various pay search engines like RealNetworks and GoTo.

2. Formulate a concise and to-the-point description of your index page. Try to include words, in a manner that sentence makes sense, that might help search engines find your site.

3. In directories like yahoo!, always choose right heading to add your URL. Don't think that more general heading you choose, more visitors you attract. Remember it's not quantity that matters, it's quality. So go to lowest level before submitting your URL.

4. Try to include major searchable words in first paragraph of your web site content. Many search engines read first 250-300 words of a page to index it.

5. I've noticed search tools like Google use title of page to give it recognition. But recommendation by gurus of web development is that title should be name of your company. Still, since Google spiders all pages if your web site even if you submit just index page, you can play around with titles of other pages. Just make sure that from every page, there is a link to you main page, and link should be attractive enough.

6. A compelling signature that accompanies your e-mail messages many times generates useful visits. It should constitute of a two-line, pithy description of your business, and link to your URL.

7. Although this I wouldn't suggest to people who have to pay for online time according to usage hours, you can look for various message boards and bulletin boards to spread word around about your business. Don't outright start your media blitzkrieg though. Introduce yourself first, participate in various discussions and debates, and during on of interactions, you can tell about your business.

I hope these steps help you generate hits that in return generate business for you. For any sort of design consulting, you can write to me at mailto:amrit@bytesworth.com

(Takeaway selling is based on fact that "people don't know how much they want something until it's about to be taken away from them." It's supply-and-demand mentality: rarer or less available something is, more people want it. And it's also one of reasons behind success of private sites.)

Add a deadline to your offer, or limit number of products you sell (or number of new members you allow to join). But there is a caveat: to make sure that people believe your need to limit offer, give a reasonable, logical explanation to justify your time-sensitivity -- or else your tactic will be instantly discredited. (How many "time-limited" offers have you seen on web that are totally false or misleading?)

If you add a deadline or limit number of members, you must explain why you're doing so. Here's an example of what I put on some sales letters I've written -- they sell memberships to private sites and offer personal consulting to their members:

Example #1:

"To be candid with you, I don't know how long I'm going to keep doors open to new members because this information is extremely sensitive and limited. I don't want to dilute value of this information for my paid members. If you were a member, wouldn't you want same, too? So, I must restrict number of users for quality control purposes."

(In this case, it is very true. The author sells access to a limited number of "hot" real estate opportunities that he finds through his unique system, which he also teaches his members. If too many people join and get their hands on opportunities or system, it will surely lower value of information to member-base, and contradict purpose of site. Otherwise, why would one join?)

Example #2:

"We're only human, and there are only so many hours in a day (and so many people we can physically attend to)! So, in order to limit number of hours we do provide, we must put a cap on number of new members for obvious reasons. We can only guarantee that people who sign up through [date] will qualify for membership, completely custom-tailored consulting support and this incredible set of free bonuses worth over $[amount]! 'You snooze, you lose'. So, don't wait. Join NOW!"

(This example demonstrates importance of support they offer private members and, at same time, drives home idea that such a service is limited. I'm sure owners can hire part-time help if need ever arose. But nothing can replace expertise that comes from straight experts -- more people join, less time they have.)

3) People are instinctively curious. And nothing piques curiosity more than something that's secret, rare, private, unavailable, exclusive, limited, scarce, uncommon, prohibited, hidden, etc. The unknown drives people's interest. They love having dibs on something that's not readily available (especially if it gives them an edge over competition before they know about it).

So, use words like "private site," "exclusive members area," "insider access" or "restricted vault." Moreover, people love not only hidden information but also idea that it's all put together into a single place that's easy to access, learn and digest. It all comes down to a matter of convenience.

Expressions like "secret formula," "custom checklist," "unique process," "specialized system" and so on all help to heighten perceived value because they imply less time, money and effort in finding that same information. As an example, when I write copy for private sites, I use terms such as: "Proficiency Program," "Secret Formula," "Inner Circle," "Hidden Vault," "Mentoring System," "Treasure Trove," "Coveted Toolkit," etc.

Even though such phrases are truly qualifying product as a whole (i.e., entire private minisite) and not one specific item, formula or system, it still helps to make product a little more tangible and convenient in visitor's mind. It also adds a certain mystique to it. Use it to your advantage!

4) Finally, put a numerical value on any benefit you promise, be it in dollars or hours. And make it an odd number, for they are more believable than even or rounded numbers. (That's why, for example, Ivory said it's "99 and 44/100% pure." If Ivory had said "100%," it wouldn't have been as believable.)

In fact, here's a rule of thumb. A true benefit is one that's:

1) Quantifiable, 2) Measurable and 3) Time-bound.

One private site, whose copy I recently critiqued, offers golf training to its members. But originally, one benefit promised, "You will hit stronger drives." I told owner to replace it with, "My unique, mentoring system will show you how to boost your drives by as much as 27 yards in less than 30 days."

The word "yards" makes benefit measurable, word "27" makes it quantifiable and words "30 days" make it time- bound. Now, that's a clear, cogent and compelling benefit!

Nevertheless, if you're an Internet marketer or entrepreneur, private minisite may be product for you. But realize that number of memberships you successfully sell will hinge greatly on words and expressions used in your sales copy. If you ignite your site with killer copy, you will detonate your response rate.