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Web Design Resources: http://www.emailexchange.org/webdes.html

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C. Attract targeted traffic.

How do you reach your niche group?

You tap into those FREE Internet resources and find out where and how your niche group exists.

1. Search Engines.

Prepare a list of search words that would identify or are related to your niche. What words would you use to look it up in "Yellow Pages"?

Once you compile your list, hit Top Ten Search Engines and Directories and start searching each word and begin to "Bookmark" results that you find will be useful for interacting with your niche.

Top Ten Search Engines: http://emailexchange.org/promo2.html

2. Discussion lists.

A discussion or mailing list is a community that discusses a certain subject by e-mail. The Internet discussion groups may be mailing lists, newsgroups or IRC chat channels, to name just a few possibilities.

Every niche group has serious discussion lists that would be informative and educational to join. Your niche group will benefit from your contribution to list and you can communicate your message, with your signature.

Join Free Discussion or Mailing Lists:

Liszt - The Mailing List Directory: http://www.liszt.com/

Search The List of Lists: http://catalog.com/vivian/interest-group-search.html

CataList, catalog of 46,902 public LISTSERV lists! http://www.lsoft.com/lists/listref.html

3. Your Signature.

NEVER underestimate power of your signature.

During a one week period, my signature was ONLY form of promotion I used and we got over 1000 visitors to our unadvertised web site.

How To Use Your Signature: http://emailexchange.org/sig.html

4. Ezines/Newsletters.

Whatever your niche, there probably already exists a network of publications that tap into your group. Tap into them and get an instant pulse on your market.

Top 100 Online Business Newsletters: http://emailexchange.org/newsletters.html

This gives you a basic "Blue Print" to follow to either begin to establish yourself on Internet or expand on whatever you have already accomplished.

Once you know WHY you want to contact people, then you will know WHO it is you need to communicate with and for WHAT reason.

The basic resources I have outlined above will give you a strong foundation to discover WHERE to reach that special niche of yours.

And you will need to decide WHEN.

The Launch

I'll upload pages, double check them, then head for search engines. Next, I'll get on about serious business, and wait a time. It takes a while these days to get listed.

I may take a crack at pay-per-click search engines, just to get hits more quickly. But to play this game seriously, you need hard data on hits versus sales.

Something Different

I'm going to use an approach that again is not supposed to work with fiction. However, it works great with How To titles, so I'll give it a try.

I'll let visitors download book and read first 50 to 60 pages or so. They will order only if interested in reading rest of it.

Checking And Testing

With above, site purpose becomes very simple: Generate a download of book. This is a lot easier to achieve than actually closing sale. Given any hits at all, effectiveness of site in getting this job done will be easy to measure.

Of course bottom line is, 1) Will anybody be interested? And 2), if so, will anybody buy? That last one is going to be a cliff hanger for a time.

What Next?

Given sales, I'll know 1) # of hits to get a download, #2) # of downloads to get a sale. Thus I'll know value of a hit. Sure, it will be soft data; you can't be sure until counts get into thousands. But hey, if $100/month seems likely, with upside potential, here's what I'll do.

Launch More Sites I have five other manuscripts that are equally good. So I'll put them up as described above. If results are equally good, I'll build a central site, still themed, to which original sites are satelites. Then ...

Watch My Dust

I'll open site to other quality work, perferably in genres no longer published. There are a lot of people like myself around who have written good tales that never made it into print.

If It Works

I'll be into a site that cost many hundreds of hours to put together, particularly when you add in some scheme for deciding upon new titles to offer and converting them to ebooks. Dollar costs might be more than $4000. But it will be a winner, for I will have demonstrated at every step along way that there are enough people who will read ebook fiction to make it fly.

An Unwarrented Risk If Built From Scratch

In paragraph above, I consider a fuzzy view of future, one that may not come about. But look at difference in risk of time and dollars. To build above, then finally accept failure a year out would be a disaster.

But with minimal risks in putting together that first mini-site, hey, this is going to be fun. I can easily afford a little time and a few bucks. And what if it pays off?

So What About You?

What crazy idea do you have down deep inside that makes people chuckle or laugh every time you bring it up?

However wild it may be, no matter how many scoff at it, risk a little time and a few bucks. You may be able to demonstrate you were right after all. And you'll be on your way to success.

And if it flops? No problem. Just try an even crazier idea. Keep it up, and you'll find gold. Lots of it.