That's why "information is king" is such a constant refrain, it's why e-books have become such a popular medium for both author and reader (instant sales, instant access) and it's why everyone, ANY one, has opportunity to make money with their computers.

This is not yet another article rehashing benefits of creating an information product (you know that already, already) and it's not YET another article regurgitating same old marketing principles (you know you need to get word out about your information product and there are no end of useful resources out there to tell you exactly how). What this article is about is what your information product should be about.

Although it's true that Internet audience is so vast that virtually any subject matter will have a market, actually finding that market may not be so easy. Or, let's say that you know you can put words together, you have a broad base of experience to draw from or you know you can find out what you need to know about a particular subject in order to write an information product about it.

Well, here's something to consider. Instead of following traditional path of deciding what you're going to write about, writing it and then going about finding people who are interested in reading what you've written, how about researching market and finding out what people want to read about BEFORE writing an information product to meet that need? The advantage of this approach is that you know your market exists before you start writing, you can find out about your market and what it is they really want to know, meaning you can write a highly relevant information product responsive to that demand and, just as important, as you will see, you know exactly where your market is and how to reach it.

Let's start at beginning. I bought Web Position Gold a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to use it create doorway pages that would rank well with search engines, drive traffic to my site, yada yada yada. Yeah, so? Well, most uncharacteristically, I decided to follow instructions. The first step was to "target keywords you think people would type in search engines to find type of products or services you offer". Well ... DUH. But, just for hell of it, and since I was, after all, following The Instructions, I decided to read "Choosing Keywords" topic "for more information on choosing effective keywords!".

Here's an extract:

"Target wrong keywords and all your efforts will be in vain. Choose right keywords, and you'll see your traffic skyrocket. Therefore, think long and hard on what keywords people are likely to use to find you. ...

"The question to ask yourself is how do you really know if you're optimizing your pages for keywords that Web surfers are looking for? There are several good techniques you can apply to determine what people might be searching for ...

"However, best way is to stop guessing and actually SEE what people are searching for."

I followed this advice and tried keyword generator service they recommended (see below for links).

Excellent point, but this assumes that you actually have some traffic to begin with. Each step of Internet Marketing Process is not just important - it's required for success. So, let's focus today on getting traffic to your site, and remember:

A. Getting traffic to your site is like putting gas in your car. You can have a great engine, but it won't go anywhere without gas. Likewise, you can have a perfect sales letter - but without traffic, it's just pretty to look at.

B. The highest traffic sites of world do not just get a little more traffic than next guy - they get exponentially more traffic than next guy. For example, according to Media Metrix, AOL's network weighed in at #1, getting more traffic than any other site in world in April of 2001. Amazon was ranked #10. Both are top ten sites... And difference? AOL had 89,000,000 visitors that month and Amazon had 19,000,000. That's a whopping difference of 70,000,000 visitors between #1 site and #10 site.

Interestingly, higher up ranks you go, greater gap between each site.

So, what's difference? Why is it that better a site gets, further behind it leaves its closest competitor? Here are their secrets:

1. They Set Up "Multiple Streams of Traffic"

Back in 1995 I observed an interesting phenomenon. I found that likelihood of someone responding to your website was highly dependent on path they took to get there.

People may ask you "what is conversion rate of your website," but that is really an irrelevant question. Conversion rates are meaningless unless they take into consideration how someone gets to your website. (Test this yourself and you'll find it to be true.)

So, I coined phrase "All Clicks are Not Created Equal." For example, traffic from a site recommending your product is more likely to generate a sale than traffic from a site criticizing your product. That's an extreme example, but you get point, right?

When people discover this, their natural tendency is to start getting picky about how they get their traffic. Why waste your time on traffic that won't generate a sale, right?

If you're paying for advertising, this makes perfect sense. However, many people mistakenly throw away traffic from free sources as a result.

High traffic sites never throw away traffic and constantly endeavor to set up new traffic streams.

Let's take worst possible traffic source imaginable: FFA pages. Traffic from FFA ads is extremely sparse. To make matters worse, this traffic is rarely source of an immediate sale. Very little amounts of lowest quality traffic in world - yep, I think that qualifies it as worst possible traffic source.

If, however, you have an automated FFA promotion going that doesn't take you any time to maintain and still brings in traffic, should you throw it away?

Maybe not...

I still have in place free automatic traffic building sources that I set up years ago. Much of traffic that comes from these free sources is of low quality, but hey, I don't lift a finger to get it any more.

Most super-high-traffic sites are constantly working on new ways to bring in traffic - many of which are not very sophisticated at all. Even Yahoo, for example, uses a low-budget "tell a friend" script on their site to encourage people to forward articles to their friends. Does Yahoo care that anyone can do this with a free CGI script? Of course not. It's just one of thousands of traffic sources they've established.

When you read #3 below, you'll realize why "low-quality" traffic may not be so bad after all...

Remember, though, if you're paying for "cheeseburger" traffic, don't pay a steak-and-lobster price. Better: get your cheeseburger traffic for free from as many automated sources as you can.

2. They Use Viral Marketing