Today I'd like to show you how to apply this powerful strategy to your Internet marketing campaign.

As I'm sure you are aware by now, there are a multitude of ways to invest in your Internet marketing. Many of strategies will yield immediate results, however results will be short-lived.

An example of a short-term marketing strategy is buying advertising. While you DO need to purchase SOME advertising, if you rely solely on this strategy you'll see a disturbing trend develop at your site -- whenever you advertise less, your site traffic will come to a near stand-still.

Another example of a short-term Internet marketing strategy is bulk email. Here's why...

When you use bulk email, you blast your message to thousands of email addresses, filter myriad of complaints, and hope for a few sales mixed in. There is absolutely no positive long-term effect on your business. Perhaps you make a few sales but you've made zero long-term investment in your business.

So how does one diversify their Internet marketing portfolio and GO LONG with their promotion strategies?

Perhaps you already know answer. Let's test your knowledge, shall we!

Of following low-cost Internet marketing strategies, which TWO would have longest positive result on your website traffic?

1. bulletin board and newsgroup postings 2. search engine ranking 3. banner ad buys and exchanges 4. building your own opt-in email list 5. sharing your web content with others

If you guessed number one, you're.... Wrong!

If you regularly make INTELLIGENT and HELPFUL posts to targeted bulletin boards and newsgroups, you can generate some traffic. However most boards purge posts frequently and with growing number of boards out there, users rarely take time to search archives for answers.

If you guessed number two, you're.... Wrong Again!

Top ten search engine rankings are great, but unless you have time to maintain listings you'll find that they can be hard to maintain. While I definitely recommend giving search engine ranking some consideration, especially when setting up a website, this strategy should be considered more of a continuing effort than a long-term strategy.

If you guessed number three... you're... Wrong Again!

As I mentioned at top of this piece, you DO need to purchase SOME advertising, and banner advertising and exchanges can be a part of that. But if you rely solely on paid ads, you'll see less site traffic whenever your advertising slows.

And we love it! After all, every question we receive is an opportunity. It is a chance to help out fellow Internet marketers and in process, further develop our expertise and reputation as an expert.

But each inquiry is something much more than that. It is also an opportunity to sell a solution. These solutions can be in form of instruction, a software solution or maybe even an opportunity.

And most of us ezine publishers have our replies down to a science. Of all ezine publishers I've asked, every effective one processes each new inquiry in a similar fashion. We field so many messages each week that we have to have a reply system down pat, or we'd be buried in email!

Here's a quick flow chart most of us publishers use when replying to inquiries...

First, we reply quickly and personally, then...

1. Offer any free help we have available on subject 2. Suggest one of our proprietary solutions 3. Suggest a solution we've plugged into our site 4. Send them to a 3rd party website if necessary

Now, it's important to realize that we've been through literally thousands of messages. This means we've developed some great solutions to almost every inquiry.

For instance, lets look a three popular questions every ezine publisher has faced at one time or another. Along with each question you'll see action publisher took to secure a new, long term income stream...

Inquiry #1: What software did you use to build your website?

This is one you'll come across quite often. And it turned into a gold mine for one publisher I know. (She preferred to remain nameless.) She's one of best webmaster's I've seen and her site is amazingly sharp, fast-loading and professional. As inquiries began growing she would tell folks how she built site and tools she used. But smart marketer that she is, she decided to use this as an opportunity to grow her income.

She emailed companies who created software she used to build her site. She got them to look at her site by telling them it was done with their software, and they too loved it. Then she told them she was receiving a growing number of inquiries from other webmasters and would be interested in offering their design tools at her site. After a little finagling, she was able to offer their software at a discounted price.

Now, every email enquiry she receives about design of her site gets met with a pre-formatted email reply. It takes her all of 10 seconds to reply by pasting message in and personalizing it, and nearly every webmaster tries free demo programs then goes on to order software at her special discount price.