Alarmed, I immediately investigated. He was right.

It was then that I realized that I had dropped ball. I hadn't even looked at my search engine results for a couple of months. I hadn't been marketing my business.

How had this happened? As I reflected on what I'd been spending my time on, I realized that recently more and more of my time was being spend on adminstrative tasks. And I'd been spending very little time doing things I love most about my business; writing, researching and marketing. Not good.

Over past year, I've been working harder and longer. And I'd been marketing less and less. Not to mention fact that precious time that I have with my kids was being chipped away by my "projects".

My business was running ME.

I was also still locked into mindset that I *couldn't afford* software and services that could really help me to run my business more efficiently.

Here's a good example: I spend a great deal of time answering emails from site visitors, most of them same types of questions. Now, I really like to answer my emails personally, but there comes a time when you have to decide whether or not this is really best use of your time.

I bit bullet and purchased two programs: a program to set up and administrate a Frequently Asked Questions area, and an autoresponder program to set up an Instant Answers section which sends immediate responses to common questions by email.

It's one thing to have a web site.

It's another thing to get (qualified) traffic to it.

About 8 years ago I attended a seminar on this new thing called "The Internet." The guys who ran seminar told us a lot of stuff, but there's one thing they said that has always stayed in my head.

They said NET was about to change marketing paradigm.

You see, previously marketing had solely been about "difference." An example. My product is bigger and bluer than yours. Buy it!

The guys who ran this seminar said NET was different. It was about "sharing." "The more you share more you gain." How right they were !!

INTERESTINGLY ENOUGH...

This was original vision of Internet... "sharing"

AND...

now let's get back to topic of TRAFFIC generation.

SEARCH ENGINES are about competition... "difference."

If you're not on first 3 pages of a search engine search, forget it. You're effectively lost in techno netherworld... never to be heard of again.

So, you can do one of two things.

1. Bust your butt and your wallet trying to get top positioning with ever-changing SE's search criteria mathematics OR...

2. FIND A BETTER WAY... through sharing.

Question? "Why do people search Internet?"

Answer: "They're looking for information OR... a solution to a problem."

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So, if you'd exchanged links with 1,000's of other ON-TOPIC, quality related sites would you get more traffic?