But that's only where it begins. Once your website is getting traffic, it's next job is to convert visitors into paying customers. From there, your job is to try to turn customers into repeat buyers or into a source of referrals. Here are four major types of marketing to incorporate into your marketing plan:

__1. TARGETED MARKETING

Who is your target audience, what do they want, and how do you reach them? Understanding your audience is first step to a successful marketing campaign. There are many ways to reach your target audience on Internet, including search engines, links, ezine advertising, joint ventures, and more.

Don't neglect to research your 'offline' market as well -- many people still prefer to be contacted in 'real world', rather than through cyberspace! For more information on offline marketing methods, visit http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/articles/checklist3.html

__2. PERMISSION MARKETING

'Spam' -- unsolicited email -- can cause varied reactions from minor irritation to outright rage. You don't have to spam in order to get business; people acknowledge that there are products and services about which they're willing to receive information. The Internet has proved this to be true: how many times have you willingly signed up to receive a newsletter?

Some methods of permission marketing include publishing a newsletter; offering product or service announcements or updates; and using an autoresponder to distribute reports, articles, stories, etc. Subscription forms can be placed on your site so that visitors can indicate their interest.

But why do webmasters want to provide links to other sites anyway? On surface, this seems to be counter-intuitive, as a link is a way to leave a site. Why would anyone want to make it easy for someone to leave a site? In other words, why do webmasters add links to other sites from their own pages?

If you understand reasons behind this phenomenon, then you will be able to get others to link to your site.

To get links you have to give links - This is a very critical piece of information that you would do well to remember. If you freely add links to your own site, and those links strongly reinforce your theme (or themes), then you will find that more people want to link back to you.

Adding value for visitors - Perhaps best reason for adding a link is to add value for your visitors. Let's say you have written a page about sewing with a nice article, some graphics and a good layout. To enhance your visitors experience of your site (and to increase their knowledge) you might include a few links (one to half a dozen) to quality pages about sewing. These external pages should provide additional information supporting your own page and most definitely should fit in with theme (the subject) of your site (and page).

It's usually wise to open these links in a new browser window. This allows your visitors to get additional information without leaving your page. When they are finished reading referenced material, they simply close window to return to your site.

In these instances, you are typically not interested in a link exchange, per se. Your primary motivation is to add value for your visitors.

Reference material - If your site contains good reference materials, it is very possible that other webmasters will want to link to your pages in order to aid their own visitors. Thus, it's important to have excellent quality content, both for your own visitors and for visitors to other sites.

Articles - It's quite common for webmasters to write articles which are available for free publication elsewhere. In exchange for free content, a link back is usually required. If you write quality content which is of value to many webmasters, you will find you can get thousands of links back to your site.

One of biggest benefits to this method is it is NOT a link exchange. You do not return link to sites which publishes your articles.