Slight Misery - people who invested little or nothing and received same in return. They joined AOL, and immediately found their mailbox was overflowing with spam (junk email). They read some of mail and, and believing what they read, bought into a program for $20. They sat back and waited, and waited, and waited and nothing happened.

Losing heart, they quit program and dropped AOL after free trial period. They now send their email to Aunt Martha, which is all they really wanted to do from "get-go", using a free ISP such as "World Spy".

More Misery - these people believed many of offers that wound up in their mailbox, and bought into a few. They then started their free advertising campaign. When that didn't pay off, they started investing in paid advertising. Here a banner, there a banner, everywhere a banner, banner - they quickly learned reality of banner ads. But with no long term commitment, they folded their tents, cut their losses, and disappeared into night.

Real Misery - these are tenacious ones - they failed at level one and two, but believed hype and invested in an online store. They're like guy who rented a huge vacant brick and mortar building, and then started to think about what he was going to sell. After an awful lot of work and many bucks later, they found out that just having a store isn't key to success on Internet.

So what's scoop? Is everyone doomed to failure?

Of course not - there are a lot of people making money on web. But you have to find your "niche". Unless you have very "deep pockets", like anything, you have to know what you are doing.

At same time that number of Internet users is growing, number of Internet pages top 1 billion and list is growing rapidly every day. So chances of your site being found is like finding a needle in a very big virtual haystack, unless you actively market your site via Internet and traditional avenues.

In this column, we will address following question: "How do I drive traffic to my site? We will also take this question to its logical conclusion by answering following question: "Once I have traffic flowing to my site, how do I get them to return?"

Keep in mind that these questions are better asked prior to development of your site than after it is finished. It is far less painful to incorporate these features during development, than after site is completed. Doing this will save a lot of site redesign, not to mention ulcers.

When addressing question of driving traffic to your site it is important to look at who your target market is and identify top avenues for driving those individuals to your site.

The first step in this process is identifying different Internet channels available for driving traffic to your site. Some possible mediums are:

·Links with other related sites ·Web rings ·Affiliate programs ·Search engine optimization ·Internet Press Releases ·Listserves ·Newsgroups ·Opt-in e-mail lists ·Banner ads & site sponsorships ·Viral marketing (e.g. e-mail to a friend)

It will be important to research these channels in order to find right mix for reaching individuals you want to target.