Funnel Traffic To Your Primary
E-commerce/Corporate Site

From Theresa Coffey, TNT Editor...

Are you already on the Net? Maybe you have an online store (such as Yahoo! Stores, Amazon's zShops, or your own standalone store). Or perhaps you have a sales site that sells your own product(s) or service(s). Regardless of what you are selling, the key question is whether you are "wringing" the most value out of your e-commerce site.

Is your sales (or corporate) site pulling in the kind of targeted traffic required for business to thrive? Because without traffic, your Web site will become just another unvisited and unshopped site. Without traffic, what's the point?

Regrettably, there are lots of pointless sites on the Net. Out of 56+ million sites, the majority are very inactive and most generate little traffic.

What's even worse is the fact that for some of these sites, the owners paid out tens of thousands of dollars in design costs and achieved no results. (Hopefully, this is not the case for you!)

Do a quick check on your existing site's traffic ranking, using alexa.com. You can take the traffic test at...

http://traffic-test.sitesell.com

What does your Alexa traffic ranking score mean?

Let's use a few examples to explain. A site that ranks 560,000 at Alexa.com is the 560,000th most trafficked site on the Web, which means it is in the top 1 percentile of all 56 million sites. A site that ranks 5,600,000 (which is not very good, by the way) is in the Top 10%.

Traffic is like oxygen. If your site's traffic ranking (oxygen level) is below the Top 10% at Alexa (i.e., higher than 5,600,000), your site is unable to sustain economic life. The continuous lack of visitor activity will translate into a complete lack of sales, both first-time and recurring sales. No business can survive without sales or growth.

SBI! creates oxygen. It shines at traffic-building -- it's the T in C T P M. Consider it your "traffic pain" remedy (if your traffic is currently at an acceptable level -- build upon it! Who ever has enough traffic or enough business?). Here's how...

A theme-based, keyword-focused SBI! content site is tailor-made for drawing targeted, willing-to-buy traffic from the Search Engines. All you need to do is follow the process detailed in the Action Guide and build a highly-optimized content site based upon the most profitable theme of your existing business.

Once you have established your credibility with this content, divert the PREsold traffic from your SBI! site(s) directly to your corporate or e-commerce sales site. It's much like becoming an affiliate of your own product(s) or service(s).

Bingo! Now you can consistently funnel substantial volumes of targeted, PREsold traffic to your existing business site and drive sales.

If you wish, you can further leverage this growing traffic by developing multiple income streams -- either on your primary corporate site, or your SBI! site. In other words, you can offer your visitors other non-competing products/services related to your business -- with no production costs!

This diversification will significantly increase your bottom line. Best of all, diversification will stabilize your overall business since you are not relying on a single source of income. (If you have a mid-sized or larger business, your product range is likely sufficiently diversified so other monetization models are not crucial.)

SBI! will set you and your visitors down a mutually profitable pathway, based on trust and credibility...

STEP #1 Your targeted visitors find your SBI! theme-based Content site via a Search Engine keyword search. You rank highly on search results pages so you are easy to find (Traffic!).

STEP #2 This targeted Traffic perceives you as a credible and popular business. They trust you because of the high-value information you are providing -- it shows you understand their needs or wishes. You are an "expert" in your niche. That's PREselling!

STEP #3 Your visitors want more information about your potential "solutions." These solutions could be your own service or product, or those of merchants that you represent (as an affiliate or through a finder's relationship), or your eBay auctions, etc.

Remember, one type of "solution" may appeal to a particular visitor but not to another. Diversify to maximize income and stability. That is the key to Monetization.

STEP #4 Your open-to-buy/hire visitors clicks, submits, buys or hires! Each one gains a solution and you gain income. A win-win situation!

The Advantages Of A Separate SBI! C T P M Site

Why build new SBI! sites to funnel targted traffic to your primary e-commerce site? Good question!

SBI! sites are far more effective than "afterthough" gateway pages because you build the traffic right into the site from Day 1, from the very first word you type. Your e-commerce site has too many other functions. And, in any event, it is perceived differently by both engines and humans.

The priority of your sales site should on "selling" effectively rather than on Search Engine Optimization. It is very difficult to write powerful sales copy and be Search-Engine-sexy at the same time.

Content on your main sales site is a distraction from the main purpose... selling. And yet, you must provide links to it or the engines will discredit "orphan content."

Also, to be most effective at the Search Engines, any site must have links pointing to it. It's hard to gain links to corporate or e-commerce sites. And if there are few inbound links, you are less likely to be listed at some engines, let alone ranked well.

No doubt about it. The best way to generate targeted traffic to a primary e-commerce or corporate site is through one or many (if yours is a larger, multi-faceted company) SBI! sites. It is far, far more cost-effective and long-term than anything else you could possibly consider.

Use SBI! to build a traffic-funnel that Search Engines and visitors love. C T P M first. Then do the "selling" (M) at your primary e-com site.

If your visitors are going to buy from you or hire you, they have to trust you first. Let's face it, surfers are a naturally skeptical lot. You may really have the best product at the best price. You may offer the best customer service, and the fastest delivery times. But if you can't get your visitors to trust you, your business is sunk!

To be successful, you need to...

1) Own your free, targeted, motivated traffic. Grow your business by growing your own niche-oriented traffic, and referring it to your primary site.

2) Diversify -- monetize your traffic in other ways. Protect your income, and build equity, by diversifying into new monetization models (crucial if you are a small business owner).

3) Build equity. Not only do you own your targeted traffic, but you'll build a large e-zine list and your e-zine will help you build trust over time.

4) Increase Conversion Rates. PREselling through valued content establishes credibility. So your recommendations carry weight. The difference in Conversion Rates between visitors who arrive PREsold via an in-context text link vs. an advertisement can be as high as 20-fold.

5) Build a rapport and establish trust with your visitors: Quality, credentializing content is, far and away, the best way to establish this. Luckily, it's also SBI!'s strongest point.

The bottom line?

The increased traffic and business driven by your SBI! funnel site(s) are yours. They are not dependent on the continued expenditure of great numbers of advertising dollars. Your SBI! site will grow, building greater and greater traffic momentum over time and leverage your existing e-commerce or corporate site.

Here are two examples of SBI! funnel sites...

1) Alan Lofft of Axiom Audio uses an SBI! site, audiolofftreport.com, to leverage Axiom's main e-commerce site, AxiomAudio.com. Axiom is a mid-sized company that sells high end hi-fi equipment online.

Read the case study.

2) Jerry Mack, a Regional Manager for a large medical imaging company used his first SBI! site to bypass the non-traffic-generating corporate site to drive sales... over $3 million worth. Then he got smart. He didn't need the parent company!

He left that company to start his own Web site to sell and drop-ship medical equipment (made by various companies, including his former employer!). Yes, he did it all over again with another SBI! site, this time for himself! Read the case study.