Hi Jim Engage the customer in the process as much as possible. They come to your website with a general idea of what they want. So, then we would need to involve them or help them in the decision of specifically finding what they want to buy. Pretty good for a newbie. You are very right. They arrive with an idea of what they want. People love to buy and hate to be sold -- and they buy based on emotion and justify with logic. If you engage them and help them decide to buy - as opposed to a hard sales pitch - that drives sales, indeed. Here's a 'for example' that might make you smile. "Did you know that when you purchase one pound of Naturally Grown exotic coffee, grown on Galapagos Island, roasted fresh and shipped to your door - the cost is under 25 cents per cup? Compare that to the nasty stuff in the styrofoam cups. I know you deserve better... but do you? [click here to order] If you can evoke emotion - which is what their decisions are based on -- and give them the logic they need to justify... you have a winner. : ) Linda

Highly targeted traffic. Search engine traffic can be great but as we all know, sometimes its not all that targeted for the newbie. So there must be other ways of a newbie finding or acquiring traffic versus having to rely on search engines.

Winston, As a "newbie" myself, I absolutely agree. I am having a very difficult time acquiring targeted traffic. These safelists are for the birds. All they have done for me is fill my "in-box" with a ton of emails that I have no interest in. Does anyone have any recommendations on where to go for targeted traffic?

Heather, We are just putting into action a plan for advertising in our local area to help in that area and get some much needed traffic of the calibre we're looking for. Because of that we are able to specifically target the customers we are looking to acquire rather than hoping they find us on the internet. While we have an internet based business, I think that while we are going through the learning curve here, offline ventures might prove more profitible in the short term. That being said, I have learned a LOT from these fourms. I've learned more from Linda and Peter's forums in the past month or so than I have in the last year about operating a business online, and I'm sure they are only scratching the surface at this point and am looking forward to whatever is coming in the future around here. Awesome! I feel like a sponge! May I have some MORE! :-)

Winston, I too have found Linda and Peter's forums the most helpful, not to say that there aren't other wonderful formus here.