Hi: Let's play pretend. Imagine that there's a contest. The prize is better than winning the best lottery ever. The contest has only one rule... --> To win, you must get 1,000 real people to your website in 72 hours using any means currently at your disposal. (In other words, don't say you'd buy an ad on national tv unless you can afford to pay for the ad.) Could you get 1,000 people to your site in 72 hours? How? What would you do? : ) Linda

Wow Linda this is a very hard question. I think for me anyways. I'm new to online marketing so you have me stumped. I'll be back to see what kind of response you get. I'd sure like to learn how this can be done. The only ways I know how so far are: making friends through Adalnd, Joining groups, forums, search engines, & surf sites. :)

Hi, Linda I'd go ask three or four of my friends that I've met through networking or other means to recommend it to the people on their mailing lists. Of course, I'd choose the three or four of my friends who have mailing lists that big, lol. To prepare for that request I'd make sure I had a quality product of my own and would offer those friends a healthy commission in a joint venture arrangement. So of course I'd have to choose the friends whose subjects were close enough to mine to be a fit, otherwise they wouldn't want to share their customers. Do I get an A? I actually learned this in one of those numerous ebooks that I bought over a year ago (from Shawn Casey, believe it or not). It made sense, but the solution was the tail end of a very long learning curve...you have to have the pieces in place before it will work. Not until I joined your forums and test group did I begin to understand the front end of that learning curve. The other thing I learned from that book, indirectly, and have become convinced of through observation, is that when you've done it once, you can do it over and over and it's easier each time. Cheri

Well that would be a a test but one I think I could do. The main words in your statement is real people vs impressions or hits. I would use all my advertisings resources and tracking codes in my adds for the links. Asking friends for a favor would bring a few real people to a site but with out overing more than the offer it self many people would now come. I would by all means use the 72 hour window in my marketing effort letting people know this was a special marketing test we was doing. What reward to offer would have to be a free up grade to a paid level on my safelist or free credits. I am even though in a comp. cruse or something to the person that gets the most friends to a site... Team work would be an area of focus and then I would have to devise a code to verfie visitors. Some like what is the sixth word of the third para. If you did it correctly it would be a great way to grow your list. That my thoghts off the top of my head. Using auto surfs will get hits but very few raw clicks or real visits. Hope it helps! Johnny

I've just been reading about press releases. An effective press release creating interest along the lines of helping real people on line may be effective (provided I had teh wherewithal to follow it through. Pay per click advertising at google/ Yahoo/ Miva etc might work, but would cost. Other than that, my methods are pretty basic and long term, so I give up :-) PS: Your forums are too good - they keep interrupting what I'm meant to be doing :-) (Just another example of my lack of discipline - I'm beginning to understand what my teachers meant by "easily distracted"}