Internet Marketing Blog

By Perry Marshall

Most web marketers are obsessed with getting free traffic.
Or, if they're buying traffic, they're trying like crazy
to get the 5 cent clicks.


That's all well and good, but it's based on a huge
misconception. This obsession with cheap traffic is exactly
backwards. Let me explain.


In 1862 the US Government passed the Homestead Act,
which gave you 160 acres of free land if you'd agree to
farm it for 5 years. Gazillions of people headed west
to grab up their free land.


*SOME* people snatched up incredible patches of lush,
productive farmland. But the promise of free land also
created a massive Hype-fest. Everyone who was selling picks,
shovels, horses or wagon wheels was eager to get your
money and send you on your merry way.


Well if you wound up with 160 dry, scrubby acres of
sandy soil in Western Nebraska, 'free' was really no
bargain at all. A lot of folks wound up eeking out
a bitter existence on unproductive land, and many
just abandoned their homestead and went back where
they came from.


The REAL opportunities in the wild west came AFTER
the land was NOT free anymore. When there was a real
estate market, towns, cities and farming cooperatives--
NOW it was possible to make real progress.


It's better to buy a farm that already exists than
to make one from free stretches of prairie. And once
there's a real market, there's a reason why cheap land
is cheap and why expensive land is expensive.


Well that's pretty much what the 'ground floor' of
any industry is like. And the Homestead land rush is
exactly what the Internet was between 1996 and 1999.


Pay-Per-Click was the beginning of a real market
for Internet traffic. Now you could buy it instead of
trying to create it from scratch.


Now here's the Big Point that I want to make:


1) Buying traffic for cheap is a SECONDARY objective in
a good web marketing strategy.


2) Your PRIMARY objective is to be able to afford to spend
MORE money on advertising than all your competitors.


After all, a smart farmer is a lot more concerned with
the productivity of each acre, than he is with the cost of
the land. If the land produces, he doesn't care what it
costs.


Expensive keywords are very profitable if you know
what to do with them.


Deep pockets are rarely the solution to an Internet marketing
problem. The solution to every web marketing problem
is being able to convert each visitor into dollars BETTER
than your competitors. You do it by having a superior sales
machine.


When you have a superior sales machine, you can
outspend your competitors on advertising, you can
get the listings you want, and you can pay your
affiliates more than everyone else pays them.


That's how you dominate markets.

=====================================
On Tuesday and Thursday night, May 25th and 27th,
Perry Marshall, Don Crowther, Jason Potash are
going to do an advanced PPC conference call,
covering the most advanced strategies for attracting
and converting web traffic with Google AdWords and
Pay Per Click marketing. Details