Having spoken with and mentored literally thousands of Internet Marketers over the years, I see essentially the same issues and frustrations again and again. People tend to isolate themselves and feel as if they’re the only ones hitting a particular wall but the fact is a relatively small number of challenges are keeping the majority of people from enjoying success.

The inability to create traffic from thin air is a huge stumbling block for serious yet inexperienced entrepreneurs. The common “solution” offered to this is to leverage other people’s traffic through joint ventures – much easier said than done when you’re new and unknown.

Another key complaint is the difficulty in keeping up with all the new “must do” marketing gimmicks that come along month after month. Looking at Internet Marketing from a bird’s-eye perspective, one could easily get the impression that to be successful, it’s mandatory to become an expert at blogging, Twitter, Web 2.0, search engines, and a whole slew of other practices. Honestly, who has the time to become even basically proficient in a dozen different methods, much less develop genuine expertise?

Forget the 101 different marketing processes that you’re being pressured to learn; these are things you can outsource later on. For now, all you need is a small set of tactics that work well. You can build a lucrative venture from only a handful of effective methods, whereas you’ll only run yourself ragged trying to become an ace at everything.

I believe a single, simple solution can be applied effectively to these and other common problem areas. I call this solution Login Frequency Marketing, or LFM.

Create Login Power

It may surprise you to know that a login device is all you need to create extraordinary results. The very simple act of placing something people want in a secure member’s area, hence requiring them to log in and get it, opens the doors to a whole range of powerful, profitable strategies.

Contrary to popular objections, membership sites don’t all have to be based on monthly recurring subscriptions. Nowhere is it written that you must convince people to pay you every month, and that you must come up with new material on a monthly basis to appease your customers. The membership model is the most surefire way to go from struggling and confused to profitable and confident and, I promise, setting up and running your own great member site is nowhere near as difficult, costly, or time consuming as most people think.

For that matter, you don’t even need to sell anything to succeed with a member site that uses LFM. You can give away a free report, free software application, or free e-course and simply require prospects to register a member account and then log in to obtain their gift.

The point that I’m in danger of laboring is that creating and running a membership website need not be a lot of fuss and hassle. Now let’s get to the point: How can an LFM membership strategy level the playing field for a marketer that doesn’t have an established reputation or a ton of cash?

The Traffic Myth
The concept of creating traffic is a myth. You may think of this as merely a semantic distinction but it will open your eyes to the reality of internet activity. The truth of the matter is that to create traffic you would have to contact a person offline and then convince them to power up the PC, connect to the web, and then visit your website. Even direct marketing and telesales operations who aim to accomplish traffic creation in this way won’t usually convince someone to drop everything and go online that instant. In practice, all they can hope to do is plant an idea in someone’s mind so that the next time they log in to check their email, they remember to visit the promoted website.

When marketers say they create traffic, what they really mean is that they direct traffic. At any given moment in time there exists Internet traffic made up of millions of people that are either surfing randomly or online for a specific purpose. Don’t try to do the impossible and manifest visitors from the ether. Tap into existing streams of traffic and divert some of them your way.

Think like a hot dog vendor for a moment. Does a hot dog vendor set up his cart in the middle of nowhere and then send out leaflets hoping to attract visitors? Of course not! He goes where there is ALREADY an abundance of people, establishes a visible position, and starts redirecting traffic. To begin with, people just stop to grab a hot dog before continuing on their journey. Eventually, some of the regular foot traffic in that area will start to go out of their way to buy their lunch.

There’s a very good chance that you’re not in business online to sell hot dogs but the principle is the same. Find places that already enjoy a large volume of regular visitors and convince some of that traffic to make a stop-off at your website.

Joint ventures and cross-promotions are a consistently effective way to accomplish this. People go online to read Marketing Joe’s emails and he recommends they take a trip to your website. Or they go to a download page after making a purchase and see a message by the product creator, recommending your website. How do you convince product and mailing list owners to join you in a joint venture or cross-promotion? This is where LFM starts to open doors.

Your membership site, however simple, gives you legitimate, virtual real-estate to leverage in joint venture and cross-promotion discussions. The very fact that you’ve put in the small amount of work required to set up a membership property tells prospective partners that you’re serious and intelligent. Professional marketers instantly understand the value you can offer with the basic membership process. As new people register for your site, and especially as they log in repeatedly, they can be exposed to promotions and offers at various intervals.

You could approach a marketer in your niche that has a big mailing list and offer to place an advert for their product on your login page. This way all your members are guaranteed at some point to see the promotion; many of them will be exposed to it multiple times. As your membership grows, more and more prospects will have the opportunity to respond to your promo partner’s advert.

As long as your site looks good, your product is of a quality nature, and you conduct yourself in a professional manner, you’ll be pleasantly surprised to get positive responses from many of the potential partners you approach. Marketers like the idea of having their adverts posted in private member areas; there’s just something exclusive about this kind of access to another entrepreneur’s members.

Marketers also appreciate the benefits of receiving ongoing promotion over a long period of time. To increase the number of positive responses you receive to your joint venture invitations, you can over-deliver by offering a PERMANENT advert placement in exchange for just 1-2 email broadcasts. Even if you’re just starting out and only have a small existing membership, you can tempt marketers with the promise of long-term promotion. All they have to do is run a couple of promotional emails for you now and they’ll be assured of being placed in the line of sight of all of your members, maybe for years to come.

Essentially what you’re doing here is offering virtual real estate, much like an agency that sells billboard space along the highway. How many other methods of directing traffic can you think of that allow you to snag attractive, joint venture partners without the need to own a large mailing list or a popular website?

Because your member’s area will likely have a variety of different pages, you can also tailor your proposal to suit your joint venture partners. For instance, you may have an article or lesson in your member’s area that’s related to a potential partner’s main product. If you don’t have such a page, why not create one specifically for the purpose of setting up your cross-promotion? Doing this enables you to make a highly attractive offer. Just about any product owner would love to have their wares promoted alongside a targeted article.

You might sweeten the pot still more by offering to place partner ads on a “thank you” page that your members see after buying something from you. Savvy marketers will be especially interested in this because they know the best place to advertise is in front of pre-qualified buyers. Maybe you’ll go another step and set up some sort of downline builder in your membership site. This will provide multiple levels of prospects and affiliates for a joint venture partner. In exchange for a mailing or two, you could agree to make your associate’s program a permanent part of your downline builder page.

By setting up these ad placements with 3, 5, 10, or more partners you’ll be able to direct a substantial amount of traffic in a very short period of time. By offering some sort of free gift or membership, you’ll convert this traffic into qualified email subscribers, providing long-term profitability for you and giving you increased leverage for brokering future deals. Offering a life-time advert in exchange for a couple of one-time email promotions will help you get your foot in the door in the beginning. Once you’re enjoying a steady stream of traffic and a healthy pool of members you’re in a position to broker better deals that are weighted in your favor.

If you start to run out of real estate with your current membership site, don’t over complicate matter, just build a new one! Use your existing membership to populate the new site and you instantly have a shiny new bargaining chip you can use to launch a new cycle of highly effective promotions.

With proper use of LFM, your traffic problems can be effectively erased. Because there are numerous ways to use your membership program strategically, you can focus on becoming an expert with LFM and not overwhelm yourself trying to keep up with the latest and greatest trends in Internet marketing.

I’ll be revealing some of the more sophisticated applications of LFM in forthcoming articles. I hope you’ll stay tuned because the LFM system is easy to implement and virtually guaranteed to put more money into your bank account.

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By Robert Puddy
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This article was originally featured in Mike Filsaime’s print newsletter, “MDC Monthly.” You can get a free trial copy shipped to your door by clicking here.

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