Vitale is also a strong, inspirational speaker, who has presented before hundreds of business groups. One association called The Speakers Platform rated Joe as one of the top 25 speakers in the world on sales and marketing.

Some of the most impressive groups Joe has spoken in front of include: The Sales and Marketing Executives, and the first Houston Publishers and Authors Association conference.

Joe Vitale lives in Houston, Texas, and can be reached at jgvitale@ix.netcom.com for media interviews, consultations and speaking engagements.

Not many people will argue that Joe Vitale is a top notch marketing consultant. He is the inventor of the concept of “Hypnotic Marketing” and the author of the popular e-book called “Hypnotic Writing.” He has also worked along side 200 other authors and publishers to help them write, publish and promote their books. He has also spent time helping large organizations and companies such as The American Red Cross and Hermann Children’s Hospital in Houston.

Joe has written many books including the brand new “Spiritual Marketing”— “The Seven Lost Secrets of Success”(1995) —I heard one company bought 19,500 copies of it! Joe is also the producer of the extremely popular Nightingale-Conant audiotape collection called “The Power of Outrageous Marketing!”

Joe also produced “CyberWriting: How to Promote Your Product or Service Online” (Without Being Flamed), “Turbocharge Your Writing”(1988), “The AMA Complete Guide to Small Business Advertising.”, “There’s A Customer Born Every Minute: P.T. Barnum’s Secrets for Business Success”(1998), “The AMA Complete Guide to Small Business Advertising”(1996)

He’s also the creator of Guaranteed Outcome Marketing.

I think Joe Vitale’s ads get such a strong and powerful response because he knows exactly what people want as well as what they want to hear. I hear that Joe also has learned a lot from many of the historical marketing greats such as Robert Collier. I think his great knowledge of the marketing men from the early to mid 1900s has given his a wisdom that most of todays marketers are lacking. His knowledge of marketing history allows him to write copy that combines history with the present and future. A mixture of antique and modern techniques that touches his readers and compels them to take action now.

Obviously Joe Vitale is one of my favorite writers, speakers, and teachers. I read his stuff over and over again and again. I would definitely recommend you do the same. Many thumbs up to Joe Vitale!

If you have a merchant account already or shopping around, there’s several different fees on a merchant account application. Knowing what they mean, and which ones you can negotiate, is the key to getting the best deal. If you call your merchant provider and they don’t drop at least $100 a year in fees, I’d shop around. This is especially true if they say “the bank won’t lets us drop any fees” because in that industry, almost everything is negotiable because it’s so competitive. This is a breakdown of the industry standard fees:

Monthly Minimum: This is the minimum in fees you pay each month. If you’re doing about $1,100 a month in volume then this fee won’t be an issue. If it’s much less volume, then the difference is charged to bring it up to $25.

Annual Fee: This is one the banks charge but I know one place that waives it if you ask. If you’re doing very little volume, then ask for the monthly minimum to be waived. If over $1,100 a month, get the annual fee waived.

Chargeback Fee: This is typically $25 and shouldn’t be more than that (never heard of it being higher). It’s when a customer disputes a charge and wins it. An example is if they wanted a refund within the refund policy but someone didn’t give it to them, or they got a wrong or damaged item and didn’t get a replacement. You also get charged these if you take a fraudulent order.

Voice Authorization Fee: These are if you call your processor and do the transaction over the phone. It’s pretty rare to do this if you have software, a terminal, or a gateway.

Return Draft/Check Fee: This is if you accept checks and one bounces from a customer. If you have a check guarantee service then it won’t apply, the guarantee place will cover the check. Newer terminals can swipe actual checks with optical recognition, so you can swipe them just like a credit card. It’s quicker to do this, but also the money is ACH transferred a lot faster into your account with this method than taking it to the bank.

Statement Fee: This is for the overhead in making up your monthly statement. I’d highly recommend (if you have the option) to do a “Green Statement” which is online instead of having your statement printed and mailed. It’s usually a lot less per month, and you can download your statement into an accounting program which helps at tax time. If you have an accountant, they probably would prefer the electronic version of your statements anyway.

Application Fee: This one is for running credit reports and the initial footwork in taking an application. Some places say it’s waived, then make up for it elsewhere (like a higher rate or transaction fees). It can be negotiated most of the time, the real risk they take is if they go through the application process and you’re turned down. If you have decent credit, not on the match file, and no foreseeable problems with getting qualified, you have a much better bargaining position to get this waived.

Early Termination Fee: If you currently have a merchant account and switch to another processor that has a better deal, many places charge some kind of fee. It’s really important to look for a place where it’s a fixed amount, not some huge penalty based on percentages of your volume. Also, you can negotiate to have your new processor pay this fee to get you to switch to them. Only a few processors like this one do that. Also, you have to ask for it most of the time.

Discount rate: This is more of a big deal if you do a high monthly volume. There’s several different rates depending if you swipe the card in a terminal (less risky so it’s lower) or take a phone or Internet order (card not present rates are higher, as there’s greater risk). It’s really important to know if you’re getting an introductory “teaser rate” which is one that is really low for six months, then rockets upward later. Anytime you see a place quote you a rate without you applying first, it’s a teaser rate. These are similar to adjustable rate mortgages and should be avoided at all cost.

Transaction Fee: This is much more important if you’re average transaction is low and you do a lot of them. It’s the fee for each transaction you do. If you do few transactions, and the average ticket price is really high, then bargain for a lower discount rate. Always focus on whichever of these two will save you the most money.

When trying to get the best deal, the most important thing is going to be your agent though. If they aren’t a merchant account underwriter, they’ll be too far down the chain to help since an extra layer of residual commissions have to be tacked on to whatever you get. Also the person has to be ethical. I’ve worked with several people in that business doing Internet promotions and run across some thinly veiled used car salesmen who are just out to stick it to people.

It’s why I recommend a friend of mine Charles, his background is military (he did two tours in Afghanistan) and law enforcement, and he’s an executive merchant account underwriter with several major banks. You can call him at 800-715-8053 and he specializes in reducing the rates and fees of existing businesses. You can also contact him online with a quote request at this secure form. He told me it’s really easy to save a business money, because most of the agents doing this use teaser rates which have since expired and the merchant is unknowingly paying way more than they should be.

Don’t go and create some weird set of menu buttons on your website and put it in some odd place on your site. When it comes to the main menu of your website, I strongly believe you should put it where every other website usually locates it. It’s almost considered standard to have all your main menu buttons on the upper left hand side of your website. And that’s exactly where your menu should be.

Marketing surveys tell us that’s the first place new visitors to a website look when they enter a new website for the first time. So why confuse them by putting your menu some where else? As humans we like certain things to be obvious and easy to find. Like the buttons to an elevator are almost always centered between the top and the bottom of the elevator door. Those two elevator door buttons are no different from the menu buttons on a website.

We all expect for them to be in a certain place. Can you imagine if a hotel put the buttons to their elevator all the way at the bottom near the floor. How many people do you think would automatically bend down to look down there? Or can you imagine if auto makers put the break pedal on the far right side where the gas pedal normally is in a new car you bought?

Even if you had a problem finding something in the real off-line world, you could always ask a nearby worker how to find something. But on the internet, there’s nobody around to ask! The internet doesn’t have workers standing around to help you out, so you must make your navigation extra, extra clean, clear, and simple.

Another secret of mine is to put navigation links or buttons at the bottom of each page. This makes your website flow more easily and it also has another major benefit. When your reader gets to the bottom of one of your web pages, he/she will probably be thinking.”Ok, where do I go now”

So I like to go ahead and already have a link or button right at the end of the page that tells the reader the best place to go next. It just makes logical sense.Your reader gets to the end of your article or sales letter, and there it is, a button right where his/her eyes were heading. A clear and simple button or link that is in the perfect order because it’s the next thing their eyes will see when they finish reading. Most websites don’t do this because the person who put the site together wasn’t educated about how effective this method is at keeping your readers at your website. This is a simple and effective way to keep readers from quickly exiting your website.

Because if your reader gets to the end of your article or sales letter and isn’t sure what to click on next, there’s a good chance that reader will just leave your website. And navigation at the bottom of each of your web pages makes that less likely to happen and this obviously gives you a better conversion rate. And this puts more cash in your pocket!

Also it’s very important that you have a “Home” button on every page of your website. I know that may sound obvious, but you wouldn’t believe how many marketers are failing to do this. And why is it so important? It’s critical to have a “Home” button on your website because many internet surfers/shoppers will enter your website through pages other than your main home page.

It’s very typical for your visitors to come from one of the many other links to your website that the search engines list. For example, lets say the search engines for some strange reason have listed your “About Us” page instead of your main home page. Well obviously your readers are going to want to see your main page and they’ll be looking all over that “About Us” page for a way to get to your main home page. They’ll be looking for a “Home” page button to take them there.

Another important feature to add to your website is a link that says “Bookmark” this web page. This is one of the quickest items you can add to your site to encourage people to come back again. It takes seconds to add this link to your site and it will pay off for years. Also make the title of the pages you’re asking readers to bookmark very descriptive and exciting. I say this because your bookmark is going to be appearing in the middle of a long list of other book-marked web pages. You want yours to stand out from the others. A good way to test this is to click on your own “Bookmark this page” link to see exactly how your site listing will appear in your list of favorites.

If you have no writing ability or just hate writing, then these articles may be for you. But I don’t like using these free articles because generally they are old and already on hundreds of other websites. Plus articles with free reprint rights have already been read by most of the people on the net.

That’s why I write my own articles. Because that way I know that they don’t exist on any other website on the net. And that way my readers and prospects know there’s only one place in the world to read my original articles and content.At my website. My articles and instructional information makes me stand out from everyone else and you can do the same thing I’m doing.

And another beauty about writing your own articles is that you can briefly mention your products and services in your articles and instructional guides. And even when you include these subtle advertisements in your articles and content, it’s still content! But now it’s turbo-charged content because it’s going to be taken much more serious. When you briefly mention your own products because they fit perfectly into your article, your readers simply see it as a recommendation and not a hard-sell. But be careful not to over-do this.

If you saturate your articles and content with endless plugs and ads for your own stuff, readers will quickly see through this and they will no longer view your articles as content. They will once again see them as ads. So you can get away with one or two brief mentions of your products or services that relate to what you’re teaching, but use caution. You never want your articles and content to have any flavor of a sales letter or they become viewed as just a sales letter.

They’ll think “How can I believe in this product when this guy can’t afford to pay $4 a month on web hosting. You’ll lose all credibility if you use free services because you’ll actually be telling your potential customers that you’re not making any money. It really does look pathetic when you see someone trying to tell you how great their products are that are being hosted on a freebie site.

The other terrible thing about free hosting is that the free hosting companies usually put banners on your website that take your visitors away from you. Don’t ever let anyone advertise on your website unless they’re paying you at least a couple hundred dollars a month for banner space.

You don’t want your readers and prospects being distracted and directed over to a different site unless you’re getting paid very well for it. As a rule, I don’t sell banner space or any ad space on any of my websites under any circumstances. I just can’t stand losing my traffic to other websites. The only way I can keep the big income rolling in is if I do everything I can to keep my visitors on my site and coming back to my site. The last thing I’m looking for is a way to send my readers and new visitors somewhere else!

Trying to cut corners on web hosting can slow your whole business down. You may save a few dollars a month, but you’ll end up losing hundreds or thousands of dollars over the long run because your website will be down more often, you’ll have more frequent slow server interruptions, overloads, bogging down, sluggish servers, etc.

Cutting corners on web hosting also means you’ll have slow tech support and you’ll end up on hold half the day. Or you may even end up having to get tech support by email which is horrible if you have to wait 2 days to get a reply to your email problem. So don’t cut corners on web hosting.

For those of your who want to build a website by yourself using easier software you can try www.Tripod.com, www.AngelFire.com, www.FreeYellow.com, www.HomeStead.com, www.FreeSiteTools.com, or even AOL.com.

Aol members can call AOL and ask for their free website building software or do a keyword search for it while logged in at Aol. But again, just be sure not to host your website with those companies. Just build your website there. Then upload it to your own domain name after you use their tools and their website to build it. If you don’t understand how this works, you can call me at 530-222-1659 and I’ll explain.

The websites I listed above are all great sources for people that don’t have any extra money to spend to have a professional website built. If you honestly don’t have any extra money to have an expert build your site, then any one of these companies above will be a start for you. But I really believe in doing things right the first time, so if there is any way humanly possible you can scrape together $100 bucks to have a professional build your site for you, then I definitely would. If you’re not prepared to spend a hundred dollars on your business and financial future, then you might want to re-think whether you really should be starting a home business at all. People that don’t want to spend money to grow their home business usually end up stuck at a J.O.B. the rest of their life. And the people that understand that their business needs money to grow bigger are the ones who find success.

1. “About Us” page – This page describes who you are as an individual or company and what your purpose of having a website is. It may tell a brief story of how you started your business, how it’s grown, who uses your website, etc. Anything you think is interesting and unique about you and your company is perfect for your “About Us” page.

2. “Contact Us” page. Be sure to have a “Contact Us” link on every page of your website so the people that visit your website won’t have to look all over for it. Believe it or not, people will actually think you are hiding from the public if you don’t make it extremely easy and clear how they can contact you. One of the best kept secrets to increasing your sales is to list your contact information in several different locations throughout your website. List your contact info on the top, bottom, and side of your page. It’s difficult to over-do this one. Obviously the purpose of this button and page is to tell your readers how to get in contact with you. This page should provide your phone number, fax number, email address, and physical mailing address. If it’s not possible for you to answer your phone during the day, you can still list your phone number as long as you have voice mail or an answering machine hooked up to it. Never list a phone number that is not being answered and doesn’t have voice mail or an answering machine. By the way, if you can personally answer your phone during the business day, you’ll immediately double and in some cases triple your sales!

3. “Privacy Policy” This button and page tells your readers your policy on what you do with your readers personal contact information. Your privacy policy lets them know if you sell their email address, phone number, or physical address. It’s standard for most privacy policies to explain that the company will never rent, sell or distribute any personal information except within their own company or network. You’ll have to decide if you want to sell your users information or not. If you do plan to sell your users email addresses, names, phone numbers, or physical addresses, then I would just completely leave the privacy policy button and page off your website. There’s no law that I’m aware of that says you must have a privacy policy posted on your website. But knowing our government, I wouldn’t be surprised if they starting forcing us to post a privacy policy on our websites.

4. “Home” – A button that says “Home” is absolutely necessary on every page of your website. It’s simply a “Must Have” item. That way your readers can always find an easy way to get back to your main or first web page. That’s just considered part of good navigation.

5. “Testimonials” A “Testimonials” button allows your readers to read actual letters or emails that you’ve received from satisfied customers in the past. These testimonials often explain some specific details of your product, services, or business in general that made your customer very happy in the past. Again, you don’t have to have a testimonials page, but these days you’re practically expected to. And if you don’t have a testimonials page, your customers will either think you’re a brand new business and don’t have any customers yet. Or they’ll think you’ve been around a while, but nobody really likes your products or services enough to tell you about it. Letting your customers believe either one of these scenarios is bad for you.

6. “News” “Updates” “Press Release” – These three different types of buttons all basically serve the same purpose on your site. They let visitors to your website know what’s hot within your organization. Many people on the internet are news junkies that always want to know of any exciting fresh news that’s hot off the press within your company or website. This is probably the least important of all buttons listed above, but if done right, this button and page will increase your sales and conversion rate. And as you know, that means more money in your pocket!

7. “Links Page” This page is sometimes referred to as your “Resources” page or “Other related links” page. This page only contains links to other useful sites that are related to your industry or subject matter. This page acts as a resource tool so your customers can learn more about your industry or subject matter. This page will probably not be a good idea for you to list in your immediate menu. The greatest benefit you’ll get from this “Links” page is search engine popularity. Yes, search engines give your website higher rankings when it has both incoming and outgoing links to other related sites in your same industry. Especially when they contain some of the main “Target” keywords as your website does.

The reason you shouldn’t put your “links” button in your regular menu at the top of your site is because the visitors to your website could quickly become interested in some other website you have on your links page and click right out of your website. Then you would have basically just given that traffic to the other companies listed on your links page. So I like to kind of keep my links button hidden at the very bottom of my page. In fact I don’t even like to make it a button. I just make it a text link that says “links” And I keep it really small because the only people I really want to see that page are the search engine robots that come to my site to scan it for relevancy and popularity in order to decide how high to list it.

8. “FAQ Page” – As you know, FAQ stands for “Frequently Asked Questions” and this is an important page for any site since as we talked about above, there are no sales people standing around on the internet. So if people don’t quite understand your website, system, program, product, or service, they’ll simply move on to the next site unless you have a good FAQ page that answers the most commonly asked questions of the people that visit your website.

Also try to view your website with different browsers. Test your website using both Internet Explorer and Netscape both. And also test older versions of them because obviously millions of people are still using older computers with older browsers on them. There’s a software program that automatically tests your website in several different browsers for you. Just log into the members only website to find out more about it.

I’ve seen many of my students find out the reason they’re losing a lot of sales is because their web page is coming up wrong, strange, or broken on different browsers. And it’s sad when they find this out after a year of spending bunches of time and money promoting their site. Another easy way to test your website on multiple browsers is to call up your friends, relatives, and business associates and ask them to type your website address into their browser on their own computer to test it for you. I recommend you have several people check your website for you before you decide that it’s perfect. Be sure to ask them which browser they’re using and keep track of that info.

The successful people of the past have taught us that sheep who just follow what everyone else is doing don’t make money! Original thinkers with unique original ideas, methods, techniques, and concepts make the big pay checks! And now I’m sure you’re saying to yourself, “Ok, so how do I make my website so original and stand out from all the others?” “What’s the secret to making my website refreshingly different than the rest?”

Here’s the answer: Don’t try to sell them in the beginning! Don’t just put a sales letter up on your website like every other website on the net!

Ok, so I know what you’re thinking now: “Well how can I possibly make any money if I’m not trying to sell on my website?” “How can I get people to buy without a sales letter on my site?”

I didn’t say you won’t have a sales letter on your website. You’ll have a sales letter, but it just won’t be the first thing your prospective customers see. The first thing you want them to see is your educational articles, tips, secrets, and content. If you want your readers to give you their hard-earned money, you’ll need to first earn their trust by teaching them what they came to your sight to know. For instance, if they come to your website to learn how to make money using their home computer, give them some excellent free tips first. Give them the kind of free information they’d normally expect to pay for. But don’t charge them a dime! Then present your sales letter to them after you’ve already given them a bunch of helpful free advice.

The average reader leaves a website that is immediately trying to push and sell him/her because sales letters are usually boring and irritating. Plus we’ve all been programmed to immediately resist and back away from sales people and advertisements. What do you do when you type in a website address and the website pops up and the first thing you read is a bunch of sales copy like “Get your credit card out and click on the order button right now!” “Don’t wait to order! I will only offer this deal to you for the next 3 mintues! Act now! I guarantee this is the best offer you’ve seen! You’ll never find a better one than this!” etc, and so on and so on.

What do you do when that’s the first thing you see on a website? Yes, you leave that site immediately. We all do! So it just makes sense that to make serious money with your website, you must do the complete opposite of selling at the beginning or first part of your website. Instead of ramming and pushing sales materials down the throats of your readers, just start out by giving them a nice freebie gift on your first page with no strings attached.

The gift doesn’t have to be something you physically ship out to them. No, it can simply be some good quality reading material that helps them out.

You’ll notice my site at OnlyReviews.com does not appear to sell anything at first glance. No, it just looks like a harmless little website that reviews famous internet marketers and business opportunities. Yah, that’s what I do there. I write reviews about famous marketing gurus, business opportunities, and money-making systems and I put them up on that site. People love to go there and read about a certain marketing system or person to find out the true story. Then when they’re done with the article, they see my ad at the bottom of the website and 9 times out of 10, they click on it because they like what I have said above and they want more. They now trust me so they want to find out about my business opportunity.

That website gives me a lot of credibility and since people know that I review business opportunities and money-making-systems for a living, they figure it just makes sense that I must know the ones that really bring in a serious income. They realize that I’m in a very good position to know what works and what doesn’t when it comes to marketing on the internet. They know I’m the best person to go to for advice and they know I always provide lots of content. So when they finally get to the bottom of every single one of my articles they always see a very subtle ad for my own business opportunity and they almost always click it. About one out of every 15 of those people ends up ordering from me. Now that’s a conversion rate anyone could live with.

So you now see the beauty of teaching people or educating them with free informational content before showing them your sales letter. My readers really enjoy the free reading material that would normally only be provided on a paid, members only website and cost $19.95 to get in. By the time my readers are finished reading their free marketing articles, they view me in a completely different light than the average guy selling stuff on the net. I now can show them my sales letter and they know for sure it comes from a very credible and honest source who would not mislead them. This is all because of my content. After seeing all the things I give away free on my website, my readers are actually quite curious how much they’ll get from me if they buy something from me. People know I’ve got the good stuff by now. My readers now understand that I don’t skimp and that I always give them good valuable products for their money. They know I’m all about content.

Then the idea behind Direct Marketing is to get the reader (your prospect) to take an action and do something immediately. Such as call a phone number, mail in an order form, visit a website, request a free informational report by email, etc. In my opinion, this is the best income generating kind of marketing because it’s very specific and tells the reader exactly what to do. And believe it or not, readers love to be told what to do. Yes, readers want to be told exactly what to do!

Readers don’t like being confused and don’t like reading un-clear materials or advertising. Readers want you to get right to the point and tell them exactly what you are suggesting they do right NOW! You’ll find that the people who read your ads don’t like playing guessing games and wasting their time trying to figure out what it is you are trying to get them to do. If you want the sale, you better just come right out and tell the reader the next step you want him/her to take!

There is another type of marketing that doesn’t really have a specific name but I’m sure you’ll recognize it when I describe it. This other kind of marketing is the stuff you mostly see on T.V. but also in some magazines and newspapers. It’s a “Get your company brand name out” kind of advertising like when you see an ad that just says “Ford Tough”, or a full page magazine ad that just says “Nike..Just Do It” in big black bold letters. Or it could be an ad that just says “We do it your way at Burger King”

I’m sure you’ve seen that type of advertising around in your day-to-day life, and I’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s non-specific, plain as you can get, advertising. It’s purely meant to build brand name recognition so you’ll choose their product later on when you’re out shopping. They know if they can blast their name in front of your eyes enough times, you’ll eventually feel like you know them and can trust them. They know this gives them extreme credibility and trust among consumers.

But that type of “Brand Name” advertising is also hugely expensive and can be a big gamble for the companies doing it. They usually need the help of an expensive, top-notch ad agency to give their ads the right kind of look and feel. The names I mentioned above are the type we typically see involved in that kind of advertising. It’s usually major corporations that do that type of advertising. And the main objective of these major corporations is to simply get an idea into the heads of the people who see their ads.

Since me and you are not major corporations, it just makes sense that we don’t want to do that type of advertising. We want to do just the opposite. As smaller internet marketers working out of our homes, we don’t want to just get a basic brand name or idea into peoples heads. We want them to take action right this minute and make some sort of contact with us right now!

We want to do the first kind of marketing I described above called “Direct Marketing” because this type of advertising gets things to happen and orders to occur immediately. As a small internet marketer working out of our home, we need to know as quickly as possible which ads are working and which are not. The best way to do that is to be very specific in your ads as far as what you want the reader to do.

This type of specific direct marketing is what makes testing your ads more simple. When you are telling your readers (prospects) exactly what you want them to do, it becomes very simple to find out whether or not they actually did it. And of course this is called “Tracking your ads” or “Ad Tracking.” And I’ll be teaching you the best techniques for Ad Tracking later in this course. But first, lets talk about…

Another Note: Never use pop-ups or pop-unders! These only irritate people and most internet surfers/shoppers have pop-up and pop-under blockers anyway.

On a different note, you’ll be much more successful at marketing your website, products, and services, if you collect and analyze your website statistics. This is going to help you plan your future marketing strategies even better. Below are some of the things you should know:

1. Some sort of identity of the people who are viewing your website. At a minimum your log files will show you the domain name that each user is coming from.

2. You should know which of your web pages is visited the most often.

3. You should know the amount of times each of your web pages are visited

4. Your log files will also tell you how long each of your readers stays on each page.

5. Your log files will also tell you what website brought your visitors to your website.

6. You should also know which times of day your site gets the most visitors/traffic.

Again, if your Internet Service Provider is good, they will provide you with a special log/control panel that will show you all of the statistics outlined above and much more!

By studying some of these basic statistics you can find out what parts of your website are not doing their job correctly and fix them. For instance, your log files might show you that one of your products is not selling well. You might think it’s just an unpopular or bad product to sell, until your log files show you that the link to that product is not even getting clicked on. And the cause of this could simply be that your page is designed in such a way that visitors just don’t notice the link to that product. So the solution might just be to bring that link up higher on your site to make it more visible and obvious. But without this knowledge from your web logs, you may have made the wrong choice by eliminating that product instead of realizing that nobody was finding it.

But only your log files can tell you if that page is not getting visited often or if it is getting visited often and people just honestly don’t want that product. After you make the change/fix to your site, you can then watch the traffic from the log files again to see if that correction made a difference. This is just one small example of how log files can be extremely useful. Your statistical log files are going to tell you all this and much more.

In case your Internet Service Provider doesn’t offer very good statistics about your website, you can always purchase your own tracking software. The best one on the market is called “Web Trends.” But web trends is for the more advanced marketer. If you’re new to internet marketing I’d recommend you just pick a website host that does offer good tracking and statistical logging of your website traffic.

Below are the things a program like “Web Trends” can tell you:

1. What your most commonly visited pages were.

2. What keywords or phrases people are typing into the search engines to find your site.

1. How long your visitors stayed at each page of your site.

2. The pages where there were client errors so that you can fix those pages.

3. The most frequent exit pages. These are the pages your visitors were last on when they decided to leave your website. These pages must be boring if people tend to leave your website while reading them. So make them more exciting!

4. The total amount of unique new visitors to your site and how many of them are repeat visitors.

5. Which pages your visitors stay on and read the longest. These are your best so study what you did on those pages and do it again to the pages that aren’t very popular or have high exit rates.

6. How many search engines visited your website or sent their spiders to rank your website. It’s nice to know what the search engines are up to.

7. Which other websites are bringing you the most new visitors. Since you have ads out there, this will help tell you which ones are paying off the best. Or maybe even a website owner you don’t even know has linked to your site just because he/she likes your site and this is bringing you major traffic. Now you can thank them and possibly do them a favor so they keep your link on their site. Maybe the two of you can even do a joint venture together. I’ve done this on two separate occasions and it brought me a nice chunk of cash.

8. If you offer downloads of software or anything else on your site, you can see which ones are being downloaded the most and the least often.

9. Statistics help you study the flow and movement of visitors throughout your whole site to make sure they come in where you want them to. Most importantly, you’ll be able to make sure after they come in, they end up exactly where you want them like on your sales page or your educational, free information page. Lastly, you’ll be able to make sure they exited on the page you expected them to exit on.

10. What operating systems and browsers your visitors are using.

11. What state and county your visitors are from. Geography can be important!

12. The statistical log files will let you know if you’re getting “Page Not Found” errors so you’ll be able to fix those pages that are broken or don’t exist.

The Web Trends software can do all of these things listed above for you. But again, Web Trends is only for advanced students. Your website host should be able to provide you with some of the info listed above. Just ask your internet provider about accessing your web stats or logs. Don’t go out and buy web trends until you consider yourself a highly advanced internet marketer.

Also, don’t forget, you can do some of your tracking using companies such as HyperTracker.com and AdMinder.com. I also list a couple other tracking companies inside the members’ only section.