The Savvy Marketplace

Targetted traffic for long run .

Traffic . The lifeblood of an internet business .

What can any internet business dream off ? Sales of course . But to have sales you need people . Not just people but people who are interested in the product you are selling . Below are listed the most effective techniques of generating traffic to your website or sales page .

A little warning first . You would have come across advertisements that you pay some dollars and the firm will divert traffic to your website . If you sign up you will also see a dramatic increase in your hit counter but rarely any sales . This is because the traffic that is coming is not interested in your products . You don’t want some 12 years coming to your website seeking fun but potential customer and newsletter sign up’s . Be careful before buying such services .

Here are the most effective traffic generating methods that will keep adding to your bank account in yearss to come .

1 - Get a good search engine listing . This is where people search for what “they are looking for” . They are interested in the product or service they are searching and it can be really rewarding to show up on the first page of search results in Google , Yahoo and MSn .

You can hire a seo firm or do it yourself . If you choose to hire someone then make sure they know what they are doing . If you choose to do it yourself then make sure you have good place to learn . Learning from people who are themselves novice can be harmful .

It is although recommended that you Hire someone as you don’t want to waste a lot of time learning something and then implying it . Let someone who knows handle the job while you concentrate on other methods and products .

Although if you have sufficient time , then learn it yourself and imply the methods on all your websites .

2 - Write articles that are closely related to your website content and add a resource box at the bottom with your link in it like your name , company name , a little intro and a link .Now send these articles to publishers and submit to articles hubs and article sites.Search google for article submit and you should find many article sites which publish articles. An example of a resource box is below this article . You can also mention some free offer you have in this box like I have done .

3 - Start a newsletter . The most important of the traffic program . I repeat it is the most important of any promotion methods you can do .

Once you have a large newsletter you can simply send an email and get many people ( subscribers) coming to your website to see your offer . People even have 150,000 readers of their newsletters.Just imagine that many people reading your offer with all the interest you want .

It’s not that easy although . Requires time,patience and a real good skill to make people read your newsletter . It takes only a click to delete an email.

People charge to write newsletter emails so the email gets read and acted upon . The intention is that people open the email and read it and click the link you have provided in it to your affiliate product or your own product .

You can join my free newsletter that is a course on all the three above . Getting search engine ranks , Writing articles and also email writing course and developing your own newsletter . I even answer specific questions from readers . Join by clicking the link below.

http://www.website-design-software-india.com/newsletter.html

Remember the newsletter is one tool that drives targetted traffic automatically .

4 - Email signature. Add a small line of your website intro in your email signature .So next time you send an email , your website ad goes along . My firm “also” designs websites and I often come across poorly designed websites . I then send an email to the owners suggesting them the changes that they can make to have a better website and I also tell them they should contact “their webmaster” .People contact me instead . I never said that I can make the changes or this is the cost of doing these changes but the signature line speaks for itself . Do it with your emails also . Good work gets you references and more business .

Don’t send spam emails . I actually visit the websites and send email only if I see something that can be improved .

5 - Banner exchanges. I am not very sure of the results that this method gets but as said something is better than nothing . If you are not doing anything else then try this method . Exchange banner ads with other sites that are related to yours .Like if you are a website designer you can exchange ads with graphics designers.

6 - Place advertisements on pay per click . This is where you PAY when someone CLICKS your ad . Two places which have very good exposure are :

-Google adsense

-Yahoo publisher network (YPN)

You can bid on a search term and websites with related content shows your ad . Example if you bid on “search engine optimisation” then Search engine optimisation related websites which are displaying ads with these programs can show your ad automatically . Start with a small investment and if you see the benefit then continue with more budget . Have a good tightly targetted landing page here .

7 - Advertise on other high traffic websites . Get ready to have a nice budget if you plan on this .

You can also run an advertisement in someone’s newsletter . You must although first make sure how many readers they have and the quality of the newsletter .

You advertised and people deleted the email . What good is that ?

8 - Affiliate program . This is where other people promote your products for a commission you have fixed . They get a portion of money from each sale generated from their lead .

9 - Offline advertising . Advertise in newspapers and magazines with your complete URL displayed in the ad .

Always and always track your traffic . Try to find out which program is working for you . Where are your targetted potential customers finding you . Be there a lot and you have a lot of them finding you .

To sum up I have personally found that search engine listing , articles and Newsletters are the most effective of all . You must concentrate on these more than other methods .

Sign up for my newsletter and find out more on all the three methods absolutely free . Sign up below and get the free course delivered . Sign up here

If you’re a serious online marketer with your own website or websites, or you promote affiliate marketing programs, you know how expensive PPC (pay-per-click) advertising can be. If you’re in a very competitive market, you know first hand how very expensive this can be. Your $1 and $5 clicks add up very quickly, and if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will lose a lot of money to your competition, and to the PPC companies you’re advertising through, like Google AdWords.

There are other online advertising options open to you other than just PPC. There are traffic exchange websites that allow marketers to earn credits to have their websites advertised to a whole community of many thousands of users within the exchange. Webmasters earn credits to have their websites and promotions added into the rotation while surfing through other websites within the traffic exchange system. Also, most of the newer click exchange websites allow you to purchase hundreds or thousand of hits for fractions of a penny, so you don’t have to spend a lot of time surfing. Some also have games to keep you occupied and amused while earning credits. Some allow you to sell or trade your credits for cash. Many of the newer traffic exchange sites are truly a huge benefit for online marketers today.

Another huge benefit for website owners from traffic exchange systems is the number of back links they receive for their websites. The more popular these click exchange sites become, the higher their page rank becomes in popular search engines. When your website URLs are in the website rotation, your click count increases, and search engines start to rank your website higher on the free search engine chain. You not only attract new visitors to your website each and every day from the exchange, but you have the ability to get your website higher in the free search engine listings.

One of the absolute best ways to get free, or very cheap, targeted traffic today is by using traffic exchange website. Having a large community of users, clicking through websites and advertisements to earn credits is a powerful way to get targeted traffic to your website. Having the ability to generate more free traffic, and options to purchase clicks for fractions of a penny, or cash in credits for cash, are just some of the benefits why these traffic exchange sites are so popular today and their popularity is growing by the day. All website traffic is not created equally. Traffic is one thing, but targeted traffic is king! These traffic exchange website deliver targeted traffic by visitors who are interested in what you have to offer.

Nothing will replace good old PPC advertising, but when you compliment PPC with click exchanges, just watch your visitors increase by the hundreds, if not thousands each and every month, and watch your sales increase as well. And isn’t this what it’s all about? So do all you can to increase your targeted traffic, and you will increase your odds of converting your visitors into paying customers. And that’s the name of the game my friend.

Copyright 2005 East Tech LLC

Andrew Daigle is owner and creator of many websites from DXInOne Free Training Site and Forum at http://www.dxout.com, to Google AdWords Training at http://www.adwording.com and Free Traffic Exchange at http://www.trumptraffic.com

For people engaged in web hosting, e-commerce or online marketing maintaining industry, traffic is just one thing that must be considered and treated with utmost consideration.

Experienced web expert considers traffic (meaning, the volume or the total number of people visiting your site) the lifeblood of the Internet system and such allows you to stay foot in a dynamic marketplace called World Wide Web.

The web contains a vast collection of web services and sites that competes for the same commodity.

No matter how long you have been working your way to be noticed in this unique enterprise, surely, you cannot afford to lose the chance of incorporating traffic generators in your site to help you get a good run for your investments.

What is a Traffic Generator?

A traffic generator is a powerful machinery for the creation of a unique web audience that works for improving the number of people who actually visits your site.

Several software companies who are dedicated in the manufacture and promotion of such products could vouch on the effectiveness of such feature and how it transforms your site into a mighty money-generating machine.

While all companies adhere to the basic standards of developing traffic generators, there are tips on how one would be able to get the most of traffic generators and reasons for securing one.

v Increase Profit Through Increased Visitors It was shown that the use of perpetual traffic generator have shown to increase visitor index for up to 927%!

You know for a fact that increased influx of visitors increases your chances of raising up your sale rate and thereby contributes to your fixed earnings.

Increased traffic means increased sales and increased sales means a demand in an increased product offering and expanding your opportunity for qualifying for advertisements with other pay-per-click banner ad companies.

v Spend Less on Advertisement Most novice web hosting geeks fall into some trap created b y advertising industries promising huge financial gains for enrolling into an expensive advertisement programs which helps you increase sales and visitor index points.

The truth of the matter is, unless you host a huge sale industry offering a wide range of product items and are investing a lot in promotion of products, you will not be able to get much of your own money you have leveraged to in this process.

v Identify Target Traffic Keep people who are potentially able to make some purchases in your site while keeping others and use them to help you advertise them.

Part of the process of keeping predetermined target traffic is creating an option where visitors would be able to keep their e-mail addresses and other pertinent information in order to keep up with the developments in your site about special offers or promotions and other related updates. In this way, you are both being creative and informative.

v Increase Revenue Potential and Diversity In succeeding chapters in your life as a web developer / web hosting individual, increased audience in your site would mean increased demands on features and product offering by your visitors and registered members.

In such instances, it will be a perfect time for you to include programs, create product or services and cost-effective softwares that your consumers will find essential and fulfilling to which they can leverage their money for.

v Occupy Higher Listings Among Search Engines Perhaps, one would ask about the effectiveness and the mechanism by which traffic generator does to your site.

The answer would be simple: it puts up your site in front of people who have searched on subjects related to your site. In a recent study, more than 98% of web searches are based on the first 5 websites popped up on the screen upon performing search options or features.

Upon application of perpetual traffic generator, it will work for you without you having to perform all that complicated stuff. Leave it to the developers yet work on your own product features and offerings.

? Benefits Individuals Involved In Affiliate Marketing Network industries benefits much from traffic generators. If you are an individual involved in network marketing, your first and last priority would be the creation of downlines who will work for you in the sales, distribution of your sales items.

It would be much of a hassle if you will do it manually. Rather, make use of the fruits of technology.

There are many different approaches and techniques required when optimising a website for a high ranking in your chosen search engine. In most cases loads of informative, relevant content is required as well as plenty of outgoing links to separate you from the cat like competition.

But one of the most important factors that the search engines consider when reviewing your site is the amount of other webmasters (the owner of a website) linking to your website. The reason that this is considered vital is because it is an off the page factor, meaning that it is not directly under your control. Therefore it will be an indication of your sites popularity when another site links to you via their web page. However it is not enough to submit your site to any webmaster in the hope they incorporate a link to you in their site.

The search engines look for links from websites of relevance to yours, popularity of that linking site and keywords relating to your site included in the link text. Google is unique in terms of how it evaluates a page. It uses a process called page rank which will give a website a rating of between 0 -10 in accordance with its popularity.

To find out the page rank of a website all you have to do is download the google toolbar and it will display on a green bar what the websites page rank is. This is an important factor but it is not an indication as to where a page will rank as google will analyse many other factors including the title tag, content, prominence etc.

The best way to increase you page ranking is to either add further content or find others to link to your site, both of which I will explain further down. To identify your link popularity visit addme.com and click on popularity. This tool will display all the sites that link to your or your competitor’s website, all you have to do is type in your web address. If you are finding it difficult to find websites to link to then visit linkpartners.com or type your competitors address into the link popularity tool and this will display all those that have linked to your competitors.

Where to place your link

There are many different ways that you can publicise your site on the internet, but below I have included 2 of the more popular methods.

Reciprocal Link

This involves you literally trading links with another webmaster and therefore increasing both web sites’ popularity. It is important that you target the correct web site, as a site that is not listed within google will not increase your popularity and will only consume more of your time, therefore it is best to target sites that have a page rank of 4 or above. This does not mean that you must reject all below this ranking it just means that you will have most success in increasing your popularity if you aim for sites with a page rank of 4 or above as these sites are already considered as popular sites by google. Treat your outgoing links like precious gems as you do not wish to be spotted linking to irrelevant sites. If your site has a low page rank then do not take it into consideration as most people are not aware of the page rank system, so you only need to inform webmasters if your site has a good page rank.

Approaching Webmasters

Once you have identified a relevant, popular site you will need to approach the webmaster. This is the most important part of your link campaign as it will determine whether or not you site is accepted. When approaching webmasters you should include the following:

• Your web address in the subject line

• Inform the webmaster that you particularly enjoyed reading a certain article or that you enjoyed browsing through the user-friendly forum or anything else that indicates to the webmaster that you have actually visited their site. This will show the webmaster that you are not just spamming masses of sites in the hope that your link will appear.

• Tell the webmaster why he or she should link to your site. Make sure that you state similarities between the two sites and other important information that will help sway his or her opinion.

• If possible include the webmasters name

• Inform the webmaster that you have placed a link to their site on your home page in a prominent position (do this before you approach the webmaster).

Promote your articles

If you enjoy creating content then you may consider writing an article and distributing it so that others can include it on their site. When the article is included on someone else’s site then it will include your link, therefore you receive another link to your site. You may want to set restrictions on the distribution of the article, such as:

• The article must include your name and link at the bottom of the page

• It must not be modified

• It can only be used on sites that have a page rank of 4 or above

• You retain copyright of the article

This will prevent un-suitable websites from displaying your article.

About The Author

Article copryright allfreehomebusinessdirectory.com and written by Gareth Mailer. Please visit for further, more comprehensive articles.

garethbusiness@yahoo.co.uk

I am always surprised, when I read articles and ads that instruct webmasters to exchange links with similar websites. I have tried it when I started to build websites. It simply didn’t work for me.

Traffic is the dream of every webmasters. Without traffic, you get no sales, no subscribers, no publicity, and none of your reasons of being online is reached.

Link exchange takes lots of effort to achieve simply because, you have to find similar websites to yours, find the contacts, send an email to the webmasters, and then wait for an answer.

After doing all the work, you may not get an answer or worse yet, you might get response from website owners who are trying to sell you their products.

Some webmasters try to automate the process of exchanging links, and join fee based services that coast $19.95 and up to help them get links faster.

Some of the problem I encountered when exchanging links with other webmasters are:

1- Webmasters who are willing to exchange links are desperate of traffic, or usually are not high traffic website owners. Think of it, if you get lots of traffic to your website
and added a link on your website pointing to a different website, you will be diverting traffic away from your website.

2-Who wants to send you traffic if you aren’t able to send them back similar number of visitors.

3-You probably ask how someone knows how much traffic I get to my website without reading my website logs. There is some websites that give you an idea of low or high traffic websites. A good estimation of website traffic is the traffic ranking done by Alex.com.

4-Another reason is that, some webmasters don’t link back to your website, even if you added a link to their website.

5-Some webmasters charge you a fee to add a link to your website. After you pay, you don’t know how long they will keep it. That by itself, will need lots of effort to keep
track.

6-Another problem with link exchange is that few links don’t help. You will need lots of links pointing to your website to make a difference. Again, because you are dealing with website that don’t have lots of traffic.

In conclusion, I don’t recommend the webmaster of any new website to try link exchange to create traffic to their website. If you want to use this technique, use it last. Again
I am not an expert on website traffic, I am a website designer sharing my experience with traffic building techniques.

I have created a guide in the form of an ebook to help starters build a website. You can find out more about it at: http://www.ebookfreestore.com.

It’s a strange world, this place we call the internet. Many things here are stark opposites of their real life counterparts. Take for example the following. Whereas blind dating is a most dubious manner of meeting people in real life, it is the norm in cyberspace. Whereas multi-level marketing carries with it a stigma of disaster in the actual world, it is a venture very much sought on the web. And whereas traffic tends to irritate us in our daily existence, online denizens would kill to increase the same for their websites.

Traffic, or the volume of users who visit your site, is what ultimately dictates the success or failure of your enterprise. You may have the best looking site on the planet, offering the most beneficial package for would-be customers, but if no one gets to visit it, all would have been for naught.

Thus, generating traffic for your online business should be of utmost importance. Here are some proven ways in increasing the quantity of users who would visit your site.

1. Use Overture. Overture is a Yahoo subsidiary that offers a very useful keyword suggestion tool that could help you come up with the right keywords. Using the right keywords would rake in more visitors for your site. Simply punch in the words that are related to your products or services, and see how many searches were made for those particular entries. The more searches there are, the more you should consider using those keywords in your site.

2. Submit your site to the many search engines on the web. People who are looking for particular information use search engines to determine their destination. You would want to have your website shown once a search is made.

3. Know the value of keywords. Search engine spiders are sent to fetch the keywords embedded in your site, so it would serve you well if your pages are populated with the right keywords you’ve acquired from Overture.

4. Provide quality content. Populating your site with keywords would be useless if done carelessly. Your visitors would be looking for information, and it would be best to give them that. Otherwise, they’ll just leave as quickly as they came. Remember, you want quality visitors, those who have the highest possibility of purchasing what you have to offer. You have to provide good, informative content for them so that they’ll stay. Try to publish articles or special reports on your site, where your keywords are strategically positioned in the body of your content at a density level of at least 2% (2 mentions of the keywords per 100 words of the body).

5. Consider setting up multiple sites. It has recently been discovered that the number of sites linked to yours influence your search engine ranking. By setting up multiple sites under different domains, and linking them together to form a congruent whole, you will be able to climb up the search engine ladder.

6. Link exchanges. You may also exchange links and/or banners with webmasters who operate a site that is related to yours. This would increase the possibility of cross-jumping visitors who would get exposed to your site and the products or services you offer.

7. Promote in online communities. Join forums, mailing lists, discussion boards and similar gatherings of people online. Most of them would start threads asking for help. Aid them with your field of expertise. Establish connections, and then invite them over to your site. Often, some of these mediums allow you to have a signature where you could put a link to your page, and this would most certainly bring in some visitors as well.

8. Create your own means of inviting past guests to visit your site again. You could build your own mailing list to keep in touch with them and offer some promos from time to time. Or you could incorporate a forum in your website to provide for a venue for your visitors to come together and discuss certain topics. This would simulate the semblance of a community they could call their own, and they would keep visiting your site to join in the discussions.

9. Constantly change your content. Not only will this method win the favor of search engines, this would also increase the possibility of attracting visitors you once lost.

10. Use Adword. Adword is a pay-per-click service that requires you to pay Googles in exchange for a prominent display of your website’s link whenever a search is made that is related to your keywords.

At the early stages of your site’s existence, traffic may come slow. But do not be discouraged into resignation. With the techniques shared in this article, you would increase the flow of visitors in due time, resulting in a high level of activity for your online venture. And with a prosperous site naturally comes a prosperous business.

© 2005 Gunnar Berglund

Gunnar Berglund
has been a “internet- hardworker” for the last five years
He publishes The meonit Gazette http://gazette.meonit.com
and run http://www.meonit.com and
http://www.grabinternetprofits.com

——————————————-

Writing for your business is unavoidable. Unless you have a staff to do it for you, you’ll have to answer customer email, and write sales letters, as well as promotional materials.

If you sell affiliate programs, you can avoid a lot of the customer service tasks involved, but in order to be successful with affiliate programs, you need to differentiate yourself from the other affiliates in a program. This means writing articles, product reviews, press releases, and other forms of communication that provide value to your potential customers.

There are ways to market though, and they’re all free, that can cut the amount of writing that you do, build your credibility, help you find ideas for products, and help your potential customers find what they’re looking for.

Below are four:

1. Networking

Networking is a way to connect with business associates, and sometimes, your potential customers. This is normally done through sites that allow you to do searches for those you want to meet.

Normally networking sites allow you to exchange messages, blog, exchange messages on forums or groups, and start conversations with others who are interested in your area of expertise.

This is the easiest way for you to find joint venture partners that can help you sell your products and services.

Examples of networks are:

http://www.myspace.com
http://www.ecademy.com
http://www.ryze.com

2. Forums

Forums are very similar to network sites. However, unlike networking sites, where you’re looking for business partners, or to sell business to business, with forums, you’re looking directly for your market. You can find out what others are shopping for by reading about what they’re actually talking about.

Studying the forums is what finally made me decide to create a blog on how to market on the internet for free. I kept seeing the same question over and over: “I’ve just built a website, but I don’t have any money. How do I market it?”

Forums will allow you to answer the questions of others and build your credibility in your aread of expertise. You can also find product ideas from what others are discussing.

To promote yourself, you can answer questions. If you’re passionate about your topic, and you consider yourself an expert, you should be able to easily answer questions. Give the potential customer enough information to be helpful, but give him/her a reason to visit your site.

If you don’t know what to say, ask questions. This will allow you to build links and learn your area of expertise better. It will also help you build relationships.

To find forums on your topic, do a search in a search engine and combine your topic with the word forums.

3. Free Classifieds

Although classified advertising isn’t as popular as it used to be, and most don’t use these sites, classified advertising can still be effective.

What you want to look for in free classified advertising are sites that rank high and get a lot of traffic.

Sites like Yahoo, MSN, and Google have groups where you can exchange messages and promote your products and services.

Unlike a lot of free classified ad sites, the messages on these groups do get read.

If you want to easily learn how to write good classifieds, study the small ads in magazines and newspapers. The ads you see repeated are making money. If they weren’t, the ad writer wouldn’t continue to run the same ads over and over.

4. Search Engine Optimization

If you market online, search engine optimization is a task you can’t afford to ignore. It’s amazing the number of sites on the internet that aren’t even in the search engines.

You’ll have a tough time being found online if you don’t optimize and then submit your site.

The easiest way to do this is to get a tool that will tell you how to optimize your site. Software like Web CEO, http://www.webceo.com, will help take you through the process of optimizing your site by helping you find keywords, as well as analyze your site to tell you how you can improve your search engine optimization to raise your rankings.

With search engine optimization, you optimize each page for a specific set of keywords. What’s important here is to know what keywords you want to be found for, who your competition is, as well as how much competition you have. Optimize your site and then make sure that you submit it to the search engines.

Although you may not like to write, and most people don’t, you can cut your writing tasks down by choosing marketing methods that don’t require you to do a lot of writing. Write in a conversational tone and help your site visitors and potential customers find the solutions to their problems. This will increase your sales and website conversions.

Jinger Jarrett is the “Internet Marketing for Free” lady. She will show you how to market your business on the internet and do it for free. You’ll get thousands of dollars in free internet marketing tools when you visit her blog at Internet Marketing for Free.

The only way to make money online is by pulling enormous traffic
into your website. If you are not getting enough visitors you
can’t make enough money. It’s pretty simple, isn’t it? So, the
next question is how to attract huge amounts of traffic to your
desired website?

You can find an unending list of websites and individuals
offering you various techniques and methods for generating
traffic…Well but I must warn you that most of them don’t work
even a bit. Anyone who claims to increase the traffic to your
website to a million free visitors within a couple of weeks is
simply lying and should never be believed.

Here we will be looking at those options that really do work and
do not make any false commitments while guaranteeing you the best
possible amount of traffic that can be generated.

Below is a list of the best websites on the internet that offer
either free or cheap targeted websites via free traffic exchange.

1. http://trafficg.com
2. http://www.hitpulse.com
3. http://www.10khits4unow.com
4. http://www.clickaholics.com
5. http://advertisingknowhow.com

What is ‘Traffic Exchange’?

Traffic Exchange’ is similar to banner exchange or ad swaps. The
only difference is that you need to surf these websites in order
to get more hits orvisitors on your website(s).

However, most marketers failed to get much result through traffic
exchange due to lack of knowledge. Putting a whole page of the
website will never ever bring the targeted traffic.

One needs to have splash pages in order to generate the targeted
traffic. A sample of splash page can be found at:

http://www.workpartimeathome.com/traffic/warning.html

The results that have been obtained till date and that you would
achieve will be truly amazing and really worth the time, effort
and money that would be spent to complete the entire process.

Eventually, you will have an unstoppable traffic machine.Until
then, see you next time and I sincerely hope this article will
help you to promote your website in a far better way than ever
before and generate the desired traffic to your website.

Ampuan Yussof has been actively researching on traffic
generation and works from home selling one of the largest traffic building information on the internet.
Discover the mind blowing secrets on how to generate free
targeted traffic at:http://www.thetrafficgenerator.biz/?ezine

Do you know who buys, or is likely to buy, your products, services, or information?

If not, you should be looking for demographic information that will help you make good marketing decisions.

You do not have to be a research guru in order to use demographic information. Just look for the results of studies other people have done and then apply them to your business.

For example, my audience is the mature market…people over 50. There is a lot of data on this group and more studies are being done daily. Some data I found indicated that older people are avid readers. They really like newspapers and magazines. If I was trying to find clients for estate planning services, I would know that I should advertise through newspapers and magazines, rather than spend money on television.

Since my business is internet-based, this information about reading tells me that I should provide a content- rich web site for my older customers, and that mailing a printed newsletter could be another way to develop my customer relationships.

How do you find demographic data? First, find out who might be keeping tabs on your audience. I know, for instance, that AARP surveys people over 50 constantly. AARP makes that information available on its website. I also know that Forrester Research (http://www.forrester.com) does studies on older people, along with many other groups. Yankelovich Partners (http://www.yankelovich.com/) has been a leader in market research on older consumers; and Age Wave (http://www.agewave.com/) collects tons of stats on this market for its website.

Although AARP data is free, research firms sell their information…often at prices that the small business or entrepreneur cannot afford. But, by reading their news releases and the snippets of data they make available to the general public, you can glean quite a bit. To find firms that do research on your demographic, check out MarketResearch.com (http://www.marketresearch.com/).

Another great source are the news release distribution services. You can sign up to receive their news releases by email. Common ones are Internet Wire (http://www.internetwire.com), Internet News Bureau (http://www.newsbureau.com), and PR Web (http://www.prweb.com).

In addition, there are search tools you can use to make your data collection easier. Copernicus (http://www.copernic.com/desktop/index.html) is search software that is downloaded to your computer. It will search most search engines for keywords and phrases. You can get a free trial version to see how it works. Tracerlock (http://www.tracerlock.com) is a web-based service that searches most of the news portals on the web and then alerts you by email when it finds your keywords. I have found this very useful and gladly pay its monthly fee. Spyonit (http://www.spyonit.com) is a free service that will spy on specific URLs or keywords and phrases. It delivers what it finds to you by email.

Don’t overlook the magazines and journals that are specific to your audience. For the older audience, I keep an eye on the AARP magazines, Readers Digest, Aging Today, and several others. Even a regular perusal of the daily newspaper will yield lots of information. USA Today is a great source of quick, easy-to- understand statistical data. Take a look at the NYTimes online, and sign up for The Wall Street Journal’s online version.

By casting your information “net” in this way, you are more likely to come across data that will help you devise better marketing strategies. In addition, you will find a lot of content for your website and ezine.

Now, if I could just figure out how to use the fact that the older market is an up and coming group for pet supplies (it’s true!).