How do I get traffic to my business website and grow an email list?

”I have a home-based business and I’ve launched my Web site. But I have no visitors or sales. What can I do?”

Here’s one proven online marketing technique that can work for many kinds of businesses. At its heart, online marketing is most effective when you e-mail people who already know you.

Successful online marketers build their own list of prospects, with e-mail addresses, known as a ”house file” or ”e-list.” They then market to the e-list via e-mail. Here are the steps to follow.

Authority Web Site

Step 1. Create an ”authority Web site” designed to establish you as an expert in your field. The authority site is your campaign headquarters.

Step 2. Create the following pages for your site: home page, about your company, about you, products and services. Each product summary should link to a page that gives complete product details.

Step 3. Create a section called Free Articles where you post articles you’ve written about your specialty. Visitors can read and download these articles at no charge.

Step 4. Write a short free report — white paper — on your area of expertise. Visitors can download the PDF free from your site, but to do so, they must register on your site, providing their e-mail address.

Step 5. To register, visitors can also sign up to receive a free monthly e-zine (online newsletter). When they register, give them an optional check box to say that they agree to receive offers from marketing partners. The box should read, “Yes, I also want to receive special offers from your marketing partners.”

Step 6. You can’t offer too much content. The more content, the more visitors — and the longer they will stay at your site — and the more likely they are to spread the word to other people. A useful feature to add is the ability to send articles by e-mail to others.

Build a Large List of Qualified Prospects

Here’s how all the pieces come together.

Step 7. You then drive traffic to your site with the aim of getting visitors to register so they can get the free report or sign up for your free e-zine.

Step 8. The big goal is to quickly and inexpensively build a large list of qualified prospects. The reason is simple: most leads and profits come from repeated e-mail marketing to your house list.

Step 9. Several online marketing tactics can generate visitors to your site. They include: free publicity, e-mail marketing, banner ads, co-registrations, affiliate programs, search engine optimization, direct mail, and e-zine ads.

Step 10. The key to this whole strategy is testing. You conduct numerous, small, inexpensive tests. If they don’t work, you drop them. And when you find things that work, you pour money into them.

Maximum Acceptable Frequency

At this point, you are probably wondering: how often can I market to my house list via e-mail?

Every time you e-mail your house file, a small percentage will unsubscribe. This is the opt-out rate. To find the maximum acceptable frequency for your e-mail messages, increase your frequency incrementally. When you see the opt-out rate jump, you have reached the maximum, and you know to stop at that level.

Many marketers have discovered that their house files are much more receptive to receiving more e-mail than they expected. Some market different offers to their house list two times a day or more — and are successful doing it. From your point of view, this is good news: the more often you can mail an offer, the more money you can make.

The best part is that marketing to your house file by e-mail is extremely profitable, because the cost is almost zero. You have no postage or printing costs, and you don’t have to pay $100 to $400 per thousand names to rent outside e-lists.