Here's a report that might help you out. This is the latest update on what works and what doesn't in online marketing (Dec. 2000).

I will take you through what doesn't work, first.

1. Blasting your ad to FFAs Avoid these with extreme prejudice. Nobody ever visits these anymore. Plus your ad is listed for only minutes.

2. Classified ads boards. These don't work either. At least not for Biz Opps Even in Yahoo! They don't work at all. Waste of time.

3. Blasting your ad to free opt in lists. Don't work. You'll get 2 to 3 responses. this wont guarantee sales. Free opt-in list work only if you use a particular method described below: http://verdeneon.net/$3_gets_$10/

4. Blasting your ad to paid opt in lists. Don't work. In order for them to work you must chose new lists, no older than a month and with under 500 subscribers. And even then you only get under 10 responses.

If you're thinking about these "1,000,000 subscriber" companies, think twice a about paying your $39.95 to these companies. These are just a bunch of useless free opt-in lists that everyone else is blasting to and not really paying to much attention to. Again you only get10-20 people per blast. It really isn't all they make it to be. It's all hype and emotional style propaganda.

5. Ezine advertising. Doesn't work. If you're submitting your classified ad to ezines, you're a complete fool. You need a top sponsor ad and you need ezines that have a large loyal following and increases in subscribers at least 100 per week. If this isn't happening, then you've wasted your time and money.

You must take in consideration that an ezine is viewed completely the first few issues, then the subscriber just scans the issue for any relevant topics, disregarding the ads completely.

Plus you need your top sponsor ad in several ezines just to break even. This can be very expensive and there are no guarantees on the success of your ad campaign even on large subscriber ezines.

6. Ezine Solo ads. Don't work. Again, same as above. Veteran subscribers do not read solo ads. In fact, they are annoyed by them. Only new subscribers read solo ads, so the ezine must be increasing in subscribers every week.

7. Banner exchanges. These don't work. Unless you already have lots of hits to your site. If you have 1:1 exchange and you have 200 hits a day to your site, then that's just 200 impressions you get on other sites, but it's not guaranteed hits to your site. So just forget that idea.

8. Banner Ad campaigns. Don't work. Some people say they do some say they don't. I'll tell you that you need a lot of impressions to make a "good impression" We're talking about 5 million to start with. This is really expensive. At a $1 CMP (cost per thousand) that's $5,000. This will guarantee aprox. 20,000 hits It's pretty good if you have $5000 hanging around.

9. Search Engines and Directories Don't work. They might have worked 6 months ago or earlier. I'll tell you why they don't work. URL submission to search engines is like throwing a basketball from one side of the court to the other and trying to make it in while there are a thousand other people trying to make it in as well in the same basket at the same time. It's ludicrous and useless.

Then once you're in, you have to be sure your listing is in the top 3 or you lose. It's that simple. So if there is a submission company that can guarantee top 3 for a popular keyword or keywords in the 5 major search engines and directories, then you have a chance to get some extra hits a day.

Note: All these variable must be there or you lose: Top 3; the right keywords; 5 major search engines. Again, taking all the variables plus what I mentioned before, it's riduculous to even try. Another thing is that it usually takes week even months to get listed. Forget about it!

10. Ad swaps. Don't work. Unless you swap strategically and even then you need to swap with many other websites to get a decent number of hits. And since you need to put the other site's ad on your site/ezine, your biz will look like a classified ad section of the newspaper and no one will want to visit your site again.

Ok, what works? There's only one thing you need:

100% GUARANTEED TARGETED VISITORS.

Any company that can guarantee a specific number of hits in a particular time frame is a "winner" in my eyes. This is crucial for any online business. You have to get results. You need guaranteed traffic. Once you have that traffic it's up to you to get the visitors in a confident buying mood.

But I will say from experience that traffic is the key. The biz with the most targeted visitors wins. That simple.

You can control everything that happens on your site, from ad copy to delivery. So that is your job; to get everything on your site working smoothly. You must now get control of your traffic.

That's the only way to succeed online:

100% GUARANTEED TARGETED VISITORS.