No magic buttons, but here are my preliminary thoughts

I know you HATE long reading about ways to make money online etc - It's not perfect because I am Not an internet master. I am not making a fortune with my efforts...I don't have a magic key or program for you that says "if you sign up for me today, you could be rich tomorrow" - BLAH BLAH BLAH - I'm a avg guy trying to make money online, that's all -

First, here are my disclaimers (as if the previous paragraph wasn't enough lol!)

I am Average - Not a guru, not an expert, not some online marketing master who can give you the Magic Button where you do nothing and still make money

Now that is out of the way, I'm going to try to give my own guide to generating traffic & creating a real online business that will benefit all of us.

Here are MY Goals:

Residual Income - The real kind where you and I both work LESS and earn MORE.
Auto-Pilot - Programs that do a lot of the follow up FOR YOU (it's a lot more work otherwise!)
FREE Programs - Easy to "sell" and get lots of signups for - Surfers want Free, Period.

Simply Put - My goal is to build downlines and earn RESIDUAL income with the least amount of work as possible. I don't want to call people - I don't want to spend hours online - I want to build an online business where I can help my dowline succeed. If they succeed, I will succeed...It's that simple - So despite all the big promises and wild claims of online marketing, I'm going to "TRY" and stay honest - I know that sounds stupid, but I can't help it.

Now that we have MY goals out of the way, we can talk about HOW we get to the above -

This is MY current project and recommendations on how to START:

I am trying to implement a "funnel" system - My Main Income Generator is GDI. Now you may have heard of GDI. I know I had heard of them for several months. I never signed up because it didn't seem like a good opportunity. All I saw was the same boring lead pages everywhere.

Why did I choose GDI? Because it's an incredibly powerful residual income tool. IF you can get signups and those signups get other signups, you can make SERIOUS money with GDI. The keyword of course is IF - So GDI CAN BE a great program - The only question is HOW DO WE MARKET IT SUCCESSFULLY?!?!?

Do I have the "formula" for successful online marketing? Afraid not. I don't have pages of income statements I can show you. I don't have my Paypal Cashouts to show you proof that THIS WORKS.

I have what I feel is a good start...

Here is what I promote on traffic exchanges:

http://paulsteam08.googlepages.com/home

http://makinezmoney2.googlepages.com/home

http://splashpagemaker.com/splash/?rid=1723&id=2046

http://www.hits2u.com/?580867

I promote these main pages for a few reasons:

1: Traffic Exchange Surfers Need FREE tools to promote THEIR Business
2: Splash Pages are much more effective in General (again, my opinion but short & sweet is key)
3: I'm TRYING to be different - I can TELL you I'm different 1,000 times, but how do i PROVE that I'm actually going to be here for YOU when you get stuck? I can't prove it - but i can differentiate myself from the crowd and that MIGHT be enough to get extra interest.

So that all sounds great but WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF THESE PAGES?!?!?!

It comes down to 1 "end" purpose - Promoting GDI - The more signups I get into my free programs, the more likely I am to get people who see the value of joining GDI. It may take 100 free signups to get 1 real person involved, but that comes down to a simple numbers game. If I get 100 signups and 1 person joins GDI, then all i really need is MORE TRAFFIC. 200 signups would be 2 GDI signups, right? This is approximate and completely exaggerated of course. Some programs will get you 100 signups and ZERO that follow through, while others you can have 5 signups and get 4 people who understand how great it is and work hard with the program.

So how do we get enough signups so that we end up with enough "real" prospects?

Getting a lot of free signups is great - It means you are learning about what ACTUALLY Works, at the very least. But you don't need 50 free signups - What you need is a System that goes step by step and holds their hand and walks them through the process. For instance, Home Income Team is the first site that taught me HOW to promote, but their system doesn't do automatic follow up and it doesn't guide signups through each stage. What does? SpiderWeb & GRIN team! So what do we do if we believe that is true? We try to get signups for SpiderWeb & GRIN because those programs will be LEADING prospects into the business. See the difference? With SpiderWeb especially it walks you through each step - Using video training and thorough explanations to map out WHY the SpiderWeb System Works.

Wow I got off on a serious tangent there, but my blog is for tangents and my own thoughts :)

Basically, here is what I am doing:

I got the Home Income Team Traffic Upgrade Offer - This gave me pro upgrades at 7 exchanges. It's $54 (2nd chance - cheaper if you sign up for the one time offer). I like most of the exchanges it gives upgrades for.

In order to get 20k hits/month I need an avg. of 2k hits/month for 10 different exchanges

With the HIT Traffic Upgrade I get the montly credits and a better surfing ratio, but i still MUST SURF to get value here. I HATE surfing - It's all work in my opinion - So I want to do the least amount of surfing as possible -

You Need 500 hits/week OVERALL on 10 exchanges to generate 20k hits/month. You will not get 500 hits/week on EACH site unless your a surfing maniac (i'm not!) so you have to allocate your credits and choose your surfing time wisely!

I pay for packages at 3 or 4 exchanges. I buy the 5,000 hits/month package from SWAT Traffic, the 3,500 hits/month from ILoveHits and 3,500 hit package from HitPirate - In total these cost me $36/month - BUT, this is 12,000 hits/month I don't have to surf for. For me personally, my time is very valuable - $36/month for 12k hits is a great deal!

If you can't buy hits or want to stay free, I totally understand - In this case, spend your time at the following!

HitSafari - 2:1 exchange ratio BUT lots of bonus credits
EasyHits4U - 1:1 exchange ratio - best free site around
ClickRanch - 2:1 exchange ratio but good results here
TrafficSwarm - Decent free hits, but the Hoopla "bounce" report makes me leary
Link Referral - This is your #1 source of Targeted Advertising, Period!
WebBiz Insider - Great surf ratio and even more of the business aspect

This is a pretty good start for STRICTLY free traffic. My only thing is you have to spend more time to get your hits, vs. spending a bit and getting a LOT of hits

I have totally lost my place - but this is free hand and not very well organized.

Don't give up! Promote FREE programs and you can succeed. Spend a little and surf less is my motto - If you can't spend, use my best free exchanges above and you'll do fine. You can generate a lot of hits from those above.

I will come back and finish this post. I know I keep meaning to get this properly set up so you can just "plug it in" but I'm afraid I'm still learning myself - I still don't have THE ANSWER - All I can clue anyone into is what I'm doing. What I do is working, but it's a long process.

It's a super long tangent and my thoughts are running all over the place.

In Essence!

Promote Free Programs that help other surfers promote THEIR business!
Focus on Building Leads that you can follow up with
Your programs should be FREE!
Differentiate yourself

There is still more to come - I thought I had this post all "figured out" but despite me doing this for several weeks, I still don't have the great answer - I'm still working though and will figure out how to get my thoughts into an easy to follow system that can be duplicated for success.

Until then....