The Key to Marketing Online is not much different than the key to marketing anywhere. It is not a big "fuzzy" secret that can be understood by only a few people. Take a drive down Anystreet in Anytown during these tough economic times. What do you see?

Closed signs? Out of Business signs? Not far from my house the only store for a particular franchise hamburger restaurant within miles went out of business at the end of June. This franchise has an excellent menu and some of the tastiest burgers available. Their burgers really resembled those of the 50’s and 60’s that put the fast food industry on the map. But those "happy Days" burgers were not fast food; it was their popularity that led to McDonald’s, Burger King, Burger Chef, Minute Man and other early fast food pioneers.

Hamburgers have not gotten less popular. Quite the contrary! The decrease in disposable income had led to a resurgence of hamburger buying. So – why did this franchise store go out of business? The answer is simple: lack of traffic.

Any for-profit business must have a positive traffic flow. There must be customers coming to the store, whether the store is on the Internet or on the street. Of course, your online store doesn’t really have to be a store at all. It can be a blog or a Squidoo lens or an information website on which you have products available or you display ads for various affiliate programs or Google Adsense or any of a dozen other programs like these.

How to Get Online Traffic

There are two types of traffic: paid and free. Within paid or free traffic, there are two types of traffic: general and targeted. Targeted traffic are those people coming to your site looking for what you are promoting. When you get a case of the "hungrys" do you just head out to the first place that sells food? I guess, of course, that depends on exactly how hungry you are. For the most part we have cravings for a particular item – like pizza. Neither you nor I head to McDonald’s for a pizza. In fact, most of the time we simply pick up the phone or go online and have a pizza delivered to our home.

Now we’re talking targeted, convenient and, in a sense, over-delivery on the part of the store. After all, we would drive to the pizza store, wouldn’t we? But the store gives us more than we actually need – they bring their product to us. A KEY to getting online traffic is to have a site that is targeted, convenient and over-delivers.

First, however, people need to know your site is targeted, convenient and that it over-delivers. That means you must find first time visitors. Or, rather, first time visitors must find you. I’ve become a big believer in blogs and Squidoo lenses. In addition to those items, you should join social media communities like Facebook, Twitter and Digg.

Over-Deliver on Social Media

Be a good friend to social media contacts. A good friend doesn’t knock on your door several times a day trying to sell something. A good friend tries to help you sell something. Let’s take Digg for instance. You can Digg an article, a post or a page you have written. Your fellow Diggers will do the same. Visit your friends’ Diggs and, if you like them, give them a Digg-up. If they are good people, and not all are, they will visit your profile, see your Diggs and give you a Digg-up. You can essentially do the same with Squidoo lenses and make friends.

You can post links to your articles on Twitter and Facebook without a sales pitch. And you can re-tweet your friends’ tweets. Nice people, again, just might re-tweet yours.

There are dozens of ways to generate free traffic to your website. Only a few are mentioned in this article.

Smoking is bad for you, right? Well, it ain’t always been so. Matter of fact, smoking used to be desired. It solved all sorts of problems. Of course, back then we didn’t have a Surgeon General who studied all the harmful effects.

Even Ronald Reagan, long before he was President of the United States, did TV commercials and print ads for Chesterfields.

Today there are numerous websites that portray smoking as sexy even though consensus opinion in the United States is that smoking is bad and only evil things come from smoking. So, let’s take a look at advertising from the past.

Wooooooooooie, pig sooooooooooie! They throw up a hot chick telling you how wonderful things are when you smoke. And you know us guys! We’re gonna do it if it makes a girl like us better.

Ronald Reagan, who later became President of the United States, promoted Chesterfield cigarettes. In fact, he said he was sending cigarettes as Christmas gifts. Who could resist the beautiful Christmas Card carton? I would say ‘Holy Smokes’ but that would seem a might … well, nevermind, I can’t think of the word.

Even the medical folks touted cigarette smoking. More doctors smoked Camels. I wonder if this is like the commercials you see today about More Dentists Do This and More Nurses Do That. Well, I ain’t seen no nurse commercials that I remember but, then again, I just might have been so taken with other things I didn’t hear what they were saying.

Hey Mom, Grad a cigarette before you even think about scolding me. It’ll help you calm down. And you’ll never feel over-smoked due to the Miracle of Marlboro. It’s a dadblame miracle, ain’t it, that smoking didn’t become popular and kill everybody. Yeah, right. I saw a commerical just last night about some drug to reduce the number of "cycles" a woman has from once a month to once a quarter, but it said something like the drug would kill you if you smoked. And I’m still trying to understand the connection between smoking and a woman’s cycle.