Why are you having to set your e-mail anti-spam program to delete or deny dozens of variations of spellings for any single word? Why are businesses and individuals constantly looking to find ways to send you e-mail for products you absolutely don't want?

They're desperate.

Somewhere, they accepted a lie that promoting a certain product would bring them riches...and they invested much time and money to promote this thing...being told all along how much money they will make. There must be money in it if so many people are doing it...right? Then...often after just a short time, they realize there are very little profits...not even enough to cover their overhead, not to mention putting some food on the table.

Having been lied to by a company that has spent nothing of their own and has enticed you to spend your money to promote their products, you can very easily end up becoming desperate to finally succeed. It's hard for the person to fathom that nobody wants the product they are selling. The mother company makes it appear as though all the other sales people are doing great. There must be something wrong with you.

At this point, the focus changes from doing the practical to doing the desperate. It now appears normal and fine to attempt to trick people into buying your product or at least visiting your website. The focus has changed from actively performing a business to just driving cattle. The reality is that if you spend $1000 to sell $10 of merchandise, the company you are selling for made a clear $10 sale and you paid $998 (after your $2.00 commission) to do it for them.

I had a recent encounter where an EBook Wholesaler made a enticing offer that you can have all the rights to sell all the e-books you want. No matter how much you make, you just pay a $49 set up fee and then only pay $29 a month. It sounded good, but upon joining and visiting their forum, I immediately realized there was something not right.

The members and managers in the forum were obsessed with finding and flushing out other members who were selling these e-books at below suggested retail prices...even though these were just suggested prices and you were allowed to charge what you want. My first thought was "If these people were making money selling these e-books, why would they be wasting their time and focus on such a trivial thing."

As it turns out, the whole forum thing was a farce to make the members believe upper management was helping them by showing them that the reason they weren't making sales was because of people underselling them. Eventually, I was one of the under-sellers. When the books weren't selling, I eventually dropped the prices and was eventually asked to voluntarily leave the program when I explained that the books were not selling and that I was totally unsatisfied. I was promised a full refund since I had not sold a single book...even at the low prices. I never got my refund and was immediately locked out of the forum so that I could not "Spill the beans to other members". Meanwhile, they got my $49 and three monthly payments of $29, for a total of $136.00 . That's not a bad profit for them, considering they didn't sell a single book.

I knew I was taking a risk going in when I looked past the one Tell-Tale sign that I know I shouldn't have let get past me... Never Join A Program That Requires A Monthly Fee. Whenever a place promises their program will make you money, but they want a monthly fee for your privilege to use their program, walk away. It doesn't matter how good it looks...it doesn't matter how many other people appear to be involved...none of this matters. Walk Away.

If a sales program is really good enough to make consistent money, a legitimate company would work from a commission. This guarantees fairness in both directions. Businesses that charge monthly fees for you to sell their products, don't think very highly of the possibility that you will sell their products. Walk away.

If your site does not make sales as a direct result of an advertising campaign, be it PPC, newsletters, writing articles, submitting Press releases or banner adverting, your sales campaign DID NOT fail!

Every company that ever placed a TV commercial or placed an ad in a magazine or newspaper, does not conclude that their ads failed if they didn't make a sale the moment the customer saw them. Granted, the internet has increased the capacity for a customer to react quickly to your ad and follow up with a purchase, but you can't gauge the success of your ad campaign on those few individuals.

Let's say you spend $300 one week on an Overture PPC (Pay Per Click) ad campaign. Whether there are sales or not, a few other priceless things happened:

• Some of these people book marked your site
• Some of these people signed up for your newsletter
• Some of these people left through links that may have provided your business partners with sales or leads
• Some of these people saw your logo for the first time
• Some of these people saw your logo for the twelfth time and have a better idea of what you do

Now, I'm not saying to just keep dumping money into PPC if you don't see some results, but no matter what kind of advertising you do, keep in mind that many of your sales or leads may come at a much later date than when you did the advertising. Individuals who get more accustomed to seeing your brand, are more likely to make an eventual purchase.

With this in mind, it would be better for you to pay for advertising that gives you greater lengths of exposure as compared to mass volumes today. Which of these two situations might have the greater impact?...10,000 individuals that see your ad for the first time today, or 1,000 individuals that see your ad 10 times this month?

Trial and error is inevitable because there are so many things we just don't know when it comes to getting traffic and sales online. Some of the dynamics change daily as new technologies either add to your ability to make sales or work towards taking that ability away.

I define a "SandTrap" as anything that gives you the impression of building traffic, while really not doing that. A few common SandTraps are:

• Pop-Under and Pop-Up programs where you serve pop-ups or pop-unders on your site in exchange for your site popping up or under other sites or by placing a direct fee for a specific number of pops. Sounds like a good, no-cost way to get exposure.
  • Since most Browsers or Plug-Ins are stopping these ads from loading, your site won't be seen by most, but the program still counts each attempt to pop-up your site as a credit because they tried to show it.
  • Even if your site listing does get through, your site is generally caught within a frame system of the program. This means that if the customer adds a bookmark to your homepage, they have really book marked the programs homepage and will never find you again through that bookmark.
  • If your site does get through and is seen, most people will disregard the pop-up or pop-under and just close the window.
  • Odds are, your effective click-though rate will be about 1/10th of 1%. As a comparison, newsletter advertising will provide 10 to 30 times the results with click-through rates that are generally between 1% and 3%.
• Site Redirects are instances where companies buy expired domains that may have had traffic going to them. They don't build a website there, instead, they offer you the opportunity to have that traffic forwarded to your website, for a fee of course.
  • Your site is generally caught within a frame system of the redirect program. This means that if the customer adds a bookmark to your homepage, they have really book marked the programs homepage and will never find you again through that bookmark.
  • Most people who are redirected, may be confused as to why they ended up somewhere else and will simply close the window.
  • It's difficult for the program to ensure you only get the specific type of traffic that would be interested in your services and products.