By Dan Seidman

Marketing experts like Jay Conrad Levinson, Joe Sugarman, and
Jay Abraham agree perfectly on one thing: The first thing you must
do to promote your product or service is to identify your exact potential
buyer. The following strategy is an excellent lead-generation
system to discover the best people who are willing to spend money
on you.
On the Web, it’s fairly easy to locate watering holes where people
interested in your topic gather to drink of the knowledge and experience
the wisdom of their peers. Here are three strategic steps to take in
your journey to sell on the Internet.
1. Set up a free e-mail account. Use this address only for this
project. This keeps your existing e-mail account from becoming cluttered
with your research. Get it free from a service like Hotmail.com
or Yahoo.com.
2. Sign up for all e-zines that match your business or consumers’
market, using this new e-mail account. This web site lists all the big
and little e-zines: http://ezines.nettop20.com. You should also compile
a list of keywords for your business type in order to search out all potential
e-zines. In addition, go to the web sites of your clients and competitors
and subscribe to their newsletters.
3. Read through these e-zines each week to find out which ones
are quality newsletters, who is writing articles for them, and how large
each subscriber list is.

Now that you have found them, what are some possible ways to
get them to discover you and buy your product or service? Try these:
➤ Contact the best e-zines to ask if the publisher would review
your web site or service.
➤ Post messages with your opinions and expertise to the
subscribers.
➤ Write articles to share with the e-zine publishers. Remember,
they have to produce new content for each issue. Your offer of
help is greatly appreciated. A simple formula to construct an
article is to describe a problem, make it worse (share the consequences
of the trouble), then offer a solution (perhaps
yours!). But don’t blatantly promote your offering.
➤ A great way to leverage other writers who are already contributing
to these e-zines is to e-mail them and comment on
their articles. Be sure to mention that their writing caught
your eye because your expertise is in that business area and
you respect their insights. These can be turned into great
strategic alliances. Of course, visit these writers’ web sites and
sign up for their e-zines.
➤ Consider placing ads in the best e-zines—if you can, contact
other advertisers who said they make money from their ads.
Just begin to invest a little time communicating with others in
your marketplace and you’ll find a herd of buyers. And don’t forget to
stop and enjoy the chance to sip from others as well. You just might be
someone else’s buyer, too.
Target your market on the Web and you will sell more! Good
hunting.

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Dan Seidman is a speaker, author, and coach who manages the awardwinning
web site SalesAutopsy.com. His new book, The Death of 20th
Century Selling: 50 Hilarious Sales Blunders and How You Can Profit
from Them, is available by calling toll-free 1-877-613-7355 or visiting
www.salesautopsy.com/book.html. Dan can be reached at dan@sales
autopsy.com. He is also available to speak at your sales conference or
trade show on these very funny stories and innovative selling strategies.