I always worry that I’m going to get in over my head with new technology … no matter how simple it may look to you, I tend to get myself in a predicament that winds up being painful. I’m not what you’d call a technophobe. Technoboob is more accurate.

I’m very detail-oriented when it comes to writing. But when the subject is technology, I often stick my fingers in my ears.

Quick story. My mother was a systems engineer for IBM for 28 years, starting in 1954. When I was in junior high school, she often took me to her office in Hammond, Indiana, so she could work on a Saturday afternoon.

Year: 1960. Picture a huge office - to me, at age 13, anyway - filled by … a single computer. And from the computer were big cables, connecting to peripherals in corners of the office. And on either side of the actual computer - which probably had a footprint of 200 square feet - were 5 desks, manned (womanned?) by punch card operators. Every program was a huge set of punch cards, each with a certain pattern of 0s and 1s punched out.

It was all absurd to me.

About 1978, when the Commodore-64 and the TRS-80 personal computers came on the market, I told my wife, “No one will ever buy a home computer. They’re way too complicated.”

Now … I have other technoboob credentials, but that comment certainly should give you the idea.

Which brings us to Twitter.

(If you want to join me on Twitter, go to http://Twitter.com/rden)

Like all these gadgets, I’ve resisted Twitter for quite some time. But now, friends have pointed out some very good marketing reasons to use it. For instance, you can target all the Twitterers who are using the exact keywords your prospects would use. That’s pretty hot. I’ll talk more about it in another post.

But here’s the point right now. You can follow those people on Twitter, and when many of them follow you back, you can send them a message like this:

Thanks for the connection - I value it. If you’d like to talk and network, add me on Facebook: http://profile.to/RichardDennis

That is 124 characters, under Twitter’s 140-character limit. You’re not trying to sell anything, and it’s not pushy - which is important, this being the social media. Those who friend you on Facebook are, I think, pretty hot leads for you. They are tweeting about a highly-relevant keyword phrase (which we have discussed at great length on this blog), and they have followed you off Twitter, over to Facebook, and added you.

Very good indication that this is a person you may be able to build a long-term, mutually beneficial relationship with. And this system could be an easy way to feed your net traffic machine every day.

What do you think?

Richard Dennis

Back in the 1970s, Frank Sinatra sung a song titled, “A Man Alone.” The song captured both the wonderful feeling of self-sufficiency … right alongside the yearning for companionship.

Online, doesn’t really matter if you’re man or woman. To a large degree, most people feel alone. You wonder how to make your website profitable … without throwing money away. It’s a high to be making those decisions, but often, you wish you had the counsel of someone who knows what the heck they are doing.

So what do you do about traffic?

Everybody knows there are lots of ways to buy it. A few:

1. Pay-per-click advertising such as Google Adwords & many others.
2. Banner advertising on other people’s websites
3. Advertising in related ezines
4. Buying website traffic from a traffic broker

The problem: there’s a learning curve. You will almost certainly spend more money than you make for awhile … and it could be a long while.

It’s also obvious there are lots of ways to get free advertising. A few:

1. Free classified ad websites
2. Traffic exchanges
3. Safelists
4. Email gizmos

The problem: you can spend a lot of time and usually get not much return. Actually, it’s a lot like … the paid advertising above.

A Completely Different Solution

Fact #1:

Another free resource that a lot of people have tried using for advertising is the social media … such as MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, etc. But advertising in your MySpace profile just doesn’t work because people are looking to make friends, not to be advertised to. So they resent it.

And that goes for all the other social media.

Fact #2:

Another free resource is the regular search engine listings. Search engines rank web pages based on several factors, including page popularity. Most people don’t have a clue how to make use of this fact. But this is certainly the best traffic you can find, because these searchers are typing in the exact keyword phrase they want answers for … which means they are really, really targeted. That is exactly who you want on your web page.

The focus of the Net Traffic Machine is to show you how to use the social media - NOT FOR ADVERTISING - but to use it to get your web page highly ranked by Google & the other search engines, so you are getting this best kind of free advertising - producing highly targeted traffic.

Once you are set up, your job will be simple. You’ll need to do it consistently, but it won’t be difficult at all, and it will get you the results you want … at the price you want (zero).

Most people know how important it is to focus and to not be spread all over the universe when they want to reach a goal. The Net Traffic Machine will let you focus on just a single way to generate traffic … so that you don’t have to waste time on all those others that cost money and mostly don’t work. That is a pretty good plan, from my experience.

Take care,

Richard Dennis