Any internet marketer knows how hard it is to get people to visit his or her website. Some companies are willing to pay up to $10 or $20 for each visitor to their site through pay-per-click campaigns.

What we sometimes overlook is that keeping a visitor is just as valuable as getting a new one. In fact, return visitors are even more valuable because they are more likely to take action, to purchase whatever you have to sell to them.

Here are a few tips on keeping your visitors.

1. Make sure your site gives your visitors what they want. Internet surfers have very short attention span, and there are millions of site competing for their attention. Your message should jump out at them and grab their interest from the get-go. It should be clear and specific. If your main business is selling Korean DVD’s, make certain that they get the message within the first few seconds. If they have to dig through your site to find Korean DVDs, chances are, they’d already left your site.

2. Keep your site up-to-date. When people return to a site they want to see fresh content. If you’re selling Korean movies, you’ll want to frequently update your site with new releases, special discounts, sales, etc. Updating your site on a regular basis lets your customers know you’re on the ball, that you’re diligent about your business.

3. Send out regular newsletters. Build an opt-in email list from visitors to your site. Place newsletter sign-up forms on as many pages on your site as possible. Send out regular newsletters informing your recipients about the latest updates, specials, offers, etc. Be courteous to your prospects by not sending them too much junk mail and by providing a means for them to have the mailings stopped at any time.

4. Incorporate forums and news feeds on your site. Forums and news feeds update themselves with minimal effort and maintenance on your part, so it’s a no-brainer to incorporate them into your site whenever appropriate.

5. Maintain a blog on your site. A professional blog can be a part of your domain, or you can link to an external blog from your site. The link should be displayed prominently. If your site offers professional services and products, keep your blog entries professional and relevant to the content. Keep miscellaneous personal rants away from your site as they can turn your customers off.

6. Incorporate third-party widgets to your site. Widgets can add special functionality your site without your having to write and implement the codes yourself. There widgets for chat, polls, newsletter signups, weather forecasts, and so on and so forth. Widgets are a good way to add bells and whistles to your site without the expenses of software development and extra bandwidth (since they’re hosted on external sites). However, use them sparingly as they could slow down your site and steal away your visitors (through the outgoing links that they display).

7. Make yourself unique. Chances are, there are hundreds or thousands of other sites in your niche competing for your target visitors. How do you stand out? How do you set yourself apart from others? Check out your competitors’ websites and assess their strengths and weaknesses. Are there certain features that are lacking on their sites that you would be able to provide on yours? Being unique is not so much about coming up with something totally new and revolutionary– although this would do the trick, too– it’s about filling certain voids and needs that are not being filled elsewhere.

8. Make your site fun and attractive. Your site should be easy and intuitive to navigate. The design of the site should fit its function and complement the nature of your business. Avoid flashing links, graphics, glaring colors and other elements that might annoy your visitors.

9. Collect feedbacks from your visitors. Feedbacks are a good way to engage your visitor and gather their inputs on making your site more appealing and usable. They let visitors know that you care about their needs and wishes.

10. Offer “free” things on your site. Sending out newsletters to people in your opt-in list offering them “free” this and “free” that is a good way to attract return traffic. In truth, nothing in life is really free. This probably explains why no matter how much the word “free” is overused, it remains a very powerful marketing technique. Although few people are foolish enough to think they’d actually get something absolutely free, with no strings attached, they’re always looking for extra perks and incentives to give them more for their money.

A lot of people have approached me about making it big on the internet. They’ve heard of the Jerry Yangs, the Jeff Bezoses and others who have made billions on the web.

Truth be told, these are the very tiny, almost non-existent, exceptions to the rule. Most people who enter the business never make it, especially when they enter a niche not related to porn or gambling. The web business is dynamic and challenging endeavor that requires an enormous degree of creativity and luck. There is no magic formula, and a lot of trial-and-error is necessary.

But not to get discouraged! While few people, including this blogger, have struck it rich, many have been able to make a decent living off the web. In fact, tens of thousands of people make a living selling on eBay and other marketplaces.

I think the key is stop looking for an easy way to make a lot of money. Instead, do what you love. The online business is fiercely competitive, where you have to go up against people from all over the world. It takes an incredible amount of learning, tedious work and inspiration to gain the edge over your competitors. It’s hard to get inspired if you don’t do what you love and, instead, focus on getting rich.

Online classifieds are an effective marketing channel often overlooked by webmasters. Online classified sites like www.craigslist.org and www.backpage.com get enormous traffic from people looking to buy and sell services and products.

Although not recommended for link building as they expire in 7 to 10 days, online classified ads represent an excellent source of direct traffic. They are best suited for products and services catered to local and regional markets but may be used for global as well.

Placing an ad is not as difficult as you might think. In fact, much of Craigslist’s enormous popularity is owed at least partly to the site’s fast, no-nonsense design and the ease of ad placement.

Many people ask me, how do you promote a blog? Well, a blog is a website, so you promote a blog as you would any other site. But since blogs tend to be more personal and informal than typical websites, traditional techniques used to promote, say an e-commerce site, are equally effective for blogs.

First your blog should focus on a particular topic matter. Some people like to use their blogs to write about whatever comes to mind or rant about the 1001 injustices that life throws in their ways. Even if your blog falls into this category, chances are, there will a recurrent theme that surfaces over and over, and that theme would be your topic.

Once you’ve decided what your blog is about, go to Google.com and search for popular forums on your general topic. You should get a bunch of results. Pick only a handful– not more than five– of the most popular forums to join.

But before joining make sure the forum allows you to have signatures linking to your site. This is the least they can do for you for the time that you will put into to help add content to the forum.

It’s important that the forums you join are popular because you don’t want to waste your time contributing to ones that no one reads.

After you join the forums, become active on them. Use them to raise questions, answer questions, give advices, debate issues, and so on and so forth. But be sure to include a signature pointing to your blog.

Your signatures helps to promote your blog in two ways: (1) by helping to build links to your site and (2) by drawing direct visitors from people reading your message. Therefore, it’s important that you have something interesting to write because if people like what you have to say on the threads, they’ll check out your link to see what else you have to offer. Writing one-line responses simply to get links is not recommended since you risk getting flamed by other members and appearing like a village idiot.

As I’ve mentioned earlier blogs tend to be more personal and informal than other websites. Since forum exchanges share these traits, they complement each other very well. I’ve often come up with blog topics by reading the forums and vice versa.

Another point to keep in mind is that your fellow members on the forums are your peers. It’s important to avoid writing in a way that is condescending or even pedantic to your readers. Instead, write in peer-to-peer rather than a teacher-to-student perspective. This is true for both forum participation and blog entries.