An often repeated mantra of the Internet is that "Content is king." Whether your goal is to lure the search spiders, achieve an enviable page rank for your site, or simply to attract visitors to purchase your offerings or click on your Adsense listings, the key is to offer valuable information. Web surfers are hungry for help with their problems, seek to find a new perspective on their lives, or simply crave the enjoyment of reading about their area of passionate interest.

You may have very valuable and unique information or products in which I am intensely interested. However, remember that I receive a zillion offers and recommendations a week so I'm going to read your sales letter carefully before I make any commitment.

Quite apart from the product quality I expect, I also demand that your offer and description show care, respect for my time, and an attention to detail that suggests you have really thought through what you are selling and haven't just "thrown something together" to make a quick, minimal effort, sale.

Those of us who spend our spare time on the Internet are exposed to unrelenting sales pitches for everything from clothes to books to health supplements to stock trades. Rather than the information, education, and entertainment we initially sought, we find we have entered an apparently unlimited yellow pages with colored, flashing ads exhorting us to pull out our credit cards and "Click Here.

When we buy physical items on line, there is obviously the need to wait for delivery. Make it as fast as possible, surely no problem in a world where things have to "absolutely, positively, get there overnight."

And forget those shipping charges and express delivery upgrades. Are you aware that the biggest discouragement to online buying is shipping costs? Increase the price of every item by a dollar and make shipping and handling free.

There have always been writers, through the ages, who complain that the best books have already been written. There are others who exclaim that every worthwhile story has already been told. Movie producers stick with remakes of old standards rather than risk untried directions. The world of art, literature, and music has become a vacuum filled with the merely derivative.

I am both a consumer and a marketer. I buy frequently online because I hate to shop. Before the advent of the Internet, I bought everything I own through printed catalogs and customer service telephone lines. Ordering online is easier and faster, assuming good site navigation and minimal credit card snags.

I market two books, an e-zine, various free reports, and some affiliate products.

There is a huge amount of material available free on the Internet. Part of the reason for that is tied to the beginnings of the Net when it was merely a source of information that was freely exchanged among interested parties. As the commercial potential of the cyber world started to become recognized, merchants gave away information to entice the public into using the new medium and becoming familiar with moving around the web instantly and effortlessly.

If you peek into the esoteric world of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), you will be greeted with a vast array of speculations, rumors, and theories of how the major search engines determine which sites get included in their listings and how a site moves to the top of its category.

If you want to take ten years of your limited time on earth to truly understand this stuff, that's your prerogative.

There is an old saw in marketing that very few sales are made on the first contact. Research has shown that it takes an average of five to eight contacts with a prospect before a sale is consummated. Smart marketers know this and that is the basis of the online proliferation of auto responders. Automatically, without the need for monitoring or adjusting, such a system will issue follow up messages posted to it, on a schedule that the sender determines.

I go onto the computer for information and entertainment. Like a stroll through the library or foraging through the bookstore at the local mall, I am looking for advice to solve my most pressing problems, a good novel that will transport me to a magical land, or something that will help me to grow and feel more positive about myself. I want to lose weight, look younger, and improve my relationships, my career, and my love life.