If your like me you have searched on every search engine any possible way to advertise your website. I have filled out submission forms till my fingers have cramped up. I have looked at link farms, long boring articles on SEO, I even have articles sent to my inbox everyday in hopes of finding the next ??new?? way to attract visitors.

So now you have designed your site and your thinking it looks great. ??Who wouldn??t want to visit my site??? You have all your affiliates set up, you have your ads (by Yahoo, Google,??) and your ready to start making some money. You have your exchange links set up, you listed on every toplist you can think of and you even paid money on some Pay Per Click program in hopes of visitors. And you even have your tracking program in place so you can tell who is hitting your site and where they are hitting from. You even know what pages on your site are popular.

So why are you only getting first time visitors? Why do they only visit one page? Why are they not returning?

One answer - pop ups.

If you belong to one of those exchange link programs that provides pop up, pop unders,(pop up under the main page) or exit pops (as I call them, when you close your site this page appears) then you could be chasing away your visitors.

I consider my self to be an above normal Internet user. I have several websites that I have created and between them I have thousands of pages in cyber world. I know when I click on a ad or link and all of a sudden pop ups appear out of now where I slightly freak ??like whoa!?? and once I clear my screen I make a mental note not to click that button again. Imagine how a novice surfer is going to feel. They may never click on an ad again. That kinda defeats all of us using ads. You will get hits added to your counter but they wont be return hits.

In no way am I bashing these programs. But like any good web designer, know what tools are in your toolbox and know how and when to use them.