Just do not starve your potential customers by forgetting to have the food they like:

• ample helpings of benefits

• tips rich in protein (practical)

• automatic weekly feedings (like a newsletter)

If you (affectionately) look upon your potential customers as if they are WIIFM monsters, and understand how to care for and feed them, there will be no scary nightmares (unprofitable websites).

A WIIFM monster is someone that is only interested in: what is in it for them.

It would take days to describe everything you need to know about these monsters. In the end you will see that those monsters are actually cute, cuddly, likeable monsters.

Just by observing these monsters (from a safe distance) you can learn so much ...

The moment one of these monsters arrive on your website, you need to start feeding them - immediately. It is best to have many automatic feeders at your website, those monsters are hungry - they must have food, NOW.

An automatic feeder used often is an autoresponder feeder. These monsters can pick what auto-feeder they want to feed from, and start receiving food in minutes. These automatic feeders feed the monster for days, one easy-to-digest helping per day. The monster has the option to at any time stop the feeder.

I MUST warn you about something here. If you do not have a facility for the monster to stop the feeding, the monster will explode. This is NEVER a pretty sight. Humans get their websites taken away, their email privileges revoked and so on.

Another food source is eBooks. They can chew on this for days, before they come back for more. The tastier (valuable, practical content) your ebooks, the better the chance that they will come back to YOU for more. Always have a footpath (link) in the eBook that the monster can find you again in the big jungle where everyone shouts to them: feed here for free, FREE: feed here ...

There are many different types of monsters that every website must have food for, but for now I will just tell you about the WIIFM monster.

This is the biggest monster of all. If it is not fed well, feeding all the other little monsters is of no use (like the freebie monsters).

The what-is-in-it-for-me monster is also sometimes `affectionately` called the WIIFM monster. It only wants to know what it can get from a website.

If it is clear to this monster that you have no tasty food, it leaves immediately.

This monster has a pair of very well developed eyes. It can see within 3 seconds if a website has its favourite food (WIIFM content).

These eyes are so well developed that it totally ignores banners. These eyes only go for the real tasty food (quality, practical content).

The monster also has a very, very fast click-claw. If those well-developed eyes do not see food in 3 seconds, that FAST click-claw reacts with a speed that make the speed of light seem like a snail crawl ... off goes the monster to find other more worthwhile feeding grounds.

The more favourite, favourite food you give for the WIIFM monster, the happier it gets. This causes this monster to quickly tell all its other monster buddies about this amazing source of WIIFM food. Yours.

These might be monsters, but they are not too stupid. They know that no matter how much of this WIIFM food they eat, their buddies can eat this food too, without the food ever being eaten up.

The food is not actually eaten, it is food for thought!

So, the more your feed these monsters, the friendlier they become. So friendly that they start sending you email and soon after that they start sending you money.

(Things sure have progressed tremendously since those dark ages - monsters can now send email too. That is how that spam-monster was born, but believe me, you do not want to hear THAT story ...)

To attract more of these monsters, you build a monster-habitat for them.

What they really like in such a habitat is things like ...

• a WIIFM discussion

• weekly fresh WIIFM food at the website

• a weekly newsletter, also with fresh content

• links to other worthwhile food sources

No matter to how many other WIIFM websites you send them to, they will always come back to you - if you really care about them and want to feed them.

You become a sort of a leader of the pack for them. You lead them to worthwhile food sources.

These monsters are very willing to buy food from you. If this food is tasty, they will also tell their monster buddies too. These buddies will also buy this tasty food. You will be amazed at how quickly this good news can spread. For some reason, these monsters are efficient at telling everyone very quickly if you tricked them, so be fair in all your dealings with them.

There are so many stories I want to tell you about these monsters, their different types of food sources, their enemy monsters, how to become their friends, and so on, but my time is up (for now). Time waits for no monster, not even the WIIFM monster ...

To sum up the story so far, let us listen to one of the monsters I like best:

Sumarus - he likes to eat lots of tasty food (value content) and then summarize it, oh so brilliantly ...

Sumarus (after clearing his throat):

So, to summarize (he always starts just like that)

The sole purpose of a website is to be the feeding ground of WIIFM monsters. The more WIIFM food you dish up in the form of articles, ebooks, newsletters and links to other worthwhile food sources, the more WIIFM monsters you can attract.

Your primary role is in providing tasty food to attract as many WIIFM monsters as you possibly can. The tastier your food, the more you can ask them to pay for your commercial food. If WIIFM monsters see you have no food, they leave - immediately, sometimes sooner !

WIIFM monsters HATE vomited food. They LOVE fresh food you prepared just for them.

If WIIFM monsters and website owners get to know each other very well, this can lead to lifelong, beneficial partnerships for everyone involved.

Sumarus might be too theoretical and philosophical for most humans, so this is what I think he means:

The better you can cater for the daily, practical needs of your website visitors, the better the chance that they will stay with you and continue being a newsletter subscriber.

You should only recommend other worthwhile websites.

Even if there are lots of sources of free worthwhile content, you must add value to what you give your website visitors and newsletter readers.

Initially you must provide value content up front, but will benefit from this later in the form of sales.

Sumarus also suggests that you reread this article to see how many other not-so-obvious tips you can find hidden in it.