I've heard it said that one of the deepest desires of people today is the desire to feel important. One easy way to make someone feel important is to give them attention and show you care about the things they care about. Be there when that person needs you and help that person when they need help, and you'll be satisfying the deep desire to feel important.

Now if you can make your customers feel important, do you think they'll be interested in buying from you again? When you've bought from someone who truly seemed to care about you and think you were important, didn't you feel a certain loyalty? This article will show one way to build a base of loyal customers by answering questions at places like Yahoo Answers and Answerbag.com especially if you own a service oriented business.

Sites like Answerbag.com and Yahoo Answers have become very popular. People can ask questions on just about any topic and end up with at least one answer. When users on Answerbag were recently asked why they answered questions, the responses included:

"I have made new friends here at Answerbag, and I like to share my knowledge with them."

"I love sharing views and opinions."

"In helping others, it seems to help me. Feel better about myself."

"I want people to answer my questions, so I will answer theirs."

So what does that have to do with you, an internet marketer? How could that possibly help your online business? Do you notice the words "friends", "sharing", and "helping" in the comments I quoted? These are all relationship words, and creating relationships is the key to building a loyal customer base.

Once you've started to build a releationship with someone on one of these Answer sites, you've started to open the door to doing business with them. If you gave a truly helpful answer, and as I said earlier made someone feel important by helping them, you've created a powerful emotional attachment with that person. Once you have this attachment you can carefully introduce the fact that you have a business related to the topic you helped that person with, and that you may be able to help them even more through your business.

Although most of these Answer sites are limited in how they can allow you to link back to your web site, there is usually some place to put a little description of yourself in a profile. Be sure to mention the fact that you own a web site on a particular topic, and you may create a bit of traffic from your profile.

But remember we are talking about a relationship-based type of marketing, and as with any relationship you have to give it time to grow before you can expect someone to jump on board and buy your product. However with a little patience, you can be well on your way to building a loyal base of visitors by making them feel important.