Advertising On A Shoe-String Budget
If you've got a product or service to sell you need to advertise the fact, in order to attract customers or users. However, the cost of advertising is normally quite high using conventional methods, i.e. newspapers, classifieds, etc...
The internet, however, is a slightly different beast. Why? Because there are so many sites that cater for your needs that you can essentially make your own choice of what FREE methods suit you and your business best. You just need to know where to look and who to contact. This article hopefully will give you some ideas on where to start or add to your existing advertising portfolio.
Listed below are a number of ways to promote your web site/product/service at no/minimal cost:
Start an ezine
Trade ads with other ezine owners
Trade links with other web sites
Submit your site to the major search engines
Set up a blog
Write and post articles
Write and publish an ebook
Post comments on forums in your business arena
Post to free classifieds sites
Use traffic exchange sites
Let's look at each one in more depth.
Starting an Ezine
An ezine (a.k.a. e-zine, email newsletter, e-mail newsletter, or e-newsletter) is a newsletter that is delivered via email that you can subscribe or opt-in to it. This may seem like a big and bold step but it is easier than you may think. You will need to write and publish your ezine on a regular basis, perhaps weekly, so that your subscribers do not forget who you are. This method however, requires that you have an auto-responder and know how to build opt-in lists.
With regards auto-responders I have used many, including lots of free ones, but without doubt the best is Aweber! Their email devilerability is second to none and the back-end is so flexible. Some of the free auto-responders will not deliver your ezine to high percentage of subscribers, so opt for the best.
More information on Aweber can be found here:
http://www.aweber.com/?220028
With regards building opt-in lists, well thats a subject for another article, but if you use the methods in this article to get people to your site, your opt-in list will build itself. (Providing you have subscriber capture facilities in place of course, i.e. Aweber!)
Trade Ads With Other Ezine Owners
Once you have developed your ezine, start swapping ads with other ezine owners. If possible try to get your ads on a well read, highly subscribed ezine as this will put your ad in front of hundreds/thousands of people you would not otherwise have had chance to contact.
Trade Links With Other Similar Web Sites
This can be one of the best ways to get exposure for your web site. If you have inbound links from hundreds/thousands of other sites, do you think you need to worry what the search engines think about your site. The answer is, absolutely not! The major search engines will rank your site higher by default as they will see your site with hundreds/thousands of other sites pointing towards it and think, hey this site must be really important and rank it really well. so you can to certain degree forget about Search Engine Optimisation, if you do this correctly. However, don't just swap links with any old site, try to get your link on sites that are already ranking well, and are in a similar niche to your own site. This will cause the search engines to think your site is the
expert in this particular niche as so many others in the niche are pointing at it. Guess what, you'll rise right to the top of the rankings without doing any serious SEO. top of the rankings equals lots of visitors!!!
There are two products I have used to develop the rankings of my sites, and I wouldn't swap as they have served me extremely well.
The first is Power Linking by Jack Humphreys - This guy knows his stuff and taught me a great deal in my early days on the net. Go to
http://www.articleland.co.uk/LINKTO.PHP?12 to read more.
The second is Link Metro - Developed by Brad Callen. This programme which integrates into your website is second to none where linking to other sites is concerned. The process is virtually automatic, all you have to do is approve each link or not. Go to
http://www.linkmetro.com/AdvancedMembers.php?f=W4221028S315 for more information.
Submit Your Site To The Major Search Engines
OK, despite what I said in the previous parapgraphs, submitting your site to the major earch engines can still be a profitable way of gaining visitors to your site. Play close attention to meta tags and H1 headings as they seem to hold more weight than anything else. Also, try to sprinkle your main keywords throughout the text of your homepage.
Manual submission can be a little painstaking but it is achieveable if you have the time. One site I have used a lot to help with this process is http://selfpromotion.com/?CF=ezepeze1. This site is essentially FREE, although the owner does ask for a tip! I always maintain my tips each year as the site has helped me so much in the past. Head over there now for further infromation.
Set Up A Blog
I cannot emphasise how important it is to set up a blog! It is your doorway to immediate Search Engine inclusion. In another article I will talk about blogging, but trust me the search engines love them! Especially if you update it regular, i.e. daily. My favourite is Blogger.com, there are others out like Wordpress for example, but I love Blogger because it is so easy to use. The best feature, which I'm sure is available on others is the ability to post to your blog by sending it an email. Brilliant!
Go to www.blogger.com for further information.
Write and Post Articles
This is what I am doing now and you are reading. Everytime you post an article on a subject relating to your business, ensure there is a link to your web site in the resource box. This gives you a valuable one-way link. Most search engines give more weight to one way links as opposed to reciprocal linking, although don't disregard reciprocal linking as discussed earlier. Aim to post on sites that have a high page rank, www.ezinearticles.com is one such site and is loved by the major search engines. Another option is to post to up and coming websites, i.e. the ones that are increasing in rank quickly. One such site is www.articleland.co.uk which has jumped up to PR2 in 3 months!
To speed up your posting, you could use an automatic article submitter. I use Article Post Robot, as it has a high number of article sites in its database, and they add more all the time. At present there are over 640 sites. There are cheaper article submitters out there, but without doubt the success rate of Article Post Robot is second to none. for more information on Article Post Robot go here:
http://www.srtsoft.com/cgi-bin/lyre.cgi/jvm/package/go_homepage.html?pack_id=664&aff_id=2045
Write and Publish an Ebook
OK this one takes longer to achieve but can provide the most benefit, especially if you give it away to your site visitors in exchange for their contact information. You could use it as a carrot to get them to sign up to your ezine.
But don't just write an ebook and leave it like that, fill it with links to your site or affiliate programmes you are promoting, because once it's out there it can go viral. With your links in it, it will promote your business or website whilst you are asleep.
So write your book and promote it using all the methods discussed in this article.
Post Comments on Forums in Your Business Arena
One of the best ways to get free one way links, is to post comments on forums. Pick your forums well, aiming for forums with high page rank. Also choose a forum in a niche you are familiar with. Setup a signature file like this:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steven W Sharpe is the CEO and Editor in Chief of http://www.articleland.co.uk.
He can be reached for further information at his website:
http://www.articleland.co.uk
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Post to Free Classifieds Sites
Again if you have something to sell or promote, free classifieds sites can be another good source of generating one way links. At the same time you can also advertise the product or service you are promoting.
i.e. Visit http://www.articleland.co.uk/cgi-bin/classifieds.cgi to see how these work. You can also get your own classifieds site like this one too.
Use Traffic Exchange Sites
This one I like a lot. Essentially you click on adverts of other web owners, which generates hit points or credits for yourself. This then means your site advert is displayed to other users. The more you click, the more your site is shown to others. Can be excellent for getting visitors to your site. I have recently written an email course which shows how to generate 10,000 hits a day using the traffic exchanges, to subscribe to my 5 day course goto:
http://www.ezepeze.org.uk
Well that's it. If you put all of these different methods into place, you'll be generating loads of traffic to your site, which means there are more opportunities to sell your product or service. Play around which each of the methods, and settle on the ones that work for you.
Subscribe to my 5 day course - 10,000 hits a day, to give your site a major kick start today. Goto:
http://www.ezepeze.org.uk
If you need any further help or guidance please feel free to drop me a line at steve@articleland.co.uk
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