There are many opinions on how to promote various websites. I will give you my opinion from my 14 years experience. When advertising on the Internet your audience is worldwide and over several hundred million people. You should think of your Internet advertising like you were promoting a product or service outside the Internet. Basically the whole world is your market but you certainly can’t afford to tell everyone so to be efficient you only advertise in targeted locations like industry-specific magazines and newsletters. Just to play the numbers game you might put some low cost and free classified ads in newspapers. Of course, business cards, emails, blogs and, word of mouth are also very effective advertising means. Some advertising is paid and some is free. Paid advertising can be very targeted but it usually comes with a higher price. Free advertising usually takes more of your time as you have to actively participate.
Here are my suggestions on how to structure your advertising.
1. Even though we have all worn out our family, friends, neighbors, and business associates they are still your best audience if you approach them correctly. Don’t make wild claims. Just ask them to look at your program and let them decide if they want to participate. Many will be thankful if your program is useful and interesting to them.
2. Email signature. Every email program has the option for you to add links to each email you send. This is free advertising so use it.
3. Traffic Exchanges. There are auto and manual traffic exchanges. Traffic exchanges will display your website in proportion to your viewing other websites. In my opinion autosurf traffic exchanges are not very effective. Manual traffic exchanges forces the user to look at the traffic websites thus creating a great return of interest.
Below is one of the best places to start with manual traffic exchanges. This website is not a traffic exchange itself but it gives you several groups of proven manual traffic exchanges for you to join. My suggestion is to join one every few days until you reach the point of not being able to keep up you own traffic viewing. If you don’t have time to view then there is an option to purchase traffic at a very low price.
TrafficHoopla is a free traffic builder that helps anyone with access to the Internet to build daily and ongoing daily traffic. This is considered one of the best traffic building sites around. Go slow and build your traffic at your speed. If you go too fast you will get frustrated and discouraged. Slow building is always best for motivation and for long term growth.
http://traffichoopla.com/cgi-bin/ref.cgi/35119
4. Social sites. These are websites where you share at a deeper level than with traffic exchanges. We all
know them and there are many available. MySpace, Facebook are the big ones. If you belong to them share your programs. Others social sites that are effective in sharing particular websites or links are:
Qassia: http://qondio.com/ Highly recommended (as everyone reading this knows)
Squidoo: Squidoo allows you to create lenses (webpage) on any topic you want… so create a lense on your
programs. Here are two of my lenses. One for a friend of mine that oil paints and one for my RV or motorhome interest.
http://www.squidoo.com/freeoilpaintingdvd
http://www.squidoo.com/rvfulltime
5. Ezines are targeted advertising newsletters where you can place small classified ads for very reasonable prices.
Here is a good site to use for ezines.
http://corners.hmmceo.hop.clickbank.net/
6. Co-Op Advertising
This is where you join with others and pool your funds to advertising in one place and share the leads. This is often a good technique because the entry fee is lower than if you advertised yourself and with a larger group you can often get a better price on advertising.
There are a few more types of advertising but if you accomplish these six you are doing quite well and
should build up your main program members.
What Do You Promote?
There are lots of choices in promoting various kinds of links to programs. Without going into all the details
here are your options.
1. Your direct program link. This is the main promotion link your are given when you join a program. Sometimes referred to as your Affiliate or Referral link. If your main program website is simple and easy to understand then promoting your direct link makes sense.
2. Indirect Promotion Pages. These are web pages that promote another product but also offers your main program. These are often very effective as they catch the attention of many people with the free offer. Here are some examples I am using.
http://www.onlinemarketingquestions.info
http://www.extremeblogprofits.com
3. Landing or Squeeze Pages. These are ‘short and sweet’ pages designed to capture a viewers attention
without giving away all of the details. The theory is that you only have a few seconds to grab a viewers
attention and by peaking their interest you then require them to give their name and email before they are taken to the main page.
The big advantage is that you now have a prospect you can follow up with. Many advertisers use autoresponder to send follow-up emails every few days. We are all familiar with this technique and even though we often don’t like it the technique is very effective because of the constant follow-up.
Here is an example of a squeeze page I created for another program.
http://pogrealestate.biz
Internet advertising is a numbers game and so you must not give up easily. Most of what I presented is no or low cost so it does not take too many orders or new members to cover your efforts. If you are not use to advertising on the Internet then go slow and try to understand what you are doing.
There are many more techniques and resources available for Internet advertising. Your product or service may benefit from them, however, go slow, don’t get confused, and try some of these simple techniques before spending lots of money on advanced methods.
