| by: Eric Koshinsky |
| You are free to publish this article online in your ezine website, ebook, or other online publication. The full resource box, including 'By line' must remain intact and be published with the article. If you publish this article, please contact me and let me know where you are using it. Contact at: artpub@newbie-guides.com --- **Article info** Word count: 1085 approximately Hard-wrapped at 65 characters --- General advertising and promotion - Multiple streams of Traffic: PART II There are a variety of ways that you can advertise and promote your site or products. In this, Part II of the 'mini-series' on Multiple streams of traffic, I'd like to take a look at a couple of the more commonly known methods of online promotion. Some are much better than others, and some are more suitable than others. Our goal then is to look a little more closely at them to determine if they are suitable for your needs. Read on for more... Banner ads Using banner advertising and displaying banner ads on your site has changed a lot in the last 2 years. The cost and value (benefit) of banner advertising has dropped significantly. I won't talk about them too much other than to say that their main use is now principally as 'branding' tools. A way to get your name/product/site in the front of people's faces quickly. For the average person, it is nearly impossible to get the kind of reach required to really get much benefit from banners. That being said, if you can get good exposure in a niche that fits your market, go for it, it won't hurt. On the other side of things, displaying banners on your site as a source of revenue is only worthwhile if you are getting thousands upon thousands of hits/month. The average CPM is now only about $2.00 (that means you earn $2.00 for every 1000 banners displayed!). Considering that when you display a banner on your site you are promoting a product or site that is not your own, you are giving visitors an exit that does not generate income for you. It isn't any wonder that the top online marketers (Cory Rudl, Jimmy D. Brown, Ken Evoy etc.) don't display ANY ads (banners or anything) from any other site. I am not knocking banners here. They serve a purpose. You just need to be sure that they suit your purposes. I have found that the FastClick Ad Network provides very good service for all your banner advertising needs. FFA's and traffic swaps Let me be very blunt about FFA's. They are a waste of time for anyone except the person who owns it. No matter what the claims may be, they will not produce traffic. Traffic swaps and exit exchanges have to potential to produce reasonably large amounts of traffic, however the problem is that for the most part it is untargeted. Most traffic swaps are based on a system of credits, where your site gets a visitor in exchange for displaying the traffic swap link on your site, or visiting a member site yourself. The real problem is that much of the traffic is simply other webmasters trying to boost their own credits. They are not interested in visiting your site except to get the credit. I'm sure you can see the problems with that. In a way, you can think of traffic swaps as an online equivalent of a highway detour. Lots of traffic gets re-directed your way, but it doesn't really want to be there. If you are interested in learning more about traffic swaps, you can go here to take a look at a popular one. More recently, a slightly different breed of traffic swap has emerged. These focus on generating ezine subscribers. The way they work is basically the same as the a normal traffic swap, however because they are directed specifically at getting subscribers, they don't create junk traffic. Every time you display the pop-up containing the ezine registration form, you earn an impression for your subscription link on another site. When visitors see the pop-up with the links, they choose to sign up for your ezine. There are still very few of them around, so they are very effective and produce good results. There are a few services that provide opt-in services for a fee (usually in the range of $1.00/subscriber), but I prefer free ;-). I have had very good results with this service. It is 100% free and generates dozens of subscribers a week. Ezine advertising Ezine ads (both solo and classified ads) can be very effective if done right. They can also be utterly useless. The key is to get your ads in ezines that are very closely related to your product(s), and that don't run tons of ads. There are literally thousands of ezines out there that are essentially advertising rags. Their only purpose is to run ads for you and every other person willing to spend $15. Before you advertise in any ezine, get some information about the ezine. A decent publisher will know their subscriber base and be able to tell you with reasonable accuracy how responsive the subscribers are, how many ads they run, and if someone has recently run an ad like yours (similar products). If they can't do that, you might want to think twice about advertising with them. Realistically what you want is an ezine with a reasonably large subscriber base (1000 or more), that is closely related to your product, and only accepts limited advertising (e.g. 1 ad/issue). Stephan Peirce's book goes into great detail on how to find good ezines and what to look for and what to avoid - it costs less than a solo ad in a decent ezine, and will save you tons of money in avoided mistakes. A final comment: Anyone who claims they can provide you with 100,000 (500,000, whatever) guaranteed visitors is selling junk. Think of it this way, if it were so easy to get that many targeted visitors (and you only want targeted visitors), you can bet companies (scammers) wouldn't be selling them because they would be raking in millions in profits by directing those visitors to their own products and sites! Do a little math, 1% conversion (a very low rate) from 100,000 visitors = 1,000 buying visitors. Sell a $10 product and you have $10,000. If such a profit is possible, why the hell is this kind of traffic sold for $50-$200? Quite simply because it is junk traffic, frequently created by piggy backing on traffic exchanges and FFA's. In the next section of the series we will start to look at some of the less well known methods of traffic generation, and how you can put them to use to generate a more stable and consistent base of traffic for your own sites. --------------------------- Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide useful tips and guidance for those who are new to personal online marketing. Learn more about programs, techniques, and software that can help you reach your online marketing goals. Come on by and have a look. http://www.newbie-guides.com/?aa Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com About the Author Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com |
Friday, October 30, 2009
General advertising and promotion - Multiple streams of Traf
Friday, October 23, 2009
Free Web Advertising - searchEstate – The search engine adve
by: Michael A Fowler, M.B.A. |
| Free Web Advertising - searchEstate – The search engine advertising solution for free web traffic. searchEstate is the ultimate Internet Advertising Solution, optimised for Internet Explorer and Firefox. To those who are not aware of searchEstate; It’s a Major Search Engine that PAYS YOU to advertise and gets free web traffic to your website through its free web advertising ... Quote: “searchEstate is an Internet Advertising Solution based on an Internet search engine. We are member-based and share our advertising spaces and revenues with our members.” About searchEstate... searchEstate is an inversion of the ‘pay-per-click’ model employed by the major search engines. It’s like having your own SEO Company working for you 24/7. searchEstate is becoming known as ‘the peoples search engine’ because it allows the individual to profit from Internet advertising, instead of the major corporations. searchEstate gives fast search results and you can even share revenue from the free web advertising. Internet advertising fees that the searchEstate search engine generates, is shared amongst its members.. The Difference... Until now, free web advertising was only available to those who knew the search engine optimisation techniques required for top placement. searchEstate is a search engine that changes the way you advertise. Now it is possible, without specific technical knowledge, to attain top search engine rankings and get free web traffic to your site. The Alternatives... searchEstate has two modules, free and pro versions. The free version allows you to build a Free Web Advertising network that rotates around the search engine on millions of pages, thus giving your business great exposure. The more people that are in your free advertising network, the greater that exposure becomes. SearchEstate search boxes are now starting to appear on many websites. The Pro version of searchEstate offers a great deal more. A thousand automatically mailed ads each month. Twenty advertisements with 100 keywords and strategic exchanges with the top Internet search engines. Commissions on paid members through an affiliate program. Logo ads, Banner Ads, Text Ads and Search Engine Ads are all catered for and tracked by the searchEstate program. Quote... “The key to success is to sponsor others into searchEstate. You can do it by yourself or we can do it for you via our amazing Advertising Co-op. For a limited time, we help you build your downline easily through our 1000 fresh leads each month.” Summary... It seems that now there is an alternative and complete Internet Advertising Solution to paying the major search engines! As we are told, the best route to success is to actually own your own business. Your own Internet Advertising Solution is a great way to promote your main business. Quote... “What if we were to tell you that we can strategically go in and place ads in your billboards that other people will pay for? What if, say, the average pay-per-click fee was $0.10? Something really low cost, just to be on the safe side. Well, for 100,000 ad billboards, just having 1 ad get 1 click per day will net you $1,000 per day, minus our 5-10% service fee!” Well, that’s certainly something I could live with! After a very concise conversation with the CEO, it seems a very viable proposition. A true “Swiss Army Knife” sort of business solution. Why pay for your advertising when you get nothing in return? searchEstate seems the perfect solution. Why use anything else? The major search engines are fat enough already. Of course, there will be sceptics. That is why I took the trouble to talk about searchEstate with its founder and joint CEO. When someone actually shows you how it works, it’s a lot different to just telling you. There is no limit to a search engine database. It is not reliant upon sustained memberships. It is only reliant upon advertising. Isn’t it nice to know that now the Internet user can grab his/her share of some of the revenues generated? From the inside, this certainly looks very lucrative. The Beta-Testing has shown amazing and consistent results on the Major Search Engines. searchEstate is certainly capable of achieving it's promise of free web advertising. About the author: Michael A Fowler, M.B.A. Helping people online since 1998. Creator and Author of 'The MBA Way' system. Expert Author and Web Writer. Online Trainer and Coach. E-Mail - Goldcard43@aol.com Website - http://www.the-mba-way.com/freewebadvertising.htm |
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Free Reprint Articles - Inexpensive Advertising For Your Bus
by: Fisher Swanson |
| Publishing articles and making them available for free can be a very effective way of promoting your business or website without spending a lot of money. This article contains some tips and resources that I have discovered by publishing free reprint articles over the last 5 years. Marketing With Content Marketing with content, or free reprint articles, gives you an inexpensive way to get your message in front of a lot of people. It is one of the most effective, free, advertising methods that I have found. All that it costs you is time it takes you to write an article and make it available to publishers. You may have already written an article that can be repurposed as a free reprint article, which will cut down on the amount of time required dramatically. What Content Works The best content is valuable information. It doesn't need to be directly related to your product, service or website, but it does need to be useful. It's best to write about a topic you are familiar with and for which you can offer unique insight. For example, if you are trying to market your real estate website, you could write an article about preparing your home for sale. Or you can write an article about which home renovation projects will make a house more desirable on the market. Your article doesn't need to be overly long. Don't confuse quantity with quality. Keep your points as concise as possible. You don't want people to fall asleep before they get to the bottom of the article. After all, they need to get to the bottom of your article to see your byline which is the point of writing a free reprint article in the first place. One way to get the most out of your free reprint articles is to write about a topic with staying power. I have 4 year old articles that are still being picked up by publishers to this day. Your Byline The payoff for providing publishers with free content is the byline. You don't want an essay or multiple paragraphs, just a short description of yourself, your website, and your link. You can also post your email address and phone number for people to contact you. However, the most important address is your web address. People who are online are much more likely to click on your link to find more information than they are to email or call you. Additionally, when you post your email address on the internet, it can dramatically increase the amount of spam you get at that address. If you have an ezine that you want to encourage people to subscribe to, you can post your subscribe address, but make sure your list is double opt-in to prevent invalid subscribers. In my experience, 90% of subscribers added by single opt-in are invalid addresses. Formatting Your Article Formatting your article is very important. If you are posting your article to an email distribution list you should hard wrap your article at 65 words or less per line. Try to avoid posting articles with spelling or grammatical errors. The higher the quality of the content you provide, the more people will publish it. Each new publisher that picks up your article could represent thousands of impressions of your byline. I have one article that has been published more than 100 times over the last 4 years. Submitting Your Articles - Where to Start The best and most gratifying result of writing a free reprint article is seeing it published in an Ezine or on a website that has readership that is likely to be enticed by your byline. Submitting your articles directly to editors of Ezines or websites that you know publish quality information related to your topic is the first thing you should do. Many sites have publishing guidelines and encourage content submissions. Submit your article according to their guidelines with a personal message to increase the likelihood of it being published. Keep track of publishers that use your articles and submit your new articles to those publishers first. Article Depots - Let The World Know I have found that submitting articles to depots isn't quite as effective as contacting publishers directly but still WELL worth the time. Most of the depots are well indexed by Google which provides a valuable link back to your site and increases your link ranking with search engines. Here are some free reprint article depots (there are many more): Cumuli Content - Community of Ezine Publishers http://www.cumulicontent.com Article Hub - Content Directory http://articlehub.com/ Go Articles - Article Search Engine and Directory http://goarticles.com/ Yahoo Groups The best Yahoo Groups to post your free reprint articles can be found at: http://www.All-In-One-Business.com/groups/ EzineArticles.com EzineArticles appears to charge for submissions now but does offer 10 free submissions. http://ezinearticles.com/ Protect Your Reprint Rights Just because you are giving your content away for free doesn't mean you shouldn't expect something in return. Make sure to have clear terms of use at the top of your article. Here are the Terms of Use that I use: "You are free to publish this article online or in print as long as the byline is included and the url in the byline is hyper-linked wherever possible. This article should not be used in anything that could be considered spam. If you are using this article, please send a brief message to fisherswanson@gmail.com stating where it was published." Happy publishing! About the author: Copyright 2005 Fisher Swanson Fisher Swanson is the co-editor of ThriftyFun.com, a site that publishes ways to save money. He can be contacted at fisherswanson@gmail.com http://www.thriftyfun.com |
Monday, October 19, 2009
Free Ezine Advertising On Steroids!
| by: John Colanzi |
| Free ezine advertising has been with us for some time now.
Freebies have become the order of the day. Free Ebooks Free Software Free Training Courses Free Advertising This has created an extremely favorable environment for
Many have hopped on the Free Ezine Advertising Bandwagon.
Sure you could draw a lot of leads if you posted enough to
You had the choice of either spending time or money. If you
Now that's all changed. Imagine getting Free Paid
I know what you're thinking, "John that's a contradiction." Guess What? It's not! There's a new system that will help the average marketer
The scramble for new subscribers has created an opportunity
If you have a list of contacts or an extremely active
How does it work? Publishers looking for new subscribers are paying readers
It's a win - win situation. The publisher gets a wider circulation and you earn Free
You can put your advertising into high gear, absolutely
If you'd like to see how this system works visit:
It truly is Free Ezine Advertising on Steroids! Wishing You Success John Colanzi publishes the "Street Smart Marketing". To subscribe
|
Friday, October 16, 2009
FREE ADVERTISING FOR EZINE OWNERS
by: Bob Hansen |
| Add Swapping for free with other new letters and ezines. Add swapping is a great way to be seen on the net. I hope you will have a better understanding of the need and the importance of good advertising by the end of this article. It's helped us to get noticed. If you're already making money hand over fist then you know alot of the many secrets of e business. There are those who haven't a clue though when it comes to successful ezine. I know I was once one of the many. After several failed attempts to gain support I made the switch to free advertising. That's right free! Why free? Well keep reading to learn about this well kept secret. There are several sites who would love nothing more than to place a simple 3 line entry in a well placed ezine. We here at Cameo Clothes News provide that to all new ezines. In return we have our add placed in With the Opt In email you have your target gathered already, they've come to you directly. These are people who have signed up for, and have already been part of an ongoing ezine, the other nice part about it, it's absolutelutly painless to you. Remember nothing ventured nothing gained. By sharing space you have all there is to gain, exposure. By now your wondering how you find these great lists right? Well, we stumbled across a site long ago that had several exe files available that explained much of what I'm telling your now, and best of all, it was you guessed it FREE information. Care to learn more you can. I would love to charge money for this information but just like others out there. Ok you're still confused about why free and not for money right? Remember when you first started out and you signed up for every conceivable new letter that you thought would help you get to where you are today? Well, these same new starters are in that very same spot now. By not only helping them you've helped your own self by getting your add in front of your competition faster and more often with less time spent. I can't stress it enough, It's just that simple. So work on a standard 3 line add keep it simple and start sending it out to everyone on the list now. You can get updates as well and offer your space every month. Who knows by next month you'll have more traffic than you'll know what to do with. Here's another tip not many people consider to gather new subscribers. Using web forms are a great way to meet your visitors and guests who come into your site. Alot of the older sites already know this technique. As much as we hate spam mail we are subject to it by simply listing with that site. You can do virtually the same thing with your form by using an auto responder. If your site doesn't have that much traffic coming in then you simply can use the email address gained from your forms an send out a "Canned" letter about your ezine through your ezine host. To simplify this use your email template feature and then copy and paste to your hosts invitation area. You'll want to use your subscribe address in the TO: block also. If you wish to add it in the body of the letter itself then be sure proceed it with mailto: this will then make your address a hypertext link for your readers to use. Be sure to also include a REMOVE address as well generally remove@website.com works well if you have an alias option from your web host. If not you can open a free mail account to handle this mail and then delete the names as they come in if need be. Keep a separate list of the addresses in your email program of all your contacts and Good Luck with your subscriptions and happy ezining Bob Hansen is the editor and webmaster for the following sites and has been doing it now for well over 6 yrs. His knowledge and expert advice has helped many new web designers bring in more traffic than they thought possible. |
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Five Unique Ways To Get Free Advertising
| by: Dan Brown |
| Here's 5 POWERFUL ways to get some free advertising 1. Give Testimonials When you purchase a product or service and it exceeds your expectations e-mail the business a testimonial. Tell them in the testimonial the benefits you got from the product or service. Give them permission to publish the testimonial on the web site if they include your sig file at the end. 2. Leave A Message When you visit a web site with a discussion board leave a message. You could post a question, interesting content or a compliment about their web site. Include your signature file at the end of the message. Some discussion boards let you post your banner ad or text link. 3. Sign Guest Books When you visit a well designed web site leave a compliment on their guest book. You could give them a compliment on their content, ease of navigation, graphics etc. When you post your compliment include your sig file so other people will see it when they sign the guest book. 4. Write A Review When you visit a web site you enjoyed a lot write a review for the web site Write about the benefits you gain from the site, the web site design, interesting online services it offers etc. E-mail the review to the web site. Tell them they can publish it on their web site if they include your resource box at the end. 5. Send An E-mail To The Editor When you read a good article or enjoy a certain e-zine, e-mail a compliment to the editor. Give the editor permission to publish the compliment in their e-zine if they include your signature file at the end. The editor may post it on his or her web site. About the Author Dan Brown has been active in internet marketing for the past 4 years. Dan currently is working with the Zabang search engine introducing their new affiliate program, which is due out July,2005. http://www.zabangaffiliate.com/ |
Monday, October 5, 2009
Five Characteristics of Highly Effective Advertising
by: Jeremy Cohen |
| Have you ever spent a small fortune on advertising that generated disappointment rather than sales? Many small business owners have been down the road of flat advertising results and are at a loss when it comes to developing new ideas to improve the response to their ads. Whether you run ads in your local newspaper, your industry’s top periodical or on-line, you need your investment in advertising to pay for itself, and then some, in order to justify its cost. If your ads aren’t generating the interest you want in your products and services they may be suffering from one of the five common mistakes small business owners and professional service providers make when developing and delivering their advertising. Here is a list of five qualities common to successful small business advertising campaigns. For example, if your company specializes in helping law firms reduce the cost of long, ongoing cases and you choose to run a series of full page ads in the New York Times instead of the New York Law Journal you will likely be disappointed by the response to your campaign. Despite reaching the considerably larger audience of the New York Times your would be missing the focused attention of the legal minded readership of the New York Law Journal. Be sure to zero in on your market. You will increase the likelihood that the readers who see your ad will actually have a need for your service. If you are the owner of a pet supply company and your ads simply say, “We Sell Pet Supplies” they will be passed over along with every other bland advertisement for Fido’s food. On the other hand, your ads will stand out and attract much more attention to your shop if you state that you sell, “King Sized Bones and Bowls for the Royalty in Your Family.” By focusing your ads on the owners of large breed dogs you distinguish yourself from the crowd of pet shops that simply sell pet supplies and make it clear to the owners of large dogs that you sell what they need. Be sure the copy of your ads has the effect of making what you offer unique. Your highly targeted prospects will reward you by noticing the difference in your ads and buying from you. Demonstrate Value How can you change your ads to demonstrate the value you provide? What special offers can you make to set yourself apart from the pack? Focus on client problems If you are recovering from knee surgery and need to work with a physical therapist to regain your full range of motion, would you be more likely to choose a therapist who advertises his new and modern equipment or the one who advertises that she will have your knee working and feeling like new again in just three weeks? Be sure to focus your ads on your clients’ problems. You will win more business as more and more prospects come to see you as the solution to their problem. Require Action Don’t assume that your prospects know what they should do next. You need to tell them to be sure they know. If you’ve gotten their attention, demonstrated your value and shown them that you are the solution to their problem, don’t waste your good work by neglecting to instruct them to take the next step and contact you. If all this seems like a lot to accomplish in one advertisement, you need not worry. A well-written marketing message will take care of most of the details of writing a highly effective ad. Do you have a marketing message you can use to consistently deliver effective ads and position your business as the solution to your client’s problems? You should. The author, Jeremy Cohen, helps small business owners and professional service providers attract more clients, grow their business and be more successful with his marketing and web site enhancement coaching service and his marketing guides. Get his free guide: Jumpstart Marketing: |
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