Marketing is about more than just
advertising,it’s about establishing
your product and your business, giving it an identity, and using every legitimate
means to drive visitors (traffic) to your sales pages.Marketing is a major part of your online
business and in this section we’ll look at the main tried and tested methods. I’ll
try to give you the pros and cons of each as we go through.Many do not cost much money, or are free, but
may take up a lot of your time budget. I’ll
also include some information on paid advertising, but I generally make the
assumption that in your early business life money is tight.
Advertising
& marketing on the internet is an art and methods are constantly
evolving, so look out for new ways to promote your products and be innovative yourself.Aim to spend a large part of your time on
constantly updating and expanding your marketing.Choose one technique at a time and get it
established before moving to the next.Think
who your target audience are, where they might be found and what would attract
them.Look what others are doing.Above all, track what you do, so that you
know how much effort and money goes in to making one sale.If you routinely spend $20 and 20 hours to
sell a $10 item, you’re not going to be in business long.
Articles – very good
Many people use the web to get
information and many webmasters are hungry for information to attract visitors
to website, newsletters and so on.With
your webmaster hat on, so will you.But
here we are talking about creating articles and getting them published on the
web, each with a link back to your business.Getting them published is much easier than you may think.There are many ‘magazine’ sites that publish
articles for free – see the Resources section on the right of this page.Webmasters and marketers are able to freely
download your article to their site, provided they retain your linking
information at the bottom.They gain
because they have fresh script, you gain because your article is spread around
the web and links back to your business.
Articles have to be written, and
this may or may not be your thing.It
can be remarkably easy to put together an article just by reading a few pages
in a book or online and then putting what you have read in your own words.And it should mostly be your own words.This is for two reasons, a) you’re not
stealing anyone’s copyright, and b) search engines like fresh unique material
so there’s more chance of your article being read.Make your articles as good as you can.It’s your reputation.
If you really can’t face writing
articles, you can get someone to do it for you, perhaps friends or family, or for
a few pounds or dollars you can find someone online.There are many sites where you can contract
people. See Resources.If all else fails, there are ebook bundles
out there that contain scores or hundreds or articles that you are free to
reuse.They are not fresh or original,
but better than nothing.
Social network sites – good but somewhat
limited
Social networking sites are a bit
like articles, but you essentially get a web page to yourself on their site to
say what you want.Different sites have
different rules, so be sure to read them.Some, for example, can be very restricting about linking to commercial
site.Others are more forgiving,
provided your marketing is not too obvious or you have too many pages.Don’t spam these sites, you’ll get kicked
off.Results can be very good because
the well-established sites are liked by the search engines.Your ‘article’ stays in one place with
just its own links back to you.Try www.squidoo.com and www.myspace.com, but
there are several other leading ones.
Classified Online Ads –
easy and good for some niches
Some people swear by online
classifieds because they are free, easy to set up and there are many classified
sites to put your ad onto.This is true,
but ads have to be reinserted every week or month, so the work can build
up.And you need to research whether people from your niche use online ads. Many are based on geography too, so choose well. Worth a go, but I would not spend significant
time on them unless your trials show that you have a winner.Some classifieds are listed in the Resources
section to the right of this page.
Traffic
exchange websites – potentially good
Traffic
Exchange websites get you to surf other people's website for CREDITS. You use
these credits to get hits to your own Site. Some offer free sign up and credits
just for signing up.. There are plenty of such websites.Go to www.startpagedepot.com and pick up a
list of sites.Once you’ve signed up with
a site and been approved, you can either gain more credits by surfing, or take
the credits you have and run!
Listjoe and Craigslist – very good, paid is best
These are very well know American
sites, great if you are based in the USA or have an international product
(including any download product).Find them
at http://www.listjoe.com and http://www.craigslist.com Joining as a paid member is best if you can afford it. For this you get access to thousands of responsive Listjoe
members, every 3 days.
Free-to-join
sites – Variable quality but some are good
Join for free
and put your links on their site.There are
lots of these out there.I’ve put some
of the better-performing ones in the Resources section on this page.
Blogs – Good,
but some effort needed
Everyone knows
about blogs (web-logs) these days.They
started out as diaries where people posted their thoughts and experiences
online, but now used for many other things, including marketing.Get in there and have a look at a few.Search engines like them because of their
constantly changing content.And that is
the point, you have to have an interesting, quality blog and keep it
updated.Post as many blogs as you like.There are lots of sites where you can
set up your own or contribute to open blogs.Look out for the rules of each site.The big ones are bloger.com and wordpress.com for free blogs, but there
are many many others.
