* Use auctions to determine prices. One question that I get a lot from clients is, "How much should I charge for so-and-so?" If you have this kind of question, auctions can be a great way to gauge prices. Put your item on auction and see how much people are willing to bid on it. Don't just look at high bid -- remember that there are some "insane bidders" out there -- rather, look at maximum bids from all bidders to get an idea of what customers are willing to pay for your product.

* Link your auction to your business. Now, before I go any further, I have to warn you to read your auction service's policies CAREFULLY -- many services will not allow you to put a direct link to your web site in your auction description.

Even if you can't put a link directly in your auction, you might still be able to promote your business. For instance, many services will have an "about me" page where you can put a link to your business. Also, there is nothing keeping you from linking sites in other direction -- putting a link to your auctions on your web site, for instance.

One of things that has always impressed me about so- called "net gurus" is their ability to be creative in their advertising and promotion efforts. Online auctions seem to be a great candidate for that type of creativity.

Be sure to add your award program to Website Awards Worksheet at http://websiteawards.xe.net/ as soon as you are finished. You will get some visitors from this worksheet. It's a good idea to make sure you have gotten your award listed in Awardsites before you submit to worksheet.

There are other places to get your award listed. Search them out and apply as you see fit. Generally, I've found these by applying for awards - usually banners and buttons for these different programs are listed on same page as awards. Believe me, though, amount of traffic you get from ALL of other listings will probably be less than a good listing in Awardsites.

Oh yes, one thing to avoid is those programs which allow visitors to "automatically" submit to your awards program without visiting your site. My advice is to avoid these like plague. Why? Well, these mean you will spend quite a bit of time looking at sites, but award winners (and losers) will probably never see yours. That throws out implicit exchange.

It also means that people who submit have not read your criteria, which means you will get lots of worthless submissions that you should never have received in first place.

In addition, I've found that by far most of sites submitted in this manner do not measure up. In other words, amount of effort that award submission process requires is so small that sites are often not even worth visiting.

Where else do you promote your awards program?

- In your signature line on every email that you send out.

- As part of every single autoresponder message that you send. You should be sending an autoresponder follow-up for every guestbook signing, email form submission and anything else entered by visitors. Those autoresponder messages should include a brief promotion for your awards program.

- Anywhere else that you would promote your website.

If you do these things, you will most likely find that people will be submitting their sites to your awards programs in droves.