How many times a day do you see them as you surf Web? Pop-up and pop-under windows have become a widely used marketing tool. But do they work? Are they just a nuisance, or are they really gold mine that all “gurus” claim?

After doing a good deal of research, I’ve discovered some pretty interesting facts. After implementing my own pop-up campaign, I’ve had some enlightening moments. Allow me to tell you what I’ve discovered, and you can make up your own mind.

I started by looking to one of my favorite marketing research resources, http://www.marketingexperiments.com. They actually spent over $4,000 testing pop-up windows and compiling results. Their experiment included using pop-ups for a biweekly ezine publisher and a computer products retailer.

The results were astounding! The ezine publisher got 100 more subscribers during a one-week period WITH pop-up window than WITHOUT. The computer retailer received over 3,700 new subscribers by using a pop-up window. That was enough to convince me to look further into using pop-ups on my own sites.

(NOTE: One thing experiment was careful to point out is that copy plays an enormous role in success or failure of pop-up. I wholeheartedly agree!)

Using my KT & Associates site (http://www.ktamarketing.com) as guinea pig, I added a pop-up window (to show on exit) giving information about my copywriting course. Then I waited and watched. Success didn’t take long!

While I do not conduct “controlled” experiments that MarketingExperiments.com does, I do have some basic data to offer you. After an 11-day period, I checked my site statistics and was very pleased! I had gotten a number of page views (not “hits” - “page views”) using pop-up window. I had also seen a 50% conversion rate. (Meaning that 50% of those who clicked to my copywriting course site purchased product.) The pop-up was working great!

3 Tips to market your small business idea on web overnight

You’ve got a great product or service idea, and you want to get it online quickly. Think you’ll need 6 to 8 weeks to get yourself up and running? Think again. If you’re itching to get online, you can get most of work done in just 6 to 8 hours. Here’s how:

Build a Website – Given your short timeframe, stick with a one-page layout for now. That should be just enough to tell visitors to your website about your valuable product or service offering. If you’re not a web designer, don’t worry. You have two options to get going. The first is to purchase a copy of Microsoft FrontPage. FrontPage is by far easiest product to use for designing websites. If you are familiar with Microsoft products, you’ll be fairly comfortable with user interface and should have no trouble getting started. Don’t worry if you’re not a graphic designer either, as there are some great websites online that sell FrontPage Templates that will dress up your website in a hurry. For less than $30, you can purchase a template designed by a professional, drop your text into their layout, and have a crisp, well designed looking site in under an hour!

Alternatively, you could search websites such as www.cnet.com to locate a shareware web design program to set up a simple web page, although FrontPage templates will not likely be compatible with this type of program.