The best laid advertising plans usually contain a large sum of money. But not every new “NETtrepreneur” has a big marketing budget. Either you’re still working a “day job” and sitting there hacking away online at night, trying to convince your family you’re right, or you’ve been displaced from work in some way, and so—rightly—you turn to
net. I’m not rich by any means, but I haven’t punched a clock in over two years. Not all my business comes from people I don’t know all over world—but a lot of it does. So this article will include local and regional advertising ideas for your website as well. I’m starting with order of importance here—the things that are going to do more for you for time investment. That’s thing about advertising—it either takes time OR money OR both. And if you don’t have money, be prepared to spend time.
1.YOU MUST WRITE. I know you know something about your business. Maybe there’s a little something you could teach me about what you know? That’s what writing articles is all about. It’s just sharing your knowledge FOR FREE with others who are interested in that same subject. In exchange, you get to have a “resource box” and byline. Your resource box tells others about your business and has links to your website and email. You don’t have to write a sales letter of an article—your resource box does “selling” for you. There are plenty of articles online that tell HOW to write an article—but basic formula I follow is an intro paragraph, followed by “x” number of bulleted points to back up my intro, followed by a summary paragraph. Once you have your articles written, submit them to article directories. The main four I use are: www.ideamarketers.com, www.goarticles.com, www.fresh-articles.com, and www.valuablecontent.com. I know there are others. Just do a search with terms “submit my article.”
2.YOU MUST OPTIMIZE AND SUBMIT. Again, there are tons of articles on optimizing your webpages for search engine submission. The basic premise is to fill your site with keyword rich content, full meta tags and then submit your site once a month to search engines. I have found a great and free website service: www.submitexpress.com which only submits your site to actual directories and engines, not all those free for all link pages.
3.YOU MUST GET OTHERS TO LINK TO YOU. And not just anybody—the websites that link to yours have to have something to do with your website. It takes time to research similar yet different sites, email webmaster and request a link exchange. (Writing articles and submitting them solves this problem too.) If time is an issue, at very least, do a search for “_____ directories.” The “____” of course is topic of your website. For example if you had a website about Old English Sheepdogs, you might search for “Old English Sheepdog Directories.” The first five actual directories in search results are ones you want to exchange links with—they have highest rankings and this means something for you in making your rankings better.
4.YOU MUST WRITE A PRESS RELEASE. Is your website brand spanking new—or have you done something really cool like donate a portion of your sales to a local charity? Write about it and send it to your local paper. Be sure and put your web address somewhere—either in release if release regards site, or in resource box if it’s a secondary issue. If your message has a more global impact, consider sending out a larger press release online. Do a search for “submit press release” and you’ll find a bunch of places to submit your PR for free. One site is www.free-press-release.com/submit/.
5.YOU MUST WRITE AN E-BOOK. After you have taken time to write a slew of articles, it shouldn’t take much to combine them in some sort of congruent fashion, put a spin on it and compile it into one PDF document. Give it away for free. There are several sources (directories) that offer to list free e-books. It will get downloaded and passed around—a “viral marketing” scheme. One such site is www.free-ebooks.net/submit.html.
6.YOU MUST START A NEWSLETTER. Or, just collect leads somehow. Newsletters, to me, do seem to be getting old and tired. But principle is still a sound one. Considering you’ve done steps 1-5, you now should start to get traffic to your website. Maybe it’s not numbers you’d like, but that’s okay—you’re just getting started. Theoretically, you should have an email newsletter built into your site from day one. You’ll want to contact your sign-ups regularly with information as well as your sales message. Offer your free ebook for signing up. Or give something else away for free. You can host your newslist at www.topica.com or www.groups.yahoo.com for free. Just remember that SPAM is tightening up now. I just read about a NC man who was sentenced to prison for 9 years for spamming. Make sure you have permission to send newsletters. I’m pickier now about how I advertise my newsletters. I usually just market to people who have already purchased something from me. It is a fact that 80% of your business will come from 20% of your customers. Good customers will buy from you again and again if you run a good business. Another idea I read recently is to publish information in an autoresponder that people really want. The first thing I look for when I go to a website is a price list. So, it makes sense if you publish your rate sheet in an autoresponder that you can collect good leads this way.
