Tuesday, 27 May 2008

8 Low-Cost Advertising Ideas

Despite what you may have heard, advertising doesn't necessarily have to be expensive. In this article, I'm going to give you eight low-cost advertising ideas. These ideas can be used for both online and offline businesses.

1. Article Marketing is far and away my favorite method of promoting my business. If you write articles and allow them to be freely published, your articles become viral, meaning your articles can actually spread like a virus and have the potential to be viewed by hundreds of thousands of Internet users.

2. Targeted ezine advertising is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business. For example, you can purchase an ad in DEMC for around $50 and reach 36,000 people. For a list of suitable ezines to advertise in, visit BestEzines.com

3. If done properly, Google AdWords is still a very cost-effective way to advertise your business, despite rising pay-per-click costs.

4. Advertise in local neighborhood newspapers. In some areas they're called "Pennysavers," and in other areas they're simply known as "shoppers." Whatever they're called, you can place your ad in front of thousands of eyeballs for as little as $10 a week.

5. Buy television ads on local cable TV. Cable tv ads are cheaper than you might think, and you can target your ads to run in specific parts of your city. Check with you local cable company for more information.

6. Advertise on high-traffic websites. There are many websites that will allow you to advertise your products and services on their websites very inexpensively. Visit AdBrite.com for more information.

7. Advertising in a local direct mail package like Valpak can also be very cost-effective. And since you'll be sharing an envelope with other local businesses, you'll pay a fraction of what it might cost otherwise. For more information visit Valpak.com

8. Participating in online forums is an excellent way to get the word out about your business - and it's free. To find a forum related to your particular business, just go to your favorite search engine and type in the kind of forum you're looking for. For example, if you sell dolls, you would type in "doll forums." And if you sell real estate, you would simply type in "real estate forums."

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Keywords Are The Key To Success In A Home-Based Internet Marketing Venture

Reclining back in your Lazy Boy you surf the results of your new home based Internet Business once again. Ahhh, the good life. No more 9 to 5. No more bosses. No more office politics.

Then reality sets in... $1.95 for the third day in a row? Your total earnings! You can't pay rent with that, let along put food on the table. It's at this point you begin wondering if you were a bit premature in jumping ship with corporate life. Is your new business really a glorified hobby in disguise?

The answer to that question largely depends on you. And you largely depend on using the right keywords for your success.

Keywords?

Yes, keywords.

You know of your key to your car that they will take away if you don't turn things around. You also know of the key to your house with the late mortgage payment. But what in the world is a keyword, and why should you care?

A keyword (also known as a tag) is a word related to your niche that you are targeting for massive traffic to your website. For example, let's say your topic of choice is "Internet Marketing". The most obvious keyword for this topic would be "Internet Marketing".

Now before you build a website using nothing but "Internet Marketing" for your keyword you need to find out which keyword has the greatest supply and demand. Two tools that accomplish this are WordTracker & SEO Elite. Both are good, I personally prefer SEO Elite.

Continuing with our example, after running a check you find that the best keyword to use is actually "Internet Marketing". And you should indeed build some of your web pages with a target for this Keyword.

Most people stop at this point. And it's a shame. It's like they found the first speck of gold in a gold mine and are too lazy or ignorant to continue the dig. That's why I personally recommend incorporating HitTail.com. They will take your keyword and provide back data of people who are currently actively presently getting to your site with what are called long-tail keywords.

A long-tail keyword is not unlike a normal keyword except that it is, you guessed it, long. So if your keyword is "Internet Marketing" they will tell you through the course of time that someone actually found your site using the keyword phrase of "Successful Internet Marketing From Paris". You can then choose to create a keyword campaign (articles, video, PPC, and the like) around "Successful Internet Marketing From Paris" or wait for another long-tail keyword that suits you better.

Whatever you decide. Keywords done right are indeed one ingredient that will make the difference between a lobster dinner and one of bread and water.

Internet Marketing For Your Online Business - Giving You Success And Huge Profits

In any kind of business, you have to remember that in order to become successful, you need to market your products or services. Without it, people won't know what you are offering or know that your business exists.

As you can see, marketing is important for any business. You can even say that it's the key to its success.

When it comes to running an online business, internet marketing is the best way to promote your products or services. However, you have to remember that marketing in the real world is very different from marketing on the internet. In fact, even the best marketers in the real world will have trouble marketing on the internet.

Internet marketing is far more complicated than marketing in the real world. You have to work harder and you will also encounter a lot of competition. With the large amount of people doing business online, it is important to remember that getting your website known can be quite difficult to do, especially if you don't market it.

Marketing on the internet will mean that you have to create targeted traffic for your website. With targeted traffic, you will have much better chances of selling your products of services, whatever it may be. You just don't tell people who is surfing the internet to go into your website, but you give them a reason why. You need to tell them what to expect on your website. By doing so, you will be able to filter the amount of people going in and out of your website.

Some of you may think that the more people entering your website, the better. However, if the traffic entering your website is untargeted traffic, you will never sell any of your products or services. And, huge amounts of traffic are not always good as it will overwhelm the server, which will result in a slower connection.

These are the things that you need to consider.

So, just how do you create targeted traffic?

Many expert internet marketers will agree that you need to write articles. This is one of the best ways to attract targeted traffic to your website. So, what can writing articles do, you may ask?

First of all, you need to write articles that are related to the products or services you are selling. Then, you need to publish these articles on online publishing websites. By doing so, you will be able to get interested people to read the article you wrote and if they like what they read, they will eventually want to enter your website.

If they are now in your website and likes the products or services you offer, they will want to buy it from you. As mentioned before, you need to give the people a reason why they should enter your website.

So, another way to do this is by entering forum websites that discusses topics that are related to the products or services your online business sells. You will encounter a lot of questions regarding the products or services you are selling in your website. Now, try answering these questions. By doing so, you will be able to be known in the forum website as an expert on the topic and the forum members will want to find out more about your website

All these things will mean targeted traffic. Although not everyone interested will end up buying your products or services, but the point is that you will be able to attract people who are interested in what you have to offer. This will increase the likelihood of selling your products and services and also significantly increase your sales.

These are the things that you need to remember whenever you try marketing online. Through proper internet marketing, you will be able to attract targeted traffic to your website, and you will also be able to increase your chances of selling a product or service.

These methods are just two of the many internet marketing strategies that you should learn about. However, if you are just beginning in the world of internet marketing, you will see that these two methods will be more than sufficient to help your online business get started.

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Selling Goods Online - Establishing Your Store's Presence

The number of small business owners and entrepreneurs looking to supplement their full-time income by selling goods online is increasing greatly every year.

There are many advantages to selling goods online. The startup and maintenance capital required for selling online is usually much less than that involved with opening a brick-and-mortar type store. You also save money on staffing since an online store can operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without a clerk or salesperson constantly on the clock. With an online store you are able to reach a global audience, making your sales potential much higher than if you were in a traditional brick and mortar store and payments can be made straight into your business account through credit card transactions. Another advantage of selling online is the ease of managing customer accounts.

Just like a brick-and-mortar store, and online store needs to be built right. Your online presence should be neat, clean, and attractive. Too many e-commerce entrepreneurs fail to realize the importance of this. They often build online stores that are constantly unfinished, or own an online store hosted by Internet service providers which do not offer optimum performance. If a potential customer tries to access your site and it is down, they will most likely go to another online store that offers the products that they are interested in and you lose a customer. Your e-commerce site has to be operating properly at all times to be successful and encourage customers to complete transactions. If your site seems to be unfinished your customers will not hold the same respect for your product and the result will be fewer sales.

Ease of use is an important factor in online store's design. If your potential customers cannot easily find their way around your site, they will give up and will go somewhere they can easily find what they are looking for. Do all that you can to promote a smooth intuitive shopping experience. Your competition will try to outdo you, but if you don't give them a foothold you will not have to worry about losing customers to them. With some careful planning, creative design, and reliability you will be able to successfully sell goods online.

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Internet Marketing Tips - Don't Insult Your Prospect's Intelligence

What you're about to read is a true story. You can't make stuff like this up. After reading it, I don't know what your take on it is going to be but in my mind, this is just insulting your prospect's intelligence. Some might not see it that way, and that's fine. But to me, if you want to be taken seriously as a marketer, this is not the way to do it. I'm not going to mention any names in this article, but when you read it, you will probably figure out the site I am talking about.

I belong to a solo ads club where we get credit for viewing other members' solo ads. Anyway, this morning, just before I am actually writing this, I got to this one solo ad that had the subject line, "Grab A Cash Pig". At first I thought to myself, "Are you kidding?" Certainly this was a joke. Well, I always read all my solo ads because I want to get my credits so that I can send my own solo ads. Anyway, I clicked on the link and the first thing I am greeted to on the page is a photo of a pig holding what looks like a bag of money.

Now, the graphic alone wouldn't have made me think the site was so bad, even though it was a start. But then I took a look at the rest of the site and it looked like a third grader put it together. No offense to third graders. I sat there for a moment and tried to figure out what this person was thinking when he put this site together. I mean, does he really think that people have so little intelligence that they'll sign up for this thing? Is that what this world has come to?

Now I know that some of you might be thinking that something like this is cute and not such a big deal. However, we're talking about making money online. This isn't a game and it's not an amusement park. If I'm going to get myself involved in a biz op, which mind you I don't believe in anyway, I'm at least going to sign up with something that at the very least looks legit. This was the most horrible looking site I have ever seen. What person with any intelligence would go for it?

If you're going to put together a biz up for people to get involved in, please put together something that at least looks professional. And if you're thinking of joining one of these, please at least join one that doesn't look like something out of a Mickey Mouse cartoon.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim

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3 Reasons To Start An Internet Business

Have you been mulling over whether or not you should start an online business lately? Well if you are, let me ease your burden by saying that there is absolutely no harm in starting an Internet business. In fact, this is the best way in which you can monetize your time and effort. Get into an online opportunity by all means. The profits will come too. But, how justified am I in saying this? Are Internet businesses for everyone? Okay, for all the skeptics out there, let me give you three reasons why you should enter into an online business as soon as you can.

Reason # 1 - They are the best value for your time.

When you are establishing your business on the Internet, you will quickly find that the returns that you get are directly proportional to the time that you are putting into the business. Of course, there are no fixed working hours for you; an Internet venture is not like those 9 to 5 jobs that suck. You are free to work your own hours. But, you will be able to garner so much interest in the whole thing that soon you will want to work every hour of your leisure time. There's no room for complaint, though. Your work is very easily translatable into money. You will actually see the money rolling in, compensating for each hour you work. As you get experienced, this quantum of money will only grow more and more. Now, what more impetus do you want?

Reason # 2 - You can promote them with a very small monetary installment.

Like all other businesses, your business on the Internet needs to be promoted too. In fact, it is right to say that your Internet-based business will want much more promotion than the traditional brick and mortar businesses need. But that is because you have to see only over the Internet. That is not a problem, though. The Internet itself provides you with all the promotional tools you require. Some of the best ones are article marketing, email marketing and blogging.

How much money do you think you will require for all these things? If you want, you can do them within ZERO dollars. And I am not kidding you! Some of the best article directories in the world are free. You can put in articles promoting your business and they will not mind it because they add to their content. Email marketing is absolutely free too, but it can prove to be very time consuming because you will have to first find a list to post your emails too, you will have to frame the email itself, and then send it to people.

Blogs and forums are great for promoting your online business to targeted customers. This makes the customer feel they are 'in the flow' and gives you a chance to interact with them. But the best thing is that they are free.

Reason # 3 - You have all the professionals you need ready at hand.

In traditional businesses, you will literally need to run from pillar to post to get everyone you need. But on the Internet, it is a totally different ballgame. You can easily find whom you want from the freelance job sites and get their services. You can fish both for good quality and also low prices.

Copyright (c) 2008 Colin Meunier

Colin Meunier is a Successful Home Business Coach and Mentor! To learn how you can use a breakthrough marketing system to become more successful in your home business online visit: Wealth Funnel System

How To Choose Your Market For Your Internet Marketing

The first thing you have to do is choose a market. There's two fallacies out there about choosing a market. Number one is the fallacy of just do what you love and the money will follow. Obviously if you do something you hate, you'll have a hard time odditizing it. But just because you love it doesn't mean that it's going to make money. If you're an underwater basket weaver or you're a mid Saharan crocheter, there's just no market. No body else wants to do it. You enjoy it, but nobody else likes to do it, then you're not going to be able to sell anybody anything.

You've got to choose a market where there are people in that market have a need to learn more information, get more information. We're talking about information business here. We're talking about making money via information, selling information on line. If there's no market out there to buy your information, then you are in the wrong market. I f you don't what your market is yet, and what products might work, shoot me an e-mail, and I can tell you whether or not I think a market is going to work. We can talk about whether or not your market can support a coaching program. If your market can't support a $100 coaching program, or your market, at the very least can't support a $37 membership. And $37 membership to make $15,000, you got to have what, 500 people a month at $37.

If your market can't handle 500 people, you're in the wrong market. If your market can't handle something that's going to get you to $15,000 a month, you're in the market. That's all I'm going to focus on with that. You've got to choose a market, and I think that half of you on this call already know what your market is, you're there, you're going to be able to make money and the other half of you, I don't know what that market is. If you'll let me know, I'll help you work through it, and determine whether it's a good market or not.

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Sean Mize is an internet marketing strategist who teaches internet marketers how to increase their income by creating high ticket classes and coaching programs.