Internet Advertising Tips
The Myths Of Internet Advertising
I have to laugh. I run into people all the time who ask me, first thing,
how do I advertise on the Internet for free and make a million dollars? Okay,
maybe the question isn't quite that stupid, but it's pretty close. In the
real world, they wouldn't even consider asking a question like that when
a quarter page ad in a small circulation newspaper can cost $500. Where do
these people get off? Well, in this article, we're going to destroy some
myths of Internet advertising. You may not like what you are about to read,
but at least you will know it's the truth. Then you can decide if advertising
on the Internet is something you want to do.
Let's destroy the first myth of Internet advertising. You can't advertise
for free and make money. That is simply not true. One of the most effective
forms of advertising online is article writing and submitting to directories.
The only cost is your web site and hosting. And, if you simply get a blog
at blogger.com, then you don't even have any costs there. Article submissions
won't make you a fortune overnight, but if you keep at it consistently, you
will begin to see a steady stream of income.
Let's destroy another Internet advertising myth. You get what you pay for.
Not all the time. I'll give you a perfect example of a form of Internet
advertising that not only doesn't give you what you pay for it, but can also
get you into a boat load of trouble in the process. I am talking about buying
leads. Many lead purchasing sites will charge you about 25 cents to a dollar
per lead. So if you are buying 5000 leads, you can be paying anywhere from
$1,000 to $5,000 for those leads. If you get them cheaper, they're probably
the bottom of the barrel. In either case, most purchased leads are harvested
anyway. The people you'll be emailing will most likely report you as a spammer
and you'll end up with your ISP shutting you down. The sales you will make,
if any at all, won't make up for the fact that you'll be put out of business
and your reputation will be shot to heck.
Let's destroy another myth. You can make a lot of money using just one form
of Internet advertising. While it is true that some forms are better than
others, there is not one form that is going to put you into six figures.
It takes a multiple of effective forms of advertising to see any real success
on the Internet. That's why you see so many books on the subject of generating
traffic. One that I recently bought had so many methods in it that my head
as spinning after reading it. The site resource section alone had to be 20
pages long. You can't even begin to imagine how many effective sources of
advertising there are out there.
Finally, you can't know it all. The Internet is changing all the time. Methods
that worked yesterday may stop working next month and new methods may be
just around the corner, especially with the rising popularity of multimedia.
So, if you want to run an effective Internet advertising campaign, you have
to stay informed and keep an eye on what is out there, today, tomorrow and
beyond.
Hey, if this was easy, EVERYBODY would be making a fortune online.
Is Free Advertising Online Worth Anything?
This has been a question plaguing man since the early days of the Internet.
I'm not saying that people are cheap, but why does everybody insist on paying
nothing for their advertising? Do they really think that they can get anywhere
with it? Well, for the most part, they can't. However, there are certain
forms of free advertising that actually do bring results. Surprise, surprise
and I never thought that I would see the day when I would make such a statement.
But, much to my chagrin, it is true. In this article, I am going to give
you some of the best free advertising methods on the Internet today.
The first one is article writing. Let's face it, content makes the world
go round. There is a reason why many sites pay good money for articles. Articles
on their sites help bring them up the search engine rankings. Well, it can
do the same for you too. You can either put these articles directly on your
site or blog and then let the blog directories know about the recent additions,
or you can submit your articles directly to article directories where people
who are looking for articles on various topics will seem them and may even
go to your site because of them. Yes, believe it or not, this is a very effective
form of advertising that's free.
Another great form of free advertising is participating in online forums.
You can't actually advertise directly in forums but by participating in
discussions and offering some good advice, you can slowly build up some trust.
Then, after you have done that, with a link in your signature to your site,
you will slowly see people going to your site and possibly even making purchases.
This again is an absolutely free form of advertising that works, as most
forums are free to join.
Another great form of free advertising is by giving away free reports and
ebooks. You might think that this is absolutely a crazy thing to do, but
it's not. By giving away free reports and ebooks, you will get a lot of people
to take them. Many marketers are looking for freebies. Now, the trick is
to make sure that you have links to your other products and services in these
reports and books. That's where you get your income from, not from the reports
and books themselves.
Another great form of free advertising is message boards, if you know how
to use them. Message boards are places where people go to post ads to their
business. And that's where they make their mistake. In order to effectively
use message boards, use them the same way you would use a forum. Offer some
free advice. Get people to opt in to get a report from you. After you've
done that, you now have them on your mailing list and can then send them
your offers.
Yes, most forms of free advertising, like posting FFA ads, submitting to
safelists and things of that nature, are pretty much a waste of time. But
if you use the methods described above, all of which are free, you'll be
surprised how much you can make from them.
What Are My Internet Advertising Options?
Here's a question I get asked a lot. "What are my options for advertising
on the Internet?" In other words, what ways can I promote my business online?
Notice the question is not so much, "What are my effective options for
advertising on the Internet?" I guess people assume that advertising is
advertising and anything they use is going to bring the same results. If
only that were true. As a studier of Internet advertising for over four years
now, I can honestly say that some forms of advertising are good and others
are just flat out terrible. While it is beyond the scope of this article
to go over every form of Internet advertising available to you, a subject
that books have been written on, I will try to summarize the good and the
bad so that hopefully, you'll have a guideline to what types of advertising
to pursue.
Let's get the bad out of the way first. Any sort of advertising where the
site says "Blast your ads all over the Internet" or some other sort of dribble,
is pretty much worthless. The reason for that is because these ads pretty
much go to web sites that nobody even knows exists. So the chances of your
ad being seen are slim to none. Don't waste your time with ad blasting services
of any kind.
Another bad form of advertising is buying leads and sending out emails to
them. The reason for this is because most leads that are bought are harvested,
untargeted and will ultimately result in spam complaints and you getting
your ISP to shut you down permanently. It's just not worth the risk. So do
yourself a favor and forget about buying leads.
You also want to stay away from things like safelists and incentivized
advertising. Safeslists will get you nothing but junk email and incentivized
advertising is worthless because the people visiting your site have been
paid something to go there and have no real interest in what you are selling.
You may make a sale here or there, but for the most part, what you spend
will be more than what you make.
There's more bad, but let's get on to some good before you get so depressed
that you feel like throwing your PC out a window. One of the best forms of
advertising, mostly because it is so cheap, actually free, is article writing
and directory submission. This method gets people to your web site quickly
and with little or not cost. The downside is that you have to write articles
on a daily basis.
Another great way to advertise online is through Google pay per click. This
is about the most targeted traffic you can get. The only drawback is that
you have to do quite a bit of research to find keywords that don't cost a
fortune. You also have to learn to write 3 line ads that convert. This is
not an easy thing to do.
Finally, solo e-zine ads are very good if you find a good e-zine with a large
member base. One ad alone can get you quite a few sales if you reach a responsive
list. The problem is finding such a list, which is usually a lot of trial
and error.
There are other decent forms of free advertising such as forum participation
and posting to high traffic message boards, but these few that I have mentioned
should get you started.
If it sounds like Internet advertising isn't easy and in reality your options
are limited, at least as far as effectiveness, it isn't and they are. That's
why not everybody online is a millionaire.
What Are The Best Internet Advertising Methods?
One of these days, my words will sink into people's heads. Until that day
comes, I'll be constantly trying to explain to people that there is no such
thing as the best Internet advertising method. Why? Well, it's basically
because everybody's business is different. What works for one person may
not work for another person simply because of the target market and the niche.
In this article, I'm going to try to simply explain why this is so by pointing
out some examples. Hopefully, those examples will make things crystal clear
so that you no longer have to ask what the best Internet advertising methods
are.
Let's take the niche of Internet Marketing itself, since it is so popular.
Now, normally, I would say to run off to Google and use pay per click advertising
to promote your business, since pay per click is about the most targeted
form of advertising you can get. But in this case, it is not the best, and
I will explain why.
Internet marketing is a very competitive niche. If you were to go to Google
and look up how many competing sites there are for the phrase "Internet
Marketing" you would find hundreds of millions of sites. I kid you not. Internet
marketing may very well be one of the most competitive niches in the world.
As a result, if you were to use Google pay per click to promote an Internet
marketing product, you'd have so much competition that your cost per click
costs would be sky high. As a result, unless you have a product that converted
like crazy or one that had a high price tag, your chances of losing money
with this form of advertising, as good as it is, would be very great.
Now, let's take that same Google pay per click example and apply it to the
niche of "custom baseball hats" which has very little competition at all.
If you were to use pay per click advertising for this small niche, you may
very well end up making a decent amount of money. Now, let's go in the opposite
direction. If you were to use FFA Hosting, which is where you send emails
out to people posting business opportunity ads, you would get very little
results from this form of advertising for custom baseball hats. However,
if you were to use that same form of advertising for Internet marketing,
you would probably do very well because these are people who are looking
for business opportunities.
Here's my point to all this. There are some forms of advertising that are
always good and then there are some forms of advertising that are always
bad. But somewhere in the middle is that gray area where the advertising
method itself is only as good as the product you are trying to promote.
So, do your homework. Find out what forms of advertising perform best for
certain niches. The information is out there. You simply have to find it.
What you'll ultimately find out is that one person's dog is another person's
diamond.
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