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Breakout of the Classified Ocean - With Alternative Promotion Methods
So, you just can't seem to write an effective ad?
Either that or there are just too many other classified ads out
there, and nobody really pays attention to them anymore.
Have you ever felt like this?
Well, fortunately, there are alternatives. You don't have to rely
solely on classified advertising to promote your business.
Here is a discussion, including advantages and disadvantages,
of a few other ways of getting your promotional job done.
YOUR OWN AFFILIATE PROGRAM
A very popular alternative, and it's popular because it can really
work, is to start your own affiliate program. By sharing the
profits of your business with those who get business for you,
you essentially access the promotional territory of everyone who
signs up as your affiliate. When a person signs up, he or she will
promote your opportunity to all of their contacts, and across the
Net in a variety of ways. This is an excellent way to get
promotion without having to pay for it until you share a sale with
your affiliate.
Obviously, if you are simply promoting an affiliate program this
is not an option. Also, you still need to get people to your site
to sign them up for your affiliate program in the first place.
There is still an advantage to offering one, though, because all
that do sign up will be promoting for you.
WRITE ARTICLES FOR EZINES
If you are a good content writer, you can promote your
business for free through writing articles that are of value to
ezine editors and webmasters. The content should be valuable
to the readers, so that editors will want to use it, and should also
be related to your business. Then, at the end of the article, you
attach a resource box that has your name, a brief description of
your business, and a link to your site. If you do your job right,
the content of your article should lead right in to the content on
your web site.
However, do not just make a direct sales pitch. You have to
write something of value or it will not be read, or even
published.
The difficulty here is getting published enough to make it
worthwhile. If you write one article and nothing more, you may
have trouble competing with those who have built a name by
continually writing articles. Also, if you can't write a decent ad,
you may not be interested in writing articles either.
The good part of this tactic is that it is free, and that it can
continue to bring you traffic for a long time if the article is good
enough to be passed around a lot.
FREE E-BOOKS
Another method of promotion is to offer free e-books. You
can write your own if you can produce the content, or put one
together from free reprint sources, or download free e-books
from others and offer them as promotional resources.
Again, you have to get people to your site to offer them your e-
book, or you have to advertise it. Plus, you may not want the
work of writing or putting one together.
The advantage being, that people who download your e-book
will be re-exposed to your offer when they read the e-book, if
it's your own. Also, it can help to persuade people to visit your
site to begin with.
LINK EXCHANGES
Contact other webmasters and offer to exchange links with
them. Spreading your link around on other sites will help to
promote what you have to offer.
The problem here is that you can only put so
many links on your
site without cluttering it up, and that you have to have something
to offer others in order to get them to exchange with you.
Therefore, this can be a hard thing to start out with. Also, if you
are promoting an affiliate site, you can't add anything to it
anyway.
The good thing about this is that it will expose your link to a
different market.
GUARANTEED HITS
There are programs for purchasing Guaranteed Hits to your
site. This will bring you visitors with no worries and literally no
work. The distinct advantage over other methods of promoting
is that the visitor will be at your site. You don't have to coax
them to visit as with other advertising, they will be taken to your
site. Also, this can work for promoting affiliate sites whereas
many of the other methods are only useful for those with their
own web site.
It is an expense, and while the visitors are generally online
business owners and buyers, they may not be specifically
targeted to your particular interest.
However, if you believe your site or program is good and are
only lacking in getting visitors this may be the best solution.
Guaranteed Hits usually come in groups of 1000s. 5-10
thousand often being a minimum purchase. So, even with a
terribly low sales percentage you can still see how guaranteed
hits can be very effective. Just compare the price of the
guaranteed hits to how many sales you would have to get to
make it all worth it. If even a low 1-3% sales ratio makes you a
profit, then this may be the answer for you.
The other advantage here is that you don't have to do
promotional work to get these visitors. Therefore, you will be
left with more time to work on the other aspects of your
business.
TARGETED BANNER IMPRESSIONS
Targeted Banner Impressions have similar advantages and
disadvantages to guaranteed hits. These are banners that are
placed on other's sites with content similar to your own. In fact,
they may even end up on a direct competitor's site. People are
not guaranteed to visit your site, but the banners are presented
to an audience of people that are targeted to your specific
business whereas guaranteed hits are more general.
This also has a cost, but again compare it to the cost of
classified ads and see if a low 1-3% sales ratio will still make
you a profit above that of the cost of the Banner Impressions.
Once again, this method of promotion leaves you more time to
work on the other aspects of your business.
Each of these methods can be useful, it just depends on your
abilities and interests. Some of these require work, others
require no work, but incur an expense. Consider each of them
and how they might fit into your plans. It's certainly possible to
integrate multiple ways of promotion, and in fact it makes sense
to do so.
Still, considering these other methods may just get you out of
having to write anymore classified ads, or having to compete in
the Classified Ocean.
About the Author
To Totally REMOVE the Work of Promotion at a LOW Cost
check out the QUALITY Advertising available from Charles
Schurman. GUARANTEED VISITORS available at
http://www.sweepsurfer.com/spadv.html
Or TARGETED BANNER IMPRESSIONS available at
http://ww.sweepsurfer.com/spadv2.html
Written byJ oe Bingham, editor of the NetPlay Newsletters.
http://www.netplaynewsletters.com
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