As a business owner I am always looking for ways to use free advertising online. I have tried many things, found some worked and some didn't, some methods are a trade off; traffic for time or tons of email. Some methods get traffic, but not necessarily qualified viewers, and some can give you high quality relationships with the people who visit your site. This is a list of 10 ways to get free advertising online.
1. Traffic Exchanges: This is a purely numbers way to advertise. You look at other people's websites and they look at yours. This sounds great, but remember you are marketing to other marketers and the truth is they probably have 10 surfing sites open at the same time and don't even see your page. This is not the place for a long sales page. Short attention getting pages work best with traffic exchanges. Especially if your page has a link that open into another window so they don't have to leave their surfing to view your page.
2. Safelists: This again, is marketing to marketers. You will get a ton of email doing safelists, so you need to get a "bottomless" email account so your email doesn't start bouncing 2 hours into the process. When using safelists, offering something for free to get people to your site is the best way to go. Blatant advertising rarely works.
3. Ad Blogs: There a number of these popping up. It is a blog, like any other blog with the exception that all the posts are advertisings. You can go and post an ad for your business or service on the blog
4. Classifieds: Using FFA sites is pretty useless at this point in internet history, but if you use good ad sites and do some keyword research you can do pretty well with classifieds.
5. Toolbars: There are toolbars you can download to your browser. You put an ad in and while you surf each time you change pages the ad changes in your toolbar. Depending on the program and how much you surf this can drive a lot of traffic to your site. You also have to write an eye catching ad that will get people to take action. A free report is a great thing to advertise in toolbars instead of your opportunity. It will get people to click to your page.
6. Yahoo Groups: There's two types of yahoo groups you can use. There are purely advertising groups, where you can post your advertising. There are also topic related groups. You can join in conversation with others who have something in common with you. When you ask a question or post a reply everyone will see your email signature. This is the better of the two ways to use Yahoo in my opinion.
7. Article Marketing: This is a great way to get free advertising online. You write quality articles and post your resource box at the bottom of your article. You post it to article directories; some of which rank very highly in the search engines. You will get search engine traffic, and others have the right to republish your article in newsletters or on their websites. This can drive a lot of traffic if you get published in a big ezine or a high traffic site. Doing keyword research is an important element to being successful in article marketing.
8. Forums: Find a forum on something you enjoy, something you'd like to learn more about and converse with others who enjoy the topic as well. In forums you can use a signature which usually can include a link to your website or blog. Each time you post or answer a question everyone will see your link. If you become an active member of the community people will want to know what you are doing. They will click on your signature link.
9. Communities: Myspace, APsense, IM Peers, there are communities popping up everywhere. If you join a community and participate, become a meaningful member people will gravitate to you, and they will also want to know what you are doing. In communities you can post an entire profile which will allow you to tell your story. This is especially effective. Remember, in communities you are not marketing your products/business/services. You are marketing yourself. Keep your page free of banners, and ads, let people come to you because they want to know more about you. They will ask you what you are doing, then you can tell them.
10. Video: The newest way to get free advertising online in my arsenal. Webcams have gone mainstream. You can get a webcam for under twenty bucks. From there your options are limitless. You can make short videos about your thoughts the things you love, business ideas, how you feel about a certain topic. You can use windows movie maker (a free program) to add your contact information and website to your video. Everyone's heard of YouTube, but there are video sites popping up everywhere. Many of the new sites are more focused on specific niches. Look around and see if you can find a smaller site, in addition to uploading to youtube, that is specific to the topic of your video. Video is a great way to market yourself. People get to know you are a real person, they get to feel your energy, and see if they are a match to you and your business.
There you have it. 10 ways to get free advertising online. You can use some or even all of these tactics. Just remember some will drive lots of traffic, but it may not be targeted traffic. Try a combination of these methods. Remember though using free advertising online is a trade off, you are going to pay one way or another, either time or money. So be consistent and deliberate in your actions if you expect results.
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