The Art of Advertising Your Online Business

The Art of Advertising Your Online Business

Are you done submitting your site to the 8 major search engines? Are you ready for the real methods of advertising that could blow the digits clean off your hit counters.

The Marketing "Guru's" have focused on 3-4 methods of advertising your web site that virtually everyone has adopted, ignoring the dozens, if not hundreds, of unique and effective internet advertising strategies that work wonders.

Everyone is always saying use these 3-4 promotional tools and your work is done:

- Search engine submission
- Email marketing
- Banner advertising
- Ezine advertising

If it was really that easy, wouldn't we all be millionaires right now?

Here are 10 unique methods of online advertising that the internet marketing experts will not tell you about:

If you don't publish an ezine start publishing now. Putting a classified ad in an ezine is fine, however, the trust that you gain from your own opt-in subscriber list is much more powerful and valuable than trying to reach an audience that does not know you from a hole in the wall.

Get your ezine listed in the 40 or so directories on the web that list newsletters. Many people search these directories regularly looking for newsletters that cater to their particular interests.

Begin growing a huge subscriber base by participating in the ultimate joint venture: ezine ad swaps. There is a never ending amount of resources on the net that list publishers willing to swap ads. It would only benefit you to take full advantage of this opportunity.

Write and submit original articles to other publishers and make sure that you include a resource box so that people can find your web site and subscribe to your newsletter.

Participate in discussion forums regularly. This is huge but often overlooked. Many people visit discussion boards on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Appropriate, helpful and intelligent posts on a regular basis will bring about credibility and name recognition.

Come up with an incredibly powerful sig file and use it in every email message that you send out and every discussion board posting you make. This is the equivalent of a business card and like the offline world, if you leave enough of them they will drum up business for you.

Come up with some targeted classified ads and use them in ezines (try to swap ads with other ezines if you publish your own). Also, offer advertising in your own newsletter as this will provide you with an additional revenue stream. IMPORTANT POINT

Tracking your ads is key. Use tracking software such as the Pitbull Campaign Manager™ to assign a unique tracking code to all of your ads so that you can determine which combination of ezines and ads is working for you and which is not.

Using ad codes will help you track the effectiveness of your advertising. This will in turn save you time and money and help you to achieve your goals faster.

There are many different ebooks and several kinds of free software being given away by the internet marketing community. Many people wonder how they can afford to give away valuable information or products like this. Well, they are earning advertising revenue. Many of these ebooks and software applications can have links or banners placed in them (for a fee of course). You can pay to have your banner sponsor an ebook or a software application.

Online classified ads are not dead. You just have to know the right places to advertise. Aol and the other online services have brought me a profit every time I advertised with them. They used to only be available to members of the particular online service, however, they are now available to the general public. I suggest you get there before your competition does!

Purchase banner ad space on highly targeted, high traffic web sites. Banner exchanges have become passe but purchasing banner ad space on targeted sites can be quite lucrative. There are many services that can purchase banner ads for you for very reasonable prices.

BONUS:

Start an associate/affiliate program and submit it to the associate program directories on the net (at my last count there were 50 of them and growing). As with ezine directories, this is an extremely effective and free form of advertising, as many people will search these sites looking for new programs that they can join. This will drive people who are eager to sell for you straight to your site.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Article by Marc Goldman, Goldbar Enterprises. Our web site offers Top Quality, Easy To Use, Affordable Online Tools To Help You Build, Promote & Grow Your Business - All In One Place! Visit The Ultimate Marketers Resource before your competitors do.