work at home
How and
Where to Advertise Your Small Business on the Internet.
By Jim Daniels -
Work at home site.com
I'm a bit of a cheapskate when
it comes to advertising my online business. I let my free ebooks,
articles and newsletter do most of my marketing work.
But I also realize that in order to succeed in business, you must spend SOME
money advertising. And I've been relearning this lesson recently.
Actually, I took a bit of a hiatus from advertising on the web the last year
or so. Sure, I spent some ad money here and there but not much. I've been on the
sidelines until very recently, biding my time until I got my latest project
completed.
Now that my new site, http://www.make-a-living-online.com is live, I have
been dipping my toe back into the advertising waters. And today I'd like to
share with you some of my own results, so you'll know exactly how and where you
should get started advertising online.
For starters, keep your wallet securely in your pocket. There are three things
you must do BEFORE spending ad bucks online. And here they are...
1. Get a handle on how well your site does its selling.
Figuring out how good a job your site does selling is simple. Just look at
your stats and do a little math. You are after just one number... how much a
website visitor is worth to you. Or more simply, how much you should PAY for a
visitor.
To figure this out you need to first find out how many visitors it takes you
to get a sale. If you get 1000 visitors a week and 10 sales in that same week,
then your visitor to sales ratio is 100-1. If you average 20 sales from those
1000 visitors, you are closing one sale for every 50 visitors. Once you know
your own number, you will be able to determine approximately how much a visitor
is worth to you. You simply take it one step further...
Let's say you close 1 sale in every 50 visitors and your average sale is $50.
Simple math tells you that you could pay up to a dollar per visitor and break
even. So a good goal would be to pay LESS THAN a buck per visitor. Any ad buy
that averages out to less than a dollar per visitor should be profitable,
provided the traffic is targeted. If you aim to spend fifty cents per visitor
you can double your investment every time.
Of course there are lots of variables. Things like opt-in email members you
may receive from an ad buy and the repeat visitors that your list generates. But
you get the idea. Until you know the above numbers for your site, you cannot
spend money wisely on advertising.
Once you have a handle on how much a visitor is worth to you, the next step
you must take before your first ad buy is...
2. Set up your email address capture strategy.
If your site is closing one sale for every 50 visitors, you may be satisfied.
But if you are not offering a way for the other 49 visitors to "stay in the
loop" you are making a huge mistake.
And it is simple to keep them from getting away. Just offer them something of
value in exchange for their contact information. An example of one way to do
this is offering a free gift at your site and getting their name and email
address when they request it. Your gift can be a free ebook, an email course or
anything else your visitors would want.
You can get as many as 20% of your visitors to leave their contact info if
you do it right. That's a lot of email addresses when you start advertising and
getting lots of traffic.
But what do you do with the addresses?
You treat them like gold.
Regularly publish an email newsletter to your growing list of addresses.
Contact them and offer your expertise. Give them more free, valuable information
related to what they requested originally. Make them feel special and grow a
community. This is how long-term profits are made online.
Once you have tackled the two items above, there is one last step before you
actually spend money on advertising...
3. Make sure you have a way to measure your results once your advertising
starts.
I do this simply by copying my main entry page and using the new URL in the
ad. For example, I have started advertising at the pay per click search engine,
FindWhat.com. So I copied my main web page to a new page called http://www.make-a-living-online.com/findwhat.shtml
which is identical to the original. I use that new URL in all my FindWhat.com
keyword buys. When I check the stats my web host emails me I can easily see how
many visitors came through that URL.
This is just ONE way to track traffic. There are TONS more. If you want to
use something more sophisticated, here are a few you can try...
The RoiBot Ad Tracker: http://www.bizweb2000.com/roibot
Urchin: http://www.urchin.com
OK, once you have tackled the three items above, you're all set up to do some
ad buys.
(If you're not ready to spend ad dollars yet, save this issue so you can refer
to it when you are ready. You'll save lots of time and money by starting with
this list.)
I have tried many strategies online and here's the straight scoop on what
works and what doesn't. I've ranked nine online advertising strategies as
follows...
Poor: Don't waste your time.
Fair: Worth a try at least once or twice.
Good: A solid way to spend ad dollars.
Excellent: Should be a regular staple in any online marketing budget.
OK, here they are...
1. FFA Submissions (Free for all links pages)
You know, those interfaces that say "submit to 50,000 websites for a few
bucks. Well, save your few bucks. FFA's had their time in the sun. They worked
great when they were first introduced. Now they are not worth a dime. Heck, even
if you can do a free submission it's probably not worth your time. The last
three tests I ran submitted my URL to nearly a half a million sites. I got four
visitors. 'Nuf said.
Rating: Poor
1. Bulk Email
Most of you know my take on this. Sure, you CAN get website traffic using
bulk email. You can do it yourself or hire a company to hide behind. But the
fact is, you risk your business reputation and you'll anger a ton of folks. Your
domain will end up blocked by many ISPs and could even get sued. Unsolicited
bulk email is not worth the trouble.
Rating: Poor
3. Safe lists
This is a twist on opt-in email marketing where you pay for the privilege of
being able to send email to a list of other marketers who have done the same.
While I have not tried this personally I can comment on it simply because lots
of my subscribers have tried it. And I have not heard one good thing about it
other than from people reselling it. The folks that have used it have found that
while safe list "members" have agreed to be on the safe lists, most never
actually read messages or buy anything.
Rating: Poor
4. Banner Advertising
This is an "old school" advertising strategy that I have been testing again
now that prices are lower. And early indications are that there is a solid
reason for the still-declining prices of banner advertising. My own
click-through rates been less that 1% so far, with a few exceptions. But I do
have some decent size banner ad runs planned for the coming months at some busy,
targeted sites. Time will tell if I'll continue with this strategy.
If you DO want to try banner advertising, ask the site you plan to advertise
at what the average click-through rates are and what banners perform best. That
may get you up to two or three percent. If that will take you into profit, give
it a whirl. But most small and home businesses may be better served using one of
the five advertising methods remaining.
Rating: Fair
5. Opt-in list rental
There are plenty of companies that will rent you email addresses that have
opted in to receive commercial email. And if the recipients are not being paid
to read the messages, that is they are genuinely interested in the offers they
signed up to receive, this strategy can be profitable. The problem is you'll pay
from ten to twenty cents per address and mailing to a list large enough to get
results from can be quite expensive. But if your budget can handle it, you can
generate some great trageted traffic.
Rating: Good
6. Paid Search Engines Submissions
While I highly suggest submitting to all the major search engines that are
still free (AltaVista, Lycos, Google, HotBot, DMOZ and Direct Hit) today's tips
is about paying for advertising. And there are two paid search engine services I
have had very good luck with...
Inktomi's Search/Submit at $30 a year, which gets your URL into AOL, iWon,
MSN and the Looksmart directory within 48 hours.
Yahoo! Business Express and sponsored site listings. The business express
service <http://help.yahoo.com/help/bizex/> costs $199 for non-adult sites, and
gets you Yahoo! consideration. I got my www.make-a-living-online.com site in
within a week by simply following the detailed directions at my companion site.
While $199 is a little pricey for some small business owners, a good listing at
Yahoo! brings quite a bit of extra traffic. Once you are listed, consider taking
advantage of the "sponsored site" offering for an additional monthly fee. I am
sampling this currently and it paid for itself within the first few weeks. My
results may decline as more sites are added into the sponsored sites area but
I'll keep an eye on things.
Rating: Good
7. Pay per click search engines
This advertising model offers a way for you to bid on search terms and pay
only when someone clicks through to your site. I've been advertising with
www.overture.com and findwhat.com using this method and have had decent results.
It's easy to control costs and your visitors are targeted precisely.
I've written a full tutorial explaining my GoTo advertising strategy. If you
are considering advertising with GoTo.com, do yourself a favor and read the
tutorial FIRST... http://www.bizweb2000.com/pennies.htm
If you are not in a super-competitive keyword arena you can do well with pay
per click engines. For example, if you sell web hosting, good luck getting
traffic for less than a few bucks a click. But if you have a smaller niche, this
strategy represents a great opportunity and is worth trying.
And if you DO find that this model works well for you, more than 75
additional "Pay per Click" search engines can be found at Alan Gardyne's
super-duper directory... http://www.payperclicksearchengines.com
Rating: Good
8. Ezine Advertising
Still the one. Some people think I recommend ezine advertising because I have
an ezine and I'm trying to sell my own ad space. On the contrary, I've been
trying NOT to sell my ad space for the last few years. That's why my own rates
are so high! I can run my own offers or affiliate offers and make much more than
I can selling the ad space. Many other ezine editors are finding the same thing.
While this has resulted in rising ezine ad costs over the last few years, one
fact remains... ezine advertising is still one of the most effective ways to get
targeted traffic -- cheap. Just visit an ezine directory and search for ezines
in your niche market. Subscribe to a bunch and start reading them. Look for
larger circulation ezines that have a good following. If you like the content
then the thousands of other readers probably do too. Place an ad and you'll make
a profit, nearly every time. Top sponsorships work best if you can swing it.
Rating: Excellent
9. Personalized Email Series
Here's one that many marketers don't talk about much. It's actually a secret
weapon among many of the big name marketers. You offer a freebie at your site
and when your visitors claim it you are not only added to your opt-in list they
are added to a series of personalized follow-up messages that you pre-program.
There are lots of sites that offer this service including my
www.webbusinesswizard.com and the one at http://www.bizweb2000.com/arsonly.htm .
If you write a powerful and effective series this marketing strategy can be one
of your top sales producers.
Rating: Excellent
Interested in more? I just uploaded a full tutorial on the secrets to using a
personalized email series including my own series and why it works. I also have
done lots of ad buys lately and have many more planned. I'll be uploading the
exact results very soon. Where is all this fresh info going? Into my new
companion site for my "Make a Living Online" members. And this stuff is about 1%
of what's there. Come to my new www.work-at-home-site.com
and start growing your online business today.
Yes, I want
to work from home. Tell me more...
Internet Marketing
info from bizweb2000.com
Website Promotion info from make-a-living-online.com
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