In this installment I’m going to focus on another marketing mistake. Last week I went over a big one, not getting professional hosting and your own domain. Well, this one ranks right up there with that blunder. Free advertising.
Now, before you jump all over me and tell me that not all free advertising is worthless, I already know that. Article marketing, which is one of the best forms of advertising, is absolutely free.
However, there are many forms of free advertising that aren’t worth the time to spit at. I’ll give you a few examples.
FFA Posting. To just post ads to these FFA sites is not going to work. The sites do not get indexed by the search engines and nobody goes to them so you’re not getting any traffic in any manner shape or form.
Banner Exchanges. This is another dud. The studies are in. Nobody clicks on banners anymore. Oh sure, there are things you can do to get people to click on your banners, but a plain banner might as well not even be there.
Classified Sites. The problem with free classified ads is that most of the people who go to classified sites are not looking for business opportunities. They’re looking for a pet or a used motorcycle. People who post business opportunities to classified sites are totally wasting their time.
I could go on, but my point is not so much with the type of free advertising that people use. My point is that most people feel that they shouldn’t have to spend any money to promote their business.
So to decide that you’re not going to spend money on advertising either because you feel you shouldn’t have to or worse, because you “can’t afford it” is one of the biggest marketing mistakes you can make.
Personally, I’m happy to spend money on an ad if I know that I’ll make it back. If I know that every visitor is worth $1 to me, then I’d be delighted to spend 50c for visitors all day long. The key is to know your visitor value.
One of the best ways of doing this is submitting articles to ezinearticles.com. They let you track the number of visitors you get from each one, so you can compare that to the number of sales. Sales divided by visitors equals your visitor value!
Once you’ve done that, you should be confident in spending money on advertising as you can estimate how much any campaign will return.
Next time I’ll go over another big marketing mistake…
See you then.
Sincerely,
Richard Legg
Richard, I agree with you that article marketing is the best way to go. My site is full of Banners, Text ads etc. I do get some hits on them but my articles are great links back to my site.
Thanks
Richard, I hear from everybody, that article marketing is the best way to advertise.Are you writing all days long to produce articles and submit them to eZine Articles.I see you have couple of articles in every category at eZineArticles.com.Do you use any software to submit your articles.If yes, which one?
Thank you!
You don’t need to write articles all day long – just start with one or two a day but make sure to pick the right keywords to go after.
Just going for “make money” wont work, but something like “how to make extra money from home” may get you a lot more views.
You only need to submit to a few directories to see good results, such as:
ezinearticles.com
goarticles.com
articlebase.com
articlefactory.com
buzzle.com
Hope this helps,
Richard
Hi Richard,
Sound advice! Article marketing does seem the best way to go. By the way, I’ve actually gone through all the articles on your blog today for the first time (shame on me!) and like what I see.
I need to work harder I think. I have one of your fr.ee sites, along with web hosting, but have to go to Godaddy about the Nameservers. I’ve been focussing on building a membership site and have neglected you, but I’m on board now.
Keep up and hard work, and prosper. You deserve it.
Regards,
Catherine
Yes! I have made these marketing mistakes. This is an eye-opening post for me. Going to try and focus more on article submission and track my results….I have had no luck with banners.
I have published two article sites this year:
http://www.1stopinfosource.info
and
for article submission:
http://www.free-article-bonanza.com
Thank you Richard, for providing the short list of article sites that would be good to submit articles to, I am going to start right away.
Thanks again,
Jared
http://www.private-investigation-info.com
Hi Richard,
This is the method I suggest to people with very little advertising budget. It takes some time but the monetary cost is great. For non-writers, they might try using PLR articles and re-write them to avoid duplication problems. Add some new thoughts and your on your way.
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helo richard i think off self and i say can i have chanche too bee like you a just i have dream all the best from merita
Great stuff … its so nice to NOT have to listen to all the hype… Richard great site lovin it… people helping people YES