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Advertising Tips You MUST advertise your business if you want to grow your business and attract new customers! There are lots ways to advertise your home based business and many are free. The list on this page should give you plenty of ideas. One thing to remember is to not feel overwhelmed at all the options listed here. It is best to try to master one or two before moving onto other methods of marketing. Any one method alone, done properly, can produce great results. Here's 16 advertising ideas to get you started ;-)
You may have heard it said "the money is in the list". Basically what this means is that if you have a list of prospects, you can email them over and over again and generate more and more sales - without having to find any new prospects. There are a range of websites that take a lot of the effort out of this for you. They are effectively clubs where members have opted in to receive emails from members, in exchange for being able to send emails back to other members. Proof that listbuilders work:
Most people join listbuilders for free and try to earn enough credit in the hopes they'll be able to send enough emails back to get some interest in their offer. However, in reality, the professionals (about 5% of the members) pay for the option of emailing thousands of members every few days. I have found this to be VERY effective in generating interest in my own businesses and I HIGHLY RECOMMEND signing up for as many as you can afford, and take advantage of the one time offer when you register as it will save you around 50% on the cost. My Quick Video Overview Of Listbuilders: Here's my top list building site recommendations (in order of preference): ListJoe: My favourite! email to 3,000 members every 3 days (Gold membership $197 per year if you take the one time offer when you register) ViralURL: Email to 3,000 members every 3 days (Gold membership, $197 per year if you take advantage of the one time offer at sign up) ViralAdsUnleashed: Email to 3,000 members every 3 days (lifetime diamond membership is $197 if you join at the one time offer at sign up) TheListAuction: Email to 3,000 members every 3 days (Gold membership - $197 per year if you take the one time offer when you join). ListJumper - You can join for free and email people who are looking to make money online. You can also earn money if others upgrade their accounts. Note - as with all listbuilders, if you can afford to, it is best to take an upgraded account and get yourself ahead of the masses. Think like a professional, and be different from the crowd. There are numerous discussion forums online. You can take part in discussion and on most forum you are allowed to include a "signature" that tells others a little bit about yourself - and very often contains a link to a web site. Go to Google and search for "XYZ chat forum" (where XYZ is an area you have an interest or knowledge so it doesn't get boring for you!) and register. Make posts on subjects you know will be popular and get read. Include a signature along these lines: "Get Paid To Shop - I can show you how!" The usual method of making a signature"clickable" is to use the following format - [url=http://www.myfreesuperstore.com]Get Paid To Shop -[/url] I can show you how! Some discussion forums have thousands of people reading the boards every day and this is a very effective and enjoyable way to get free advertising. Here's a list of good discussion forums. The reality is you can probably build a great list of contacts and views to your business just by concentrating on 2 or 3 of the forums you feel most comfortable with. http://www.moneyfanclub.com
Social networking has exploded over recent years and includes many names that are now familiar the world over - MySpace, FaceBook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkdIn, Yuwie, DirectMatches, Viral Networks etc. Basically the method of advertising with social networking sites is to create a profile all about yourself with links to your business etc. and then invited friends to keep in touch with you and see your profile. One site I've set up which has proved very successful for some people is "AddFriends" - specifically geared to automating the "friend introduction" process on MySpace. Trying to understand social networking sites? Check out this video from Perry Belcher...
In one sense, article publishing is a new form of "press releasing". You write an short article and then submit it for publication through various channels. The article should be factually correct and interesting. You get a chance to add a link at the end of your article explaining a little bit about yourself, your authority and your web site. Check out the article writing experts at ezinearticles to see what can be done with article writing.
One of the oldest and most highly effective forms of advertising on the planet! It's been said that we're all just 6 links of association from anyone on the earth. That means it's possible to be able to contact absolutely anyone, anywhere, within 6 "friend of a friend" links of association. That's why some businesses such as YouTube and MySpace can grow SO fast, virally. Don't underestimate the power of word of mouth advertising and it's fair to say you should always take every opportunity to tell people what business you are involved with as you never know who they may know! In other words - tell everyone you know about your business. Don't be shy - but just be measured with your "promotion" so as to not offend anyone. Those who are interested in making more money or starting their own business will show themselves pretty quickly if you let them know that's where your interests lie too. If you are like most people, you get a whole bunch of emails every day. You should add an email signature so that every email you send in reply contains a short and simply message for example: Get Paid To Shop? - Visit: www.MySite.com Click here for instructions on how to add a signature to an email. There are thousands of sites online where you can place a free classified advertisement. My only warning is be very careful you don't lured into their paid advertising. They use sweeteners such as "join today and we'll give you 10,000 free page views" and that sort of thing. Paid advertising online needs to be done with reputable and recognisable sites. I think most people are aware of the hundreds of FREE CLASSIFIED ad websites on the internet. Many network marketers start out by posting FREE CLASSIFIED ads on many of these sites. Some have gone on to really master this technique and can generate THOUSANDS of dollars in income just by placing simple FREE Classified ads online. DO NOT ignore this simple strategy. YOU WILL get results BUT you MUST be consistent. THE SECRET again is MASSIVE ACTION!! Don't just put out 10 ads and expect any results. You need to have a plan to post 10, 20, 50 ads every day on multiple sites on a consistent basis. This shouldn't take more than 30-60 minutes each day. You also need to focus on only the most popular, highly- trafficked websites with your TARGET MARKET. To find free classified ad sites, simply go to Google and search for "free classified advertising". Here are some of the bigger Free Classified sites: * http://www.inetgiant.com If you use blogging as a form of advertising, it's effectively a cross between social networking and free classified and article writing! I do not (yet) use blogging to expand my own businesses, but I do know that a lot of people get massive exposure to their businesses by writing a blog. I won't go into details here about how to set up a blog - but one of the key things is to start to associate with other bloggers on similar "themes" and this will get you "plugged in" to the blogging network. Search on Google for "how to start a blog" or "how to use blogging to advertise my business". Again, pick a subject that you are passionate about otherwise you won't have the mental stamina needed to keep a blog up to date. A dead blog is pretty worthless and in fact can damage your reputation so if you're not going to do it right, it may be best to not do it at all. We all get them - piles of junk mail. However, this can actually be a good thing to a home business entrepreneur. Collect all the prepaid envelopes that come in the junk mail and send it back with a small insert saying something along the lines... "Fed up opening mail? I know I would be. Fancy earning an extra £500-£2,000 a month? Check out my web site ..... xyz.com" If you can hand write the note, it has even more power! (better still, hand write it and then scan and print it for speed!) I suppose technically, this isn't totally FREE advertising. You've got to pay for printed materials. However, my point here is that you can deliver leaflets through doors or hand out a car boot sales for free. By the way don't forget to give leaflets to car boot sellers themselves - who better to have in your team than someone who is keen to earn some more money and is prepared to get up at 6am to stand in a field for the whole morning! You might also want to print off some business cards and hand them out to whoever you meet. Again, it's all about getting lots of people to see your business. Globally, it's estimated there are around 50,000 people starting a home based business EVERY DAY. However, most people give up with their business too soon, without realising what they could achieve. So my tip here is to apply for information from as many home business opportunity adverts as you can (search in google for "make money" or "start a business" etc and you'll see hundreds). Date the information, put it in a folder and then go back to these people 3-6 months later asking them if they'd be interested in looking at another business in combination to their existing business. If you manage to make contact, the chances are they will have given up with their previous business and will be keen to try something different. It may seem a little "devious" but its just a statistic of the home business "market". The reality is most people are simply not professional or organised enough to pull this sort of advertising off. So if you do, I'm pretty sure you will get some good results. Once every few weeks post a press release at PRweb.com, in which you include your favorable review of the website or affiliate product, along with your affiliate link. If you pay them $80, they will guarantee that your press release is picked up by all major search engines, potentially sending you thousands of visitors. I'm sure you've seen them - the stickers in the car windows advertising for a business opportunity. I can't say I'm a great fan of this form of advertising, but I've got to admit - it still gets the message out there. Having said that, I have done it myself. I used to have a magnetic plate I stuck to my car in my early days and I remember one day someone commenting as they looked at my car and saying "that's clever! I like that". So I do know it works, but because I work from home full time now, I hardly drive anywhere these days ;-) Ezine Marketing is one of the favorite methods of many top producers. The reason for this is that Ezine marketing allows you to piggy back off the credibility of someone else and in essence "rent" someone else's list! Ezines are online newsletters that people subscribe to. When an ezine sends out an email with your ad in it the reader takes it more seriously because they have a relationship established with the ezine. www.directoryofezines.com <<Recommended Resource! Recommended Advertising Sources: The secret to successful SOLO ADs is CONSISTANCY! Create a budget for yourself, whatever works for you, and stick to it on a consistent basis long term. Plan to send 1-5 solo ads every week or every other week. Just remain consistent These are recommended sources that I have compiled from trusted sources. This does not guarantee in any way your results. Advertising is still about testing. TEST. TEST. TEST. Do 10, if 3 work ... great! Repeat those 3 and keep looking for 3 more!
More Great Ezines.... Xtreme Marketing
Tips Other Great Places to Place Solo Ads Smart-list Solo
Ads Still more... 24
Karat Marketer Video marketing really requires a complete training manual in it's own right, but I will cover the basic principles here. Essentially you need to create unique videos that offer value to a group of people. The main video site to get your videos published is YouTube, and to be honest, there is no point in even worrying about all the hundreds of other video sharing sites out there. It's best to master the single site that probably accounts for about 90% of the traffic out there. It's a bit like trying to sell on auction sites - there may be cheaper and easier sites to use than eBay, but fundamentally, they simply can't deliver the traffic. My recommendation is therefore to produce short videos that solve a "problem". For example, I recorded a video which shows people how to get a youtube video to automatically play. Here's the video: Click Here. At the time of writing this, it's been viewed over 6,200 times. (By the way, one of the downsides of video marketing on Youtube is that you have no control over what youtube does with your videos - and they do have a habit of simply deleting videos so if my video is no longer there, you know why). Now, this video took about 15 minutes to create but has been seen by thousands of people all around the world. I finish it with a short and simple message telling people who I am and letting them know that if they'd like to make some money working from home, they can check out my website. My Quick Overview of marketing on Youtube:
Here's some simple steps to creating videos: 1) Search for something you already know about. (don't worry, even something obvious to you will be a mystery to someone else). 2) Check how many people search for this on Google (see Google Keyword Tool) 3) Check to see how many relevant videos there are on Youtube (anything less than 2,000 is worth a stab!) 4) Record your video, and save the file name of the video as the keywords your targetting e.g. if you wanted to appear well for the search "how to stop snoring" you should name your video file: "how_to_stop_snoring.flv". It's just another hint to YouTube as to the content of your video. 5) Upload your video on youtube and add a description, title and tag words. Do not over do the "keyword stuffing" (too many keywords and not enough "real" content) or make it look too spammy. 6) Be very careful when adding a link to a website in the video description - if you have too many videos all pointing to the same site and Google/YouTube are not happy with that site (if it's an affiliate or MLM site) then you may find your video is deleted by YouTube. 7) Make sure your description matches what is actually in the video. YouTube can see when people stop watching your videos and if your videos are deemed "low quality" they will soon vanish from sight. 8) Make sure you video really does offer "value" to the viewer. As above, all videos are tracked by YouTube and if your video simply doesn't encourage people to watch all the way through, it will be given a lower quality score than others and hence will not list so well in the search results. 9) If you are in a highly competitive area, it may be worth linking to a relevant "authority site" from your YouTube description as this will help your video and post gain credibility from YouTube and help them work out what the relevancy is to yoru video. e.g. if you were to post a video "how to play guitar" it may be worth searching on Google for "how to play guitar" and find a good site and link to it from your description on your video. You can always change your description at a later date to help improve your video ranking if not overly successful in the first place. The keys to making a successful video (i.e. one that gets found and played) is to start typing in a search in Youtube and it will give you some suggestions, then check to see how many other videos are suggested. Generally, anytime YouTube suggests there are less than about 2,000 other videos found, it's worth a shot. As you get better, and your account gains credibility you can have a go at producing videos in even more competitive search phrases. Cost: Nothing. Time: 15 minutes. Restult: Worth at least $5,000 of paid advertising! Pay Per Click marketing (PPC) is as the name suggests where you pay for visitors to your site - based on them clicking a link somewhere. The biggest pay per click market place is Google, where you can pay from as little as 4cents per click upwards. If you get pay per click marketing wrong, you can spend a small fortune very fast. Essentially, PPC is for professionals. There are lots of places you can learn about PPC marketing, but if you're just starting out and you don't have a BIG budget, I would advise you to steer clear of PPC unless you want to simply "test" a market quickly For instance, if you were selling lawnmowers you could set up a PPC campaign and give it a trial for a couple of weeks and track results. If it then looks like it would be profitable if you could get leads for a lower price then it might be worth persuing further. The top 3 PPC market places are: Google (called Adwords) Bing Yahoo
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