by: Julie Martin
You have got a great idea, and your website is now complete. You are ready to open for business but where are your customers? Simple ? you are going to have to go out and get them. It sounds easy, but advertising can be a pitfall that can cripple many e-businesses.

There are several methods of advertising on the Internet. Some are free, some are low cost, while others are insanely expensive. The first thing you will need to look at is how much you are willing to pay for traffic, and how far your advertising dollar can go.

One of the most effective, and cheapest, methods of advertising is through e-zines. There are thousands, if not millions of e-zines published every single day. The best way to approach e-zines for advertising is to join a couple that fit your product profile and that you find interesting. Most e-zines offer incentives to new businesses signing up, and will even run your ad for free just for subscribing. You can find many e-zines that offer ads for as little as a dollar. It is a fantastic way to reach thousands of people who are already interested in your type of business.

In fact, you can utilize e-zines to promote your product for free, if you can write an informative article. E-zines are desperate for content, and will often offer to publish your article in exchange for a link back to your site. If you go this route, make sure that your article is informative and not just a sales pitch. For example, if your e-business deals with making money from home, an article about how working from home decreases stress would be very well received. You can rely more on making a good impression with the article and a simple link back, than a hard sell that might not even make into print.

Link exchanges are another free alternative to costly advertising. Be prepared to get lost in the shuffle if you choose a popular site. The best way to make use of this method is by running your own link exchange from your site and offering a free posting in exchange for a link back to your site.

Targeted advertising is by far the best way to bring in traffic to your website. By using targeted key words, your customers are not just stumbling into your website. Half the work is already done by the key words. You just need to supply the information. Google Ad Words can be used very effectively as well as other targeted key word companies. Most of these operate on a pay per click basis, so you will need to research your key words and supply the best possible words to ensure a good cost-to-click ratio.

Press releases are a great way to get the word out about your site and possibly create media buzz. While this method is more expensive than the above methods, it has the potential to bring in substantial traffic. Before sending out your release, make sure that it is formatted correctly and contains a powerful first paragraph. News editors are inundated daily and you do not want to get lost in the shuffle.

When writing your press release, it is important to make it news worthy, instead of a plain announcement. Using our example above, if a recent study is released about stress management and working from home, it would be a perfect time to send out a press release that mentions the study and your business. Be prepared to receive phone calls and answer questions if your release is a hit.

You don?t necessarily have to wait for an event to happen to send out your release. If all else fails, get creative! There are many ways to tie in your business to current events, all you need is a little imagination.

We have covered just a couple of ways to effectively advertise your new or existing e-business. The best advice is to start wisely, plan your advertising budget accordingly and get the word out as effectively as possible.

Advertising Using PPC Search Engines
Buying your way to the top with Pay Per Click

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ANALYZING EZINES

After having selected ezines to advertise your program in based on how the content of the ezines relate to what you wish to advertise, there is still another process to choosing the best ezines for your marketing dollars.

Analyzing the ezines is a rather subjective process, however. There are no hard and fast rules to follow that give you a clear indication of whether or not an ezine is worth the cost. However, there is an information gathering process that can help you to make better decisions.

AD FORMATTING

One important aspect is how ads are handled in the ezine itself. Where are the ads located in the ezine? Are they made visible by being placed directly between or at the start of the articles, or are they pushed all to the end of the ezine or published separately in an ad sheet?

How many ads are run in each issue? Are the headlines of the ads offset to attract attention, are the ads separated in some way from each other, or does the entire ad section look like one big chunk of text?

Naturally, anything the ezine publisher does to give visibility to the ads is a plus for you as an advertiser.

SUBSCRIBERS: Who Are They and Where Did They Come From?

Don’t be afraid to contact the editor, publisher, or advertising agent of an ezine and ask them some questions. Find out not only how many subscribers they have, but get their opinion of what type of markets their subscribers are interested in, AND how they get their subscribers.

Some marketing practices, such as automatically subscribing people that post to an FFA or ad site, may pull a lot of subscribers for an ezine, but result in very little readers. Ads for subs programs also have mixed results. Some stick around and read the ezine, but many don’t. The best subscribers are those that are completely volunteer opt in readers.

However, many ezines use multiple means of gaining subscribers and while some use not so great methods, they may also clean their lists of non-responsive subscribers regularly. That’s why it is best to ask and make a judgment based on the answer you receive. This may take some practice and trial and error, but at least if you have the information you are giving yourself something to learn from. So, ask where, how, and what type of subscribers the ezine has. Ask how effectively they retain subscribers as well. That is a good indication of many subscribers are reading the ezine and viewing it as worthwhile.

FREE vs. PAID ADVERTISING

There are many ezines that do offer free ads to their subscribers. Some of these are worthwhile others are not. It really comes down to reader involvement. If people are still reading the ezine and not just subscribed to put their ad in every week, it may be worth your time. If the ezine has passed all of you’re other criteria up to this point, it has to be worth a shot. At least this costs you nothing but your time.

Paid advertising at this point where you have studied, selected, and analyzed many ezines and come up with a short list is definitely going to be worth the cost.

Let’s just review what you have gone through in selecting the ezines to advertise in.

1. Targeted Content that matches the product, service, or opportunity you are advertising. 2. Acceptable Potential Market based on the content of the ezine and what the ezine’s editor says about his or her subscriber’s interests. 3. Acceptable Ad Formatting and Placement in the Ezine. 4. Acceptable Subscriber Base as described by the way the ezine gets it’s subscribers and keeps them.

Now comes the kicker, ad cost. What’s a good price, and what isn’t?

Well, it just depends. That’s not what you wanted to hear, I know. You’d rather I provided a simple rule to go by that made all of your decisions for you. Sorry, but I don’t believe that is possible. It is a big subject, however, so we’d best save it for the final installment in this series.

Joe Bingham, Editor of the NetPlay Newsletters Subscribe to 1 of 3 Quality NetPlay Ezines, See which one fits you at: http://www.netplaynewsletters.com Need To Publish Your Own Ezine? I’ll Write It For You and Show You How to Make It Successful!

Free Ezine Advertising On Steroids
General advertising and promotion

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When I first started my internet home business, I realized that in order to make money I would have to bring visitors to my website. I didn’t have a lot of extra cash laying around, and my mentality at the time was “Why would I pay for it, when I can get it for free”? So, I starting searching the internet for places that would accept an ad for my product for free. I was very happy to find literally thousands of sites willing to accept my ad.

As the weeks went by I worked hard and learned a lot. The phrase that comes to mind when I think back is, “you get what you pay for”. I was placing ads on the internet every free moment I got and was getting very little results. Not being one to quite, I figured I would move on to another form of advertising or figure out what I was doing wrong with the free advertising.

As soon as I placed my ad, I would go back and look at it. I expected my ad to be at the top of the list since I had just placed it. Much to my surprise, my ad was listed down the list a little way. I realized that at the very moment that I was placing my ad, others were doing the same. And as each person placed an ad, mine moved further down the list. In my infinite wisdom… I realized that potential visitors would probably not search past the first page before choosing a product.

So then I decided that I would go into that site and place my ad every few hours. This way I knew it would always stay close to the top of the page, and hopefully be viewed by a potential customer. How right I was!!! Eventually, I had my first customer and had made my first sale on the internet! What a feeling! I was ready to take the internet by storm…

The week ran into the weekend, and I continued in the same way with my free ad campaign…and no luck. Several weeks went by were I was getting visitors and making sales through the week, and none on the weekend. Are you seeing a pattern here? I sure did. I soon discovered through statistical data that I pulled up from a search engine that the internet traffic on the weekend is super low compared to the weekdays. I also learned that the internet traffic is at its peak around the noon hour in the US.

From that day forward, I didn’t waste my time advertising on the weekends. Instead, I would sit down around 11:00 a.m. every morning and run as many free ads as was humanly possible. I could just about plan each day at noon that I could get a potential customer, affiliate, sale.

I’m also a firm believer in the phrase “work smarter, not harder”. It didn’t take me long to figure out that I could utilize copy and paste and run the same ad in every category that it applied. I also used the back button on my browser a lot. Most of the time by using the back button, all my information was still there and I could just choose a different category.

It wasn’t long before I had several paying customers and was bringing in a small monthly income from my small internet business. I often try to teach this method to my members who cannot to pay for advertising to start out with…without much luck unfortunately. Many will not sacrifice their time to this extent, or they will run one ad on the internet and expect to get up the next morning and be a millionaire.

For those of you who don’t have the money to invest, you will HAVE to invest your TIME. How much is your time worth? Many are drawing 6-figure incomes from the internet within 2-5 years. The internet has made more millionaires from the average Joe than any other vessel in history. Is 2-5 years a hard pill to swallow? It shouldn’t be. How many of you are going to work your nine to five job for 40-50 years and have nothing to show for it?

Am I still running free ads? No, I’m not. I took my very first paycheck that I earned from free advertising and put it back into paid advertising. I can reach a vast number of customers with paid ads with no effort on my part at all. Instead, my time has been filled with teaching others to do as I have done, and building my own business day by day.

Not a day has gone by in the last year and a half where I have not built onto my business. I started out running free ads, then I moved on to paid ads, ppc’s, email lists, enzine ads, then I built and optimized my own website, got link partners, got listed with the search engines, etc…

If you want to turn your life around and live without any financial constraints, then the internet is the place to be. All it will take is patience, persistence and the will to succeed on your part.

Rebecca Gilbert has been an successful network marketer since July, 2002. Visit her at: http://www.101homebusiness.org Rebecca will show you step by step how to create a successful internet business of your own.

Advertising Using PPC Search Engines

There are many forms of advertising nowadays. There?s popups and popunders, banner advertising, text ads, search engine optimization and pay per click search engine advertising. In every marketing plan, pay per click search engines is the foundation for every home based business owner.

Pay per click search engines work by allowing online advertisers the ability to bid a certain price for key words. The one that bids the highest gets their advertisement placed in the #1 position. When a customer does a search on that particular key word, then that amount is deducted from the advertiser?s account. The benefit to this type of advertising is that it is targeted. When businesses are more targeted, they get their message across to the right people. When the right people here the message, then the company saves money on their advertising costs. Traditional advertising would send out a message on hair growth for men to 100 people in which the message might only apply to 8 people in the audience. We have such a tremendous vehicle in advertising through pay per click search engines.

Small companies have taken it one stop further and have decided to offer niche-market pay per click search engines. This is an even more targeted audience. Instead of placing your pay per click ad on a general search engine, an advertiser can now place their home based business ad on a home based business search engine.

About the Author

President and CEO of Globaloo.com, niche market Business Opportunity search engine and directory.

Buying your way to the top with Pay Per Click

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If you’ve been looking for an easy way to increase your website’s revenue, Google AdSense may be your answer.

Google AdSense is a phenomenal new advertising revenue program that is taking the Internet by storm. It was specifically designed to enable content rich sites to increase their advertising revenue simply by displaying Google AdWords ads.

Google AdSense makes selling advertising space easy, as they handle everything for you. With access to a database of 100,000 advertisers, you’ll never have to worry about finding advertisers for your website again.

The concept is simple. If you have a quality site that provides content, such as articles, you may qualify to display Google AdWords text ads on your web pages. If your site is approved, you will receive a portion of the pay-per- click payment.

The great thing about Google’s sophisticated advertising system is that the ads that display on your web pages are relevant to your content. They scan each page to determine what your page is about and display the ads accordingly. This will increase your click-through rate considerably, as relevant text ads combined with quality content are highly effective.

Although the AdSense program is free to apply, your site will be reviewed and must be approved in order to begin displaying the ads.

As there have been many sites turned down, you’ll need to ensure your site meets Google’s criteria prior to applying. You can find the guidelines at the following web address: https://www.google.com/adsense/policies

They’re basically looking for quality sites offering content. The keywords here are “quality and content.” If your site is under construction, loaded with advertising and/or broken images and links, don’t even waste your time applying, as you won’t be accepted. However, if you have a quality site and provide your visitors with content, you will most-likely be accepted.

The more content pages you have, the more advertising revenue you can make. It’s really that simple. If you don’t have your own content, there is a wealth of content available on Internet completely free. Subscribe to any of the following article announcement groups to receive new article submissions each day:

Article Announce – All types of articles

AABusiness – Business oriented articles, including: Business, Ecommerce, Sales, Networking, Business Communication, Internet Marketing, Promotion, etc.

AAInternet – Internet oriented articles, including: Ebooks, Ezines, Search Engines, Web Design, Web Development, Web Sites, etc.

AAHome – Home and Family oriented articles, including: Parenting, Relationships, Cooking, Recipes, Crafts, Gardening, Home, etc.

AAHealth – Health and Fitness oriented articles, including both physical and emotional health.

AAGeneral – General Interest oriented articles.

With your subscription to any of the above groups, you’ll not only receive new article submissions delivered to your email, but you’ll also have access to the archives which contain thousands of quality articles.

Visit the following web address for further information: http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

Once you’ve located articles that are relevant to your website, simply create a page for each. For example, if you find ten appropriate articles, you can create ten new content pages in which you can display Google AdWords ads. Not only will you be adding valuable content for your visitors, but you’ll also increase your website’s traffic and revenue. It’s a win-win deal no matter how you look at it.

Once your site has been approved, you simply select the style of ads you’d like to display and paste the code into your web pages where you’d like the ads to display.

Although all of the ads are text ads, there are currently four layout options to select from:

? Standard 468 x 60 banner format (displays up to 2 ads)

? Vertical 120 x 600 skyscraper ad (displays up to 4 ads)

? Horizontal 728 x 90 Leaderboard (displays up to 4 ads)

? 300 x 250 Inline rectangle (displays up to 4 ads)

Although all four ad styles can be effective, the “skyscraper” ads placed toward the top right side of your page or the “Leaderboard” ads placed at the top of the page generally will provide a higher click-through rate than the other two styles.

However, each page is different and will produce different results. For this reason, you may want to test your pages and display the style that produces the highest click- through rate.

Once you begin displaying the ads on your website, you can visit Google and log in to your account to see how the ads are performing. You can view the number of impressions, clicks, click-through rate and your earnings.

If you’re concerned about displaying ads that may compete with products or services you’re promoting, Google offers an option to filter out unwanted ads. In addition, you can display the ads along with any affiliate programs you may be promoting, as long as the ads don’t look like Google ads.

Google AdSense is the hottest advertising revenue program on the Internet. Isn’t it about time you got paid for your content?

Visit Google AdSense for further information:
https://www.google.com/adsense
About the author:

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design
course, Web Design Mastery. http://www.webdesignmastery.com
And, Ebook Starter – Give Your Ebooks the look and feel of a
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to sign up for a complimentary subscription to Etips and
receive a copy of the acclaimed ebook, “Killer Internet
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Niche Based Pay Per Click Advertising
Advertising Methods Market Research Questions

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Internet marketing promotion and advertising is crucial for your website?s success. Take time to create a buzz about your site and that will keep people coming back. Excited people are motivated people willing to spend money on your products. Advertising that promotes both your products and your website will keep them coming back for more. Web site traffic should be the focus of early Internet marketing promotion and advertising. Many effective ways exist t generate traffic for no or little cost. Even if you do not have a large marketing budget, you can operate a successful website.

In your Internet marketing promotion and advertising, create copy that will have a lasting effect. The?hurry-up and buy before offer expires? ads might generate a few motivated customers, but none that are loyal. The future success of your website depends on residual business, those that will come back again and again. Offer good useful information in your ad copy that explains how to use your product as well as the need for it.

An effective advertising program should be long lasting. Don?t just use an ad once and discard; find ways to use it multiple times. Use a similar approach in each ad and build customer familiarity with your ad as well as the product itself. Think of some successful ads like the ones for Energizer batteries, Taco Bell, and Snuggle fabric softener. Immediately their advertising comes to mind before you think of the product. Have your customers remember your Internet marketing promotion advertising in the same way. Create several different versions of your ad, change the message, color format, and font size but don?t change feature character.

Another Internet advertising tip is to never be afraid to explore new options. If you have been using just the Internet to advertise your business, think of may be trying direct mail, set up booths at fairs or business expos. The more you broaden your advertising efforts the more likely your Internet business will succeed.

About the Author

Why do Some Get Filthy Rich Online and Others Don’t?
Learn the shockingly simple answer – 9 Part Free Report:
Home Based Business Opportunities

Advertising Using PPC Search Engines

magine if you could advertise ONLY to people who have actually expressed an interest in doing business with you? That?s basically what happens whenever a prospective customer or client types a phrase into a search engine that?s relevant to your business. But how do search engines decide which sites are worthy of top placement in their search results? It turns out that some of the results are ranked by the search engine?s computers while others are simply paid advertisements from companies willing to buy their way to the top using Pay Per Click Advertising.

Pay Per Click Advertising (PPC for short) is an online advertising format that allows you to buy your way to the top of search results pages for search phrases relevant to your business. Businesses buy advertising on specific search phrases, and are then charged each time a person clicks through to their web site.

How does this work?

Try running a search on a major search engine like Yahoo or Google for a common consumer product like ?DVD players.? When reviewing the results, you?ll likely see a set of results labeled as ?Sponsor Results? or ?Sponsored Link?. Some results may appear in the same format as the main search results on the page, while others are listed within colored text boxes along the site of the page. All of those results are paid advertisements from the sites listed within the ads.

The ads are ranked based on how much a business is willing to pay to advertise on each search phrase. In the example search for ?DVD players? the current top advertiser is currently paying $0.81 per click ? one penny more than the #2 advertiser.

The ads are purchased through pay per click advertising suppliers, and the two largest happen to be owned by Google and Yahoo. Google?s program is called Adwords and displays results on Google.com, AOL, Ask Jeeves, many smaller search engines. Yahoo?s program is run by an acquired company called Overture, and the results appear on Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, and many other syndication partners.

Why should I pay for traffic?

For businesses that have had success with search engine optimization, the idea of paying for visitors is not particularly enticing. However, if you can make more money off a visitor to your web site than it costs to get them there, why wouldn?t you pay for those visitors? Keep in mind that you can choose exactly what search terms you want to advertise on, and you only pay when a searcher actually clicks on your ad, so it generally comes down to deciding how much you can afford to spend for those visitors rather than whether it?s worth doing at all.

How much should I spend?

The main factors influencing how much money can be spent on a PPC campaign are:

1. How many searches are conducted per month using phrases relevant to your business?

2. How much are you, along with your competitors, willing to pay for those terms?

The average monthly ad spend on PPC advertising is a couple thousand dollars, but this varies immensely from less than $50/month for regionally targeted and niche businesses to millions a month by large national retailers.

The goal of any advertising campaign should be to bring in more money from the campaign than it costs to run it. Pay Per Click is no different, but the level of detail you can measure in PPC is significantly higher than most types of advertising. For example, with relatively inexpensive (some are even free) tools, you can determine which ads are generating sales or leads for your business. Beyond that, you can determine how much money you spent on a specific ad to generate a sale or a lead. By measuring what?s working, you can aggressively advertise on terms that prove to be winners for your business while shutting down ads that don?t deliver.

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