I'd like to start today's gazette with a story about two little old ladies driving down the street. You can barely see their heads above the steering wheel...
The lady in the passenger seat happens to look up just as they pass through an intersection and sees that the light was red.
She says nothing. A few minutes later they approach another intersection. Again, the car cruises right through the red light.
At this point, she turns to the driver and says, "Hazel, you need to drive more carefully or you are going to get us killed. You just went through two red lights."
Hazel turns with a surprised look on her face and says, "Oh, am I driving?"
Sometimes it seems as if many Internet marketers are following the same course. They blindly drive down one road after another, without a clue where they are going or where they have been.
It has been said, "The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same things, but expecting different results."
Are you still following the same paths that lead to nowhere? Exactly who's driving your business anyway?
If it is you that is supposed to be at the wheel, maybe it is time to try something new...
Here are five Internet marketing ideas that have brought great success to myself and many others.
Pay Per Click
When you think of pay per click advertising, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Google Adwords, but there are many other pay per click search engines that cost considerably less.
You may not get as much traffic as you would with Google, but with an effective ad copy and the lower costs per click, you can still make a great amount of money in a short amount of time.
Ezine Advertising
Another great source of advertising is ezines. Many ezines have a circulation into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Rates can vary from free for a small classified ad to hundreds of dollars for a solo ad.
With ezine advertising, you can target your ads to thousands of readers who have already shown an interest in the type of product or service that you are promoting.
You can type "free newsletter + your niche" into a search engine to find the right ezines for your business. When you find some, subscribe to them and read them for a few weeks. Advertise in the ezines with the best content and your ads will perform.
Paid Website Advertising
There are many highly ranked websites that get millions of hits per month that accept your paid advertising. Rates can vary widely, but there are some great deals to be had.
To try this strategy, just type the keywords that describe your website into a search engine. Next contact the top 15 or so sites and ask them if they accept advertising. If the sites are on the first page of the search results, you can be fairly certain that they get a large amount of traffic.
Be sure to track your results. You will want to know which sites are working and which ones are not.
Start an Affiliate Program
Affiliates send literally thousands of visitors a day to my sites.
If you have not started an affiliate program for your best products and services, I highly recommend you do so.
Although there are some costs involved with starting your own affiliate program, it is well worth it. Justify the expense by telling yourself that you are hiring thousands of sales people and paying them only when they sell. A web based affiliate program is just that.
A few secrets to success with my affiliate programs include paying decent commission rates (30% - 40%), paying on time every month and offering lots of tools and tips for my affiliates. I also actively seek out potential super-affiliates on a regular basis. Like with any marketing strategy, a pro-active approach works best!
Content Sharing & Links
Getting lots of incoming links to your site is important. Not only will traffic arrive via those links, but a site with lots of incoming links does better in search engines than sites with few links.
The best strategy I've used to get links, starts with content. You write articles based on your niche, post the content to your subscribers, at your site AND share the content with other webmasters.
You can share content "on-the-fly" simply by including a short footer after your content that tells webmasters they have permission to reprint your article at their website or in their newsletter.
Be sure to let them know that they need to include a live link to your site. You may even want to tell them exactly how to link to your site. (Preferably with a short description of your site and a hyper linked keyword or two. This will help search engines determine that the sites are related and give the link more relevance.)
There are lots of websites in every niche that are in need of decent content. Supply it and you can benefit greatly - your links will grow continually with no effort on your part. And the beauty of this strategy is that only sites in your niche will use your content. This means your links will be high quality links from sites in the right 'neighborhood.' This goes a long way with the search engines.
If you would like to see my own content-sharing link growing strategy in action, visit my archive of marketing articles.
Finally, go pro-active with your content sharing strategy. You can do this by visiting article directories and submitting your best, current articles. Make sure the article is helpful and includes a small footer at the end, about you, the author.
Here's a short list of article directories:
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.certificate.net/wwio
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.netterweb.com
That wraps up today's gazette. Now take the wheel and drive your business in new and rewarding directions!
The lady in the passenger seat happens to look up just as they pass through an intersection and sees that the light was red.
She says nothing. A few minutes later they approach another intersection. Again, the car cruises right through the red light.
At this point, she turns to the driver and says, "Hazel, you need to drive more carefully or you are going to get us killed. You just went through two red lights."
Hazel turns with a surprised look on her face and says, "Oh, am I driving?"
Sometimes it seems as if many Internet marketers are following the same course. They blindly drive down one road after another, without a clue where they are going or where they have been.
It has been said, "The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same things, but expecting different results."
Are you still following the same paths that lead to nowhere? Exactly who's driving your business anyway?
If it is you that is supposed to be at the wheel, maybe it is time to try something new...
Here are five Internet marketing ideas that have brought great success to myself and many others.
Pay Per Click
When you think of pay per click advertising, the first thing that usually comes to mind is Google Adwords, but there are many other pay per click search engines that cost considerably less.
You may not get as much traffic as you would with Google, but with an effective ad copy and the lower costs per click, you can still make a great amount of money in a short amount of time.
Ezine Advertising
Another great source of advertising is ezines. Many ezines have a circulation into the hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Rates can vary from free for a small classified ad to hundreds of dollars for a solo ad.
With ezine advertising, you can target your ads to thousands of readers who have already shown an interest in the type of product or service that you are promoting.
You can type "free newsletter + your niche" into a search engine to find the right ezines for your business. When you find some, subscribe to them and read them for a few weeks. Advertise in the ezines with the best content and your ads will perform.
Paid Website Advertising
There are many highly ranked websites that get millions of hits per month that accept your paid advertising. Rates can vary widely, but there are some great deals to be had.
To try this strategy, just type the keywords that describe your website into a search engine. Next contact the top 15 or so sites and ask them if they accept advertising. If the sites are on the first page of the search results, you can be fairly certain that they get a large amount of traffic.
Be sure to track your results. You will want to know which sites are working and which ones are not.
Start an Affiliate Program
Affiliates send literally thousands of visitors a day to my sites.
If you have not started an affiliate program for your best products and services, I highly recommend you do so.
Although there are some costs involved with starting your own affiliate program, it is well worth it. Justify the expense by telling yourself that you are hiring thousands of sales people and paying them only when they sell. A web based affiliate program is just that.
A few secrets to success with my affiliate programs include paying decent commission rates (30% - 40%), paying on time every month and offering lots of tools and tips for my affiliates. I also actively seek out potential super-affiliates on a regular basis. Like with any marketing strategy, a pro-active approach works best!
Content Sharing & Links
Getting lots of incoming links to your site is important. Not only will traffic arrive via those links, but a site with lots of incoming links does better in search engines than sites with few links.
The best strategy I've used to get links, starts with content. You write articles based on your niche, post the content to your subscribers, at your site AND share the content with other webmasters.
You can share content "on-the-fly" simply by including a short footer after your content that tells webmasters they have permission to reprint your article at their website or in their newsletter.
Be sure to let them know that they need to include a live link to your site. You may even want to tell them exactly how to link to your site. (Preferably with a short description of your site and a hyper linked keyword or two. This will help search engines determine that the sites are related and give the link more relevance.)
There are lots of websites in every niche that are in need of decent content. Supply it and you can benefit greatly - your links will grow continually with no effort on your part. And the beauty of this strategy is that only sites in your niche will use your content. This means your links will be high quality links from sites in the right 'neighborhood.' This goes a long way with the search engines.
If you would like to see my own content-sharing link growing strategy in action, visit my archive of marketing articles.
Finally, go pro-active with your content sharing strategy. You can do this by visiting article directories and submitting your best, current articles. Make sure the article is helpful and includes a small footer at the end, about you, the author.
Here's a short list of article directories:
http://www.ezinearticles.com
http://www.certificate.net/wwio
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.netterweb.com
That wraps up today's gazette. Now take the wheel and drive your business in new and rewarding directions!
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