In order to build your home based business you will need to market it both online and offline. Here I will discuss marketing it online and what can produce the greatest benefit with the least cost. While there are many ways to promote your home based business through free advertising not all of those ways will be productive. Sometimes what looks to be the most productive way is actually the least productive?
Free FFA Pages
These sites are known as FFA pages and often have members in the millions. They look very exciting because you can blast your advertisement to millions of people with one click. They make it easy to submit your site.
The submission form has a top box for your "Headline" a second box for your text and a third box for the URL of the site you are promoting. They ask for your name and email address but your email address is not published in your advertisement. It is though given to the other members of the FFA site to use for advertising their product. You can expect to get hundreds and thousands of emails from site members all promoting what they have to offer. If you use these sites use an email address that is not your main email, gmail and others are good for this.
The problem I see with this type of advertising comes from my own behavior when receiving the hundreds of emails. I often just highlight as many emails as possible and delete them all very quickly. I don't bother trying to read them because of the sheer numbers I receive. I am sure most members do the same thing. Also, I track all my advertisements using specific URLs and I have not once had a response even when sending many advertisements. In my opinion it is a waste of time.
Free Traffic Exchanges
To me these sites are actually fun to use. You start out by having a certain number of free advertising credits given to you when you join. To gain more credits you simply click on advertisements placed by site members, usually hundreds of them. You are put on a timer and must wait 10-20 seconds between clicks. The credits you gain can be from 1 credit to 5 per click. The key to using these is the page you are promoting. Many people will advertise their main sales page or their personal website. That will often be the least productive site to use. Because members are clicking for credits your page has to be easy to read quickly. The best page to use is a "Lead capture" page or a Splash page. The benefits of your program and what it will do for the reader must be main function. Using a sign up form is a must so you can capture the prospects name and email address, Requiring to much information will cause them to leave quickly. These sites can be productive but spending hours to click for credits can be a waste of truly productive time.
Using Articles For Site Promotion
The effects of writing just one article will be seen for years to come. When you submit your article to one of the major article sites that article will be made available for publishing on thousands of sites. With time your article will appear on hundreds of web sites all with a back link pointing to your web page. It is not a quick way to promote your home based business but it is the surest way to build your business for the long term. Not only does it promote your business through backlinks it can also build your reputation as the go to person on your subject. This will build not only your reputation but your site visitors as well. Because an article can be published years after it was written it have a long term affect.
While it may seem hard to write an article or seem like you must have a lot of skills in reality it is very simple. If you can carry on a conversation about a subject or send out emails or personal letters you can write an article. You want your articles to be full of factual information that is useful for your audience but technical writing skills are not necessary. It is best to simply write your article in your own words with your own personality reflected. Simply write about subjects you know and submitting it to some of the larger Article Directories is by far the most affective way to build a long term stable and profitable business.
Free FFA Pages
These sites are known as FFA pages and often have members in the millions. They look very exciting because you can blast your advertisement to millions of people with one click. They make it easy to submit your site.
The submission form has a top box for your "Headline" a second box for your text and a third box for the URL of the site you are promoting. They ask for your name and email address but your email address is not published in your advertisement. It is though given to the other members of the FFA site to use for advertising their product. You can expect to get hundreds and thousands of emails from site members all promoting what they have to offer. If you use these sites use an email address that is not your main email, gmail and others are good for this.
The problem I see with this type of advertising comes from my own behavior when receiving the hundreds of emails. I often just highlight as many emails as possible and delete them all very quickly. I don't bother trying to read them because of the sheer numbers I receive. I am sure most members do the same thing. Also, I track all my advertisements using specific URLs and I have not once had a response even when sending many advertisements. In my opinion it is a waste of time.
Free Traffic Exchanges
To me these sites are actually fun to use. You start out by having a certain number of free advertising credits given to you when you join. To gain more credits you simply click on advertisements placed by site members, usually hundreds of them. You are put on a timer and must wait 10-20 seconds between clicks. The credits you gain can be from 1 credit to 5 per click. The key to using these is the page you are promoting. Many people will advertise their main sales page or their personal website. That will often be the least productive site to use. Because members are clicking for credits your page has to be easy to read quickly. The best page to use is a "Lead capture" page or a Splash page. The benefits of your program and what it will do for the reader must be main function. Using a sign up form is a must so you can capture the prospects name and email address, Requiring to much information will cause them to leave quickly. These sites can be productive but spending hours to click for credits can be a waste of truly productive time.
Using Articles For Site Promotion
The effects of writing just one article will be seen for years to come. When you submit your article to one of the major article sites that article will be made available for publishing on thousands of sites. With time your article will appear on hundreds of web sites all with a back link pointing to your web page. It is not a quick way to promote your home based business but it is the surest way to build your business for the long term. Not only does it promote your business through backlinks it can also build your reputation as the go to person on your subject. This will build not only your reputation but your site visitors as well. Because an article can be published years after it was written it have a long term affect.
While it may seem hard to write an article or seem like you must have a lot of skills in reality it is very simple. If you can carry on a conversation about a subject or send out emails or personal letters you can write an article. You want your articles to be full of factual information that is useful for your audience but technical writing skills are not necessary. It is best to simply write your article in your own words with your own personality reflected. Simply write about subjects you know and submitting it to some of the larger Article Directories is by far the most affective way to build a long term stable and profitable business.
About the Author:
Stephen Meyer is a Home based Business who is eagerly helping people build their own profitable online home based business. Visit his web page and choose your own profitable business Home Based Business Opportunities
No comments:
Post a Comment