Advertising Online - The Most Effective To The Least by Lynn Quario

Advertising online is a wonderful way to attract a large audience. It is also less expensive compared to traditional advertising methods. There are many different advertising strategies you can use to generate traffic to your website. I use a number of these myself because I believe in diversification.

Pay Per Click

This is the fastest way to generate traffic to your website. You can literally place an ad using Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing and start receiving visitors within minutes. This form of advertising can also be costly for a beginner who is new to advertising online. Adwords has an excellent tutorial on learning how to bid on keywords. Pay per click is by far, the most favorable method of advertising for the majority of online advertisers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

This is where internet marketers strive to get their website listed on the first page of Google or Yahoo. It is every marketers dream because this is truly the best free advertising you can get. The flip side is it can take many months to get that kind of placement. You have to put in a lot of time and effort into building your website pages around keywords that rank high in the search engines. Definitely consider this method for a long term strategy.

Writing Articles

Writing articles is an excellent way to start ranking your website high in the search engines. Articles can be used as a short strategy as well as long term. What happens is you write an article and submit it to one of the article directories and that article then gets picked up by other website owners who must leave your resource information intact. This creates a viral effect that spreads all across the internet. Before you know it you will have visitors coming in droves to your website. The one thing all great internet marketers have in common is they all write articles. The most popular article directories are Ezinearticles, Goarticles, and Articlealley. Even though there are thousands of article directory sites these are the only ones I submit to.

Solo Ads

Solo ads are paid ads you place with ezine advertisers. These ads are sent out to the ezine owners entire mailing list exclusively. What this means is your ad is sent out seperatly as a stand alone ad and is not included in the ezine newsletter where there are many other competitors. The cost of a solo ad can range anywhere from $10 to $2500 depending on the size and responsiveness of the list. You definitely want to incorporate this method into your online advertising.

Forums and Message Boards

This method is also a terrific way to generate website traffic. You just have to be careful not to spam them. By providing useful information to others you get to promote your website link through a signature file. Most of them do not allow commercial or affiliate links in the post itself. So don't do it or you will have a lot of angry people and you will probably get banned from the forum. Forum posts also get indexed by the search engines so this can also be a long term strategy as well as short term. Like articles your posts will stay online indefinitely.

Free Classifieds

I like to use free classifieds simply because it is free. This method doesn't produce a whole lot of traffic but is an excellent way to get your website link out there and only takes minutes to place an ad on them once you are registered and have them all set up. Some of them will allow you to post daily while others only let you post once a month, so you want to read their terms or they will ban you also. I know I have been banned from a couple of them because I didn't read their terms of use. I like this method because it doesn't require a lot of my time to place the ads and you never know who your next prospects going to be. You may receive some spam from this method. I receive emails all of the time from different people with this same message "I am requesting more info on your home business and how it works. What investment is required? Look forward to hearing more." I have to laugh at this because all of the information is on the site or they can get it by filling out a form. I replied to the first one because I thought they were really interested in my business. It turns out they weren't interested at all, it was just a way for them to spam me and look legit, I guess. I hit the delete button on them now.

Groups

Google, Yahoo, and MSN all have groups that you can join. Search for groups that pertains to what you are promoting and join in. There are thousands of them. One recommendation I would like to make is, make sure you check the box to read messages online or you will also get bombarded with tons of emails. I receive many visitors from posting my ads to groups.

Safelists

Be prepared with this method as you will get hundreds of email messages daily. You have to supply them with two email addresses that have to be confirmed. I recommend not using your personal email addresses for these. Safelists allow you to send messages to other members in exchange for them being able to send messages to you. They offer free and paid memberships. Even though I am a member of quite a few of them, it is one of my least favorable methods for advertising online.

Traffic Exchanges

You will get tons of traffic using this method most of which is not targeted. With traffic exchanges you view other peoples websites in exchange for them viewing yours. Marketers call this surfing for credits because you have to spend anywhere from 10 seconds to 30 seconds on each site before going on to the next site. I tried this method for about a month spending 2 hours a day surfing with no results. This is the least popular method and a waste of time as far as I am concerned. I would rather spend that time more productively. I probably shouldn't have mentioned this one but thought It was worth mentioning because there are many marketers who do use them.

Once you start implementing these online advertising methods you will be well on your way to writing your own paycheck and living the life of your dreams. I know what it feels like to be a struggling marketer because I have been there. I wish for everyone who reads this article true financial freedom.


About the Author

Lynn Quario has been studying online business opportunities since Jan. 2005. She is a mentor and supporter for anyone looking to start an online business. Check out her #1 home based business recommendation. http://4wealthseekers.com

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