How to market your online business on a budget
Do you have a great online business but few customers,and a very
limited budget to work with?
Just uploading your site onto the internet is not enough, even
submitting to the main search engines and directories takes
time. Often it may take months for a website to get listed.
You don't have to spend a fortune on marketing your site, the
best methods are often very inexpensive or free.
1) Pay Per click search engines
Pay per click search engines work by bidding for keywords. This
is an immediate way to get your site listed. They work by
bidding for specific targetted keywords related to your site.
You pay only for hits to your site and bidding can start as low
as $0.1 depending on the popularity of the keyword. Only bid for
words that are specific to your site. For example if you sell
blue widgets then "widgets" is to vague. "blue widgets" will get
visitors who specifically want to buy blue widgets!!
"Widgets would probably be more expensive as it has a more
general audience but "Blue widgets" is more targeted to a
particular audience and would most probably be cheaper.
http://www.overture.com Overture can get you listed on the
majority of the leading search engines and portals, including;
AOL, Ask Jeeves, Freeserve, Lycos, MSN, Tiscali and many more.
You set up an account with them and deposit an initial £60
http://www.go-click.com You can create an account from $10 and
they have a minimum bid of $0.1
2) Submit ezine articles
Submitting ezine articles is free and often one of the best ways
of getting visitors to your site.
Write an article about a subject that relates to your site
giving useful information, but don't use it as an advert for
your site or it probably won't be accepted.
You can however advertise your website in a resource box at the
end of your article.
Articles should be of a 65 character line length. textpad
enables you to word wrap your document. For a free trial
download go to http://www.textpad.com/download/index.html
Submit your articles with online article directories at
http://www.ezine-writer.com/article-lists.html
http://www.ezinewriter.com op10.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.goarticles.com http://www.webmasterslibrary.com
http://www.marcommwise.com http://www.mailbiz.com
http://www.UltimateProfits.com http://www.vectorcentral.com
http://www.freezineweb.com http://www.smarteremarketing.com
Make sure that your article is in keeping with the directory
before submitting it. Some directories are specialised in their
subject matter.
If your articles are of value with good content they will soon
be circulated amongst many other websites providing you with
links back to your site. Search engines love sites with lots of
links so it will increase your website's popularity.
In time you will find that traffic to your site has dramatically
increased. This will be targetted traffic from visitors having
read your articles.
Success doesn't happen overnight and takes hard work and
perseverance but if you write a couple of articles a week you
will soon find an increase in visitors to your site.
3) Write your own ezine
Start your own ezine and publish it regularly. This is a good
way of informing your visitors of any news and updates on your
website. Have an opt in form on in a prominate place on your
site so that people can subscribe to it.
The ezine should also have an unsubscribe option as well. Any
visitors who do unsubscribe should be deleted from your database
immediately.
You can install some free cgi scripting that enables visitors to
subscribe and unsubscribe to your newsletter or ezine. Go to
http://www.siteinteractive.com/subscribe/index2.html There are
tutorials as well to help you install the script.
A good idea is to have a pop under box for visitors to
subscribe. This will appear after they have closed your site. I
personally find pop up boxes annoying, but with a pop under box
the visitor has already left your site anyway. You can get the
cgi script for a pop under box at
http://www.clickforcontent.com/pop_under_script.htm
If you need articles to put in your ezine there are many sites
that have databases of free articles that you can use. Try
http://www.freezineweb.com and http://www.ezinearticles.com
Submit your ezines to the following ezine directories
http://www.bestezines.com
http://www.ezinesearch.com/search-it/ezine
http://www.ezine-universe.com http://www.escribe.com
http://www.e-zinez.com
4) Offline methods of getting traffic to your site
These are just some of the methods that you can use to get
traffic to your site. There are also many offline ways as well
including just talking to people you meet!!
You could design and print out some flyers to advertise your
business and place them in cafe's, libraries, supermarket
customer advertising boards, and even place some on car
windscreens in car parks that you are passing through. I have
often gone back to my car after a shopping trip and found a
flyer on my car advertising a business or local event!!
Design and print out business cards. You can get some nice
quality paper for printing these out on to make them look
professional. Hand these to everyone you meet and leave one with
a bill whenever you eat in a restaurant. Use different colour
paper as well to add interest.
How about designing a car sticker and place it on the rear
windscreen of your car.
Placing an ad in your local paper is a good idea and reasonably
inexpensive.
Always make sure that you carry some cards and flyers whenever
you leave the house you never know when an opportunity will
occur!!
About the author:
Kathy has her own mlm online business which you can visit at
http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk She has written several
other articles to help you build your online business which you
can find at
http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk/articles/articles.html
