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 targeted 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.
For example if you sell blue widgets then "widgets" is too
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. Here are a couple of well known ones,
http://www.overture.com and http://www.go-click.com
2,Submit ezine articles
Submitting ezine articles are 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. Editpad lite
is a free download enabling you to set character line lengths on
your file. http://www.editpro.com/editpadlite.html Saves a lot
of work in counting characters!! Another useful free program is
http://www.nch.com/.au ypecharge it is designed to count
characters and words in any document.
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 and http://www.articlecity.com
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 targeted 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
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.
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 Joyce owns her own mlm home based
business.http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk For more
advice and resources on starting a home based business visit.
http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk/startahomebiz.html
