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Successful Internet MarketingDear WAHS Leslie,I have been trying to make money at home with affiliate programs and business ops without success. Each thing I join I'm told to market my website and follow all the instructions for classified ads, search engine listings, and other recommendations. But nothing seems to work. I have read about Google Ad Words and Oveture but I don't have extra money to spend on that. Is there a way to make money on the internet without spending $100's? Sarah in NC Hi Sarah, Good for you to recognize that marketing is the key to your success. So many people begin their work-at-home ventures without a thought to the importance of marketing. It takes more than an ad and a flyer. In fact, since marketing is so important, you should have a detailed marketing plan that includes marketing activities to do everyday. It is possible to market your business without spending too much money but you should begin to set aside some of your profit to use towards marketing as your business grows. The first step to marketing is to become a student of internet marketing. Techniques that worked 3 years ago...heck even last year, don't work now. This is particularly true on the Internet. Look at the prevalence of pop-up blockers. Pop-ups were once touted the absolute best way to build your customer list. Today, no one sees those pop-ups. To keep abreast of the best marketing strategies, I recommend reading Seth Godin's books (you can download Unleashing the Ideavirus http://www.sethgodin.com/ideavirus/downloads/IdeavirusReadandShare.pdf free. Requires Adobe Reader) and subscribe to his Blog http://sethgodin.typepad.com/ He pioneered the idea of permission marketing which is the idea of promoting your products or services to people who ask for the information. Next you need to determine who your target market is. Even if your product is something the whole world could use, you will do much better to target a specific market and gear your marketing message to them. Pick a market you'd like to develop and then determine the following: 1) What specifically do they want or need that your product or service can give them; 2) Where can this target market be found? (What websites do they visit? What ezines do they read? What groups do they participate in?) 3) What are their hot buttons? (What concerns or excites them such that they take action?). This information will help you design your marketing plan and will be the focus of your advertising message. Remember, people are looking for information or assistance when searching the web. Your marketing should focus on the benefits of your product or service to your customer in providing the assistance they are looking for. Develop a marketing plan. To many people fail to plan their business. They erroneously think a few posts and a few ads will lead to success. But even if a person is letting Oveture drive traffic, he spends a great deal of time studying and evaluating how the campaign is going day to day. The idea of 100% autopilot business on the internet is not accurate. There are many great low-cost and free marketing techniques but they can only work as well as the person who uses them. Offering free reports, e-courses and ebooks through an autoresponder has been very successful in one of my businesses. These free resources offer something my visitors want at no cost. It allows them to test my expertise and see that I'm knowledgeable in the topic. But it wouldn't work if my freebies were not helpful. Further, they wouldn't work if I gave them away without asking something in return. In this case, visitors can only get my freebies by submitting their email (a legitimate one) to me. This allows me to continue to send them great free info as well as to promote my products or services. Whatever techniques you decide to use, you need to be sure they are used correctly to their maximum benefit. The best free ways to advertise include writing articles, using autoresponders (there are many free services for this) to deliver freebies, and participating in discussion groups. These efforts can take some time to work. I don't recommend placing free classified ads even through a service or software. I have found these just generate spam type mail back to me. Low cost ways of marketing include ads in ezines or on websites. Again, make sure these ads are placed in front of your target market and that your ad message really speaks to them. I usually advertise my freebie and not my main product or service. This increases my response rate tremendously as 1) people like freebies and 2) most other ads are just ads..."come buy my stuff". Depending on your product or service, Google Ad Words and Oveture can be affordable, but to make the most of this method, you need to choose your keywords carefully, develop a great ad (again target specific), and monitor how the campaign is going so you can make changes to improve it if needed. There are other great ideas and more developing all the time. For example, Blogs and RSS systems are currently growing in popularity for online marketers. That is why always studying the internet and marketing is important so you can be in the cutting edge of great new marketing trends. Marketing is not something that usually works right away. Like many things in life, it takes time to develop and consistency of practice to grow. Developing a plan and implementing that plan in a way that has you doing some sort of promotion everyday is the best way to generate customers now as well as over the long run.
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