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Posts Tagged ‘advertising’

Copyright 2006 Guillermo Puyol

One of the many challenges of starting an online business is getting traffic to your website.  Unfortunately for most beginner webmasters, quality traffic is not only hard to get, but it is also very expensive.  In the following article I will discuss the technique that I used to get free advertising and free laser-targeted traffic to my website.

First of all let’s consider some of the alternatives most beginning webmasters use to generate traffic:

The first option that comes to mind is Pay Per Click advertising (PPC).  PPC is a very effective way of driving traffic to a website, and if the ads are well written they usually bring in highly targeted traffic.  The downside of PPC is cost.  In order to start a PPC campaign, the webmaster must bid on keywords or phrases related to the content of the website being promoted.  After the bidding, the ads will show all over the internet getting hundreds or thousands of impressions.  When an internet user clicks on this ads, he or she is taken to the website advertised and the advertiser is charged the bid amount.  PPC advertisements are great, but should only be used to promote special offers, introductory offers or high tag items; it should not be the only force driving traffic to your site.

A similar kind of advertisement is Pay Per Impression (PPI).  Although they are virtually undistinguishable for the audience they target, PPI are different for the advertisers.  With PPI advertisers pay for every time their ads are shown, and not only for the times the ads are clicked on.  In order for this type of advertising to be effective, the website where the ads are displayed must offer products that are complementary to those you offer, or vise versa.

As you can see, the driving factor of advertising is your budget.  If you can afford to pay for your traffic then you can run an ad campaign, but if you are on a tight budget then you have to create other traffic generating resources.

So what is this magnificent free laser-targeted traffic generating tool I mentioned early on?  Well… you are reading it.  One of the ways I use to drive the most traffic to my website is to write articles.  You don’t have to be a certified writer or a literature Nobel Prize winner to write articles, just make sure you know what you are talking about and show your passion for it through your writing.

In order to get your articles to drive traffic to your website you must make sure that they get published all over the internet and that there is a link to your website at the end of each article you write.  Article submission websites and article directories are great tools to get your articles published.  Most website owners strive to keep their content fresh and interesting to their visitors, but because of time limitations it is often very difficult to come up with original content.  This is where your articles come in!  These webmasters take advantage of the free content you provide through your article, and they return the favor by displaying a live link to your website.  Before you know it you will have hundreds of pages displaying your articles followed by a link straight to your website.  The beauty about article writing is that the links you get from it are free and the traffic that you get from your links comes to you looking for “expert advice”.  These links also help improve your page rank in search engines due to your increased link popularity.

So go now, start your word processing software, put your writer’s hat on and type away.  Don’t try to sound formal or professional if that is not you.  Be yourself, write only about things that you know, and enjoy it.  You are certainly going to enjoy the traffic from this great opportunity!

Introduction:

This is a series of articles about marketing and advertising. There are different ways you can reach an audience of millions of individuals all around the world. I show you on this series how to implement profitable strategies in your marketing career.

It has been said that “what matters is not what you sell but how you promote it.” So, the secret to success lays within your marketing techniques.  That’s why it is very important for business owners to develop skills which allow them to increase the sales of their products.

One of the most important skills you must have is the ability to reach a lot of people quickly. To do this you need to realize how powerful media is an how it can drastically increase your revenues.

– Good content –

One of the simplest yet most overlooked methods to advertise to millions in the Internet is just content itself. Whether you own an e-zine, blog, newsletter, or web site, what really matters is what you offer your visitors once they get there. What motivates them to browse through your pages and keep coming back for more?

No matter how effective can your marketing strategies be, if your potential clients do not receive anything valuable to them once they get to your pages, then they will leave and go somewhere else.

So, whatever you do, make sure you never bore your visitors. Make their experience as pleasurable, unique, and joyous as you can, so they keep coming back and reading your ads, then eventually after a few visits they will start buying from you.

Most successful web masters offer a lot of free valuable content on their web sites. Surfers find their sites looking for free information, but they see the ads and many of them buy the products. Think about it, content is anything that could be valuable to your prospects. It can be images, sound, music, information, orientations, reviews, etc.

You don’t have to give away your best pearls for free, but by providing good, free content to others you cannot imagine how much your exposure will increase Online as well as Offline. Furthermore you will get word of mouth advertising which in my opinion is the most effective of all.

Then where do you get that excellent content which could bring you lots of potential buyers every day? Well, there are many things you can do. For example you can borrow some articles from article banks as described on other articles of this series. It is free, easy and will improve the quality of your pages, newsletters, etc.

If you check the www.bravenet.com website you will notice they offer many tools for web masters and Internet marketers which could be of your interest. One of the best ones they have there, is the possibility for you to set up your own customizable forum on your website.

To have your own discussion group is wonderful because your visitors keep coming back to check if someone else have posted a reply to their messages. That keeps an interactive community withing your site to which you can advertise to regularly.

They may also read other reviews or articles that you may include on your pages which can lead them to specific products or more direct advertisement. Search engines like forums too, because forums provide fresh valuable content to surfers on a daily basis. So, Bravenet web master tools can help increase the quality of your pages and your exposure on the Internet.

Remember, give your visitors good free content and they will keep coming back. They will also tell their friends about you and link to your pages so you will receive free advertisement.

As you can see, this technique can increase your exposure and help you get more clients. You can read about other effective marketing techniques from my other articles on this series.

EasyWebRiches © 2006

We’ve all seen the hype surrounding AdSense, contextual advertising on your web site, and heard the stories of people banking thousands from this groundbreaking concept. But… for every person banking $1,000’s there are many, many more who are banking less than $50 per month.  There are many reasons for this so let’s examine a few.

* Value of the ads – despite the hype over the high paying keywords, many keyword pay only a few cents to the advertiser (that’s you).  The high paying keywords are fiercely fought over by both bidders and advertisers.  That’s a fierce arena for someone with little experience and little traffic to their site.  So forget about throwing up a “meso” or credit web site and then sitting back and banking your new found fortune.  That is probably not going to happen.

* Your business model – there are two ways to profit from AdSense – a few web sites with loads of traffic or numerous web sites with average traffic.  The concept is the same as with any business – it’s “bums on seats” or “people through the door” that make the money.

Looking at the first model – plainly the problem is to get many interested people to your web site – preferably those seeking information so that if they don’t find it on your site, they click on one of your ads and move onto another site – leaving you with a few cents as they leave you.  Traffic, as any internet marketer will tell you, is not only the life blood of your business, but is also very expensive and time consuming to build up.  Shouldn’t you be looking at capturing emails for your mailing list or selling them something rather than letting them go leaving you a few cents in tips.  Of course if you merely look at AdSense as a secondary income, then these few cents are more than welcome.

Let’s look now at the second model – the pile it high concept.  You need numerous very large sites, all attracting high paying words with thousands of pages, to make a good living with AdSense.  There is a place for this, and indeed we sell large batches of densely keyworded AdSense article sites ourselves – because we know they work.  But… here is the problem.  In order to make them work – you need not only a lot of domain names, but also a serious amount of hosting and we are talking paid hosting, not the no cost stuff.  Many packs sold have over 100 sites and tens of thousands of pages.  100 sites means 100 domains – that is about $1,000 a year and a lot of time finding good ones.  Of course you could use sub domains, but then you have problems getting them all into the search engines and pay per click advertising.  10,000+ pages and 100 domains – that’s a server you need to rent, be it virtual or actual.  That is serious money each month – and you have still not earned a dime! You have to earn a serious number of click thrus to cover your annual and monthly fees.

* The ads themselves – just as banners are no way as effective as they once were, then surfers are growing weary of AdSense ads.  This is especially so of those ugly sites that just throw up the maximum 3 sets of ads in the default colors, not caring if they are messy and detract from the site.  Many of these sites contain minimal information and are spoiling it for those that make much more effort with their internet business.  Google knows it has a cash cow and a virtual monopoly with the AdSense business, I can’t see it letting this happen for too much longer, but sadly it will take a long time to clear up and, as this happens, surfers will get more and more immune to the ads.

It’s not as if you can encourage your visitors to use the links, or disguise the ads, or even place graphics around them – all forbidden by the Google Terms of Service. 

So what can you do to keep making a secondary income from your web sites? 

Well if you want to stay with Google and why not? Then; understand that it is a business and be prepared to spend out on advertising, test your product, refine your web site, tailor your advert design to your web site and lastly offer good value to your surfers.

Lastly look elsewhere – we found a great software program that lets you provide contextual adverts on your web site derived from the 1,000’s of high commission paying products in ClickBank.  The beauty is that you can merge these ads into your web site, draw attention to them, encourage people to click on them and add graphics to them.  Better than that, although you don’t get paid when someone clicks on the ads, your Clickbank name is added to the link, so if someone buys from the powerful sales page you send them to, you make a very large commission – up to about $75 from some sites?

So AdSense is a great system, but what about looking at other methods? – Just a thought!

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© Copyright 2006 Biz Guru Services Ltd
Lee Lister, writes as The Biz Guru, for a number of web sites including her own sites.  With over 20 year’s management and business consultancy experience with businesses large and small as well as being a serial entrepreneur, she now helps others set up, develop and market their businesses. 

If you are intrigued about this new software then go to our site www.clikkads.com – if you want to build your AdSense Empire then have a look at www.AdSenseSites.biz

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.

BusinessMarketingAgency.com – According to Wikipdia, the free encyclopedia, a “niche market is a focused, targetable portion (subset) of a market sector”.

Using this definition, niche marketing is the process of finding and serving market segments, that are too small for big companies to serve them profitably defined by the volume of sales. The key to niche marketing is to find and develop a service or product that is in high demand for the small group of potential customers, but the number of these customers is still high enough, so that you can be potentially profitable nonetheless. The service or product should be selected based on the unmet customer need. To maintain a profitable volume of sales, niche marketers are reliant on the loyalty of customers. To increase the customer loyalty it is important to focus on the quality of the product or service provided, this will generate customer satisfaction, trust in the product or service, and consequently sales.

How to find a niche that is profitable for your internet business?

The most important and difficult task to do when starting niche marketing is doing site research. As with any business it is much easier to start with something that you are interested in and excited about. Since this is an internet home business, and most traffic (85%) to the websites will be determined by the big three search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN, it is a good place to start your research from. This research should focus on the following three aspects, as described above for a niche market:

High demand: Using tools like Inventory Overture (http://inventory.overture.com) you will be able to find out whether the product you have in mind is wanted. Type in your niche market term describing your product and you will see how many searches for this term and other related terms were done in the past month. The number of searches per month will depend on the niche market, but in general look for terms that are not higher than 20,000 a month.

Low supply: Take the selected terms and type in these terms in the search engines. The results will give you an estimation how much competition there is or how many sites are available on the internet for these niche marketing terms. Ideally there should be a good balance between the number of searches and results a month. As a thumb rule, you should look for terms that have less than 1,000,000 searches per month for Google, 400,000 for Yahoo and 250,000 for MSN. Based on the balance between demand and supply you could reduce the number of terms and narrow down your market niche.

Profitability potential: Once you have the reduced list of niche market terms, you also need to know much advertisers would like to pay for each term. Use for example Google Adwords, and select for the last time based on the results terms with the highest pay per click.

With these definitive niche market terms in mind, you could be able to optimize your website for two or three of terms, by adding relevant content to your site, concentrating around these terms. Because the chosen terms (and related product) have been selected based on three criteria which are typical for a niche market and your research conducted ‘life’ with the three big search engines, you have already all the conditions to be successful in niche marketing. In internet marketing in general, most are aiming for the big fish with a lot of competition. In contrast with niche marketing, you are looking for small fishes. But if you know where they are by conducting sound research, the catch might be greater and more frequently.

Google AdSense is a great way to supplement your web site’s income! So what exactly is Google AdSense? This is a program run by Google that pays you per click. You sign up for free, paste a little bit of code on your website and every time someone clicks the links on your site, you get paid a certain amount per click.

Some clicks are worth higher than others depending on the “keyword” that the ad is targetting. What does this mean? Google AdSense are “contextual based” ads, meaning that they display the links for people to click on based on the context of your website.

For example if you have a website about “tennis” then the ads Google AdSense will display will be all about tennis. So if the text on your site that Google is basing their AdSense ads on is for “tennis balls”, then the keyword phrase “tennis balls” may be paying higher per click than “tennis racket”.

Here are a few tips to get better earnings with Google AdSense:

1. Don’t make your ads look like ads! People are so “banner blind” now that they’ll skim right over your AdSense ads if you make them look too much like actual ads. By removing the background and the border of your ads and making them blend in with your own site’s background, it will help your sales tremendously!

2. Don’t click your own links! It may be tempting to earn that potential .03 for yourself but in the long run it’s not worth it! Google has ways to detect “click fraud” and you WILL get caught and you’ll forfeit all of your earnings thus far.

3. Put your ads close to your content! Don’t put your content way up at the top and then put your AdSense ads waaaay down at the bottom. You won’t get very many click throughs. Make sure your web content is actually integrated with your ads.

4. Have relevant keywords on your site! If your site is about “web site traffic” and you just keep mentioning the word “traffic” by itself, your Google AdSense ads may display ads for rush hour traffic, or traffic jams. Which has nothing to do with your website. Keep your ads relevant by giving your content good, thorough keywords.

If you just apply these simply and effective tips, you WILL see an increase in your Google AdSense revenue! While it’s best not to put all your eggs in one basket and have AdSense as your only income earner, it is definitely a good way to make a nice little supplemental income on your website!

Advertising is central to promoting your product or service and without it, you’ll never reach your full market potential. So good advertising allows you to access a larger customer base. 

For small operators – big outlay options are out. 

The alternatives are all local; press, bill boards perhaps, on site signage, word of mouth, car magnets and having relevance to the town. Keeping it simple and servicing the local community is most beneficial.

This is not bad, as many small businesses strive to cater for their immediate vicinities customer base. They also utlize their vehicles for private and business roles. With the prevalence of dual business/private use amongst small business owners, a car magnet is excellent for the value they offer.

They are one of the lowest cost means of getting an advertising offer on your car. It transforms your car in seconds into a moving advertising billboard. At day’s end, its just a few seconds and you’re ready to party.

If you have this procedure, caring for your car magnets is crucial, to ensure they look as good as new in five years, as they did when you first put them on the car. In short, it means having them dirt free front and back, peeling them on and off the vehicle and avoiding long term, day after day usage.

In their off car life they need extra care to avoid scratching and bending them. With a new, innovative protect-a-mag pocket your days of worrying protecting your car magnets will be a thing of the past. 

Custom printed vehicle magnets are an inexpensive way to get your message out there in front of your clients and prospects. A magnet on the car will bump up your profile within your community and that’s got to be good for business success. 

In business, in sport, and in many other walks of life the true greats are those who stand out from the crowd. They have a presence about them; a kind of aura. We could take the golfing legend Tiger Woods as an example or perhaps even the President of the United States of America Barack Obama. They have a certain way about them, a confidence and self-assurance. It is essential that any advert that is produced to promote a business or product really makes a major impression or stands out from the crowd.

I am a person who is involved in a number of different vocations including speech therapy (I had a stuttering problem for eighteen years of my life), advertising and I also run a web promotion company in England.

I am somebody who likes to travel to various parts of the world. These trips are not merely for a vacation they are also where I attempt to educate myself culturally and also where I try to develop my business knowledge. Many of the great ideas that turned into hugely profitable concepts are started in one country or continent and are then bought back to the UK to try over here. These can often be found by searching for catering supplies on one of the major search engines.

Whilst travelling through the Far East I noticed that their countries have an entirely different way of attempting to attract people into their bars and restaurants. The majority of these bars and restaurants had advertising boards with various cost reduction food items. Some of these had the words flashing and others were of a rather poor quality. The effect was some what mixed; in a way it could be construed as being “over the top” as most of the bars and restaurants had these types of advertising signs but the ones that looked the business; the ones that stood out from the crowd certainly looked ultra impressive and did make me want to venture inside.

What lessons did I learn from my experiences? Well firstly these neon advertising menu boards really do tempt and attract new customers. It is essential that the boards are of a certain quality (high) as cheap in this industry is not good. So are these signs available in the UK? They have just become available on the market place and are already proving to be extremely popular.

In this day and age businesses are looking for ways to survive.To accomplish this you have to take the intitiative.You have to not be reactive, but rather you must be proactive.

The businesses that fail are the ones that are hiding and running. You are aware of the ones.The ones that think that they don’t have the money to advertise.It is companies such as that who will fail.Because the situation the economy is in, a business has to advertise to survive.

For those that understand and know they must advertise to make it in this economy go with this method.This way of advertising is to use mobile billboards.  In the process of running my mobile billboards San Diego company I have seen many companies benefit from this.

Why use mobile billboard advertising?  Because consumers are more picky in where they spend their money.  Not only that, but customers can tune out all advertising. They have the ability to have the commercials fast forwarded.They are able to subscribe to satellite radio and receive no ads. They basically can live commercial free.

But with using mobile billboards or truck advertising in San Diego that I like to use, consumers can’t avoid the ads. Advertising trucks are their with them in traffic.  It is right in front of them.It is on the side of them.  It grabs their attention. With a gorgeously made ad, it has the effect of branding your business in your consumer’s mind.

It’s not like the other types of ads out there, this one cannot be turned off. So you are most definitely going to get impressions.You pretty much lock into the fact that it will be seen by the consumer.Contrast it to different forms of advertising and it is much more cost effective.  Mobile billboard rates are worth it in terms of getting seen by the consumer. 

So if you are looking for ways to make it, you have to try out truck advertising.For your marketing dollars, there is none better.  It will give you exposure.Your prospects won’t forget you.You are going to drive more sales.

The extensive advertising campaign that got Barack Obama into the white house has been given acclaim and awards at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Awards. Advertising agency Droga5 won the Titanium prize for presenting an idea that is “provocative, challenges assumptions and points to a new direction” for ‘The Great Schlep’ campaign featuring Sarah Silverman intended to boost support for Obama amongst Jewish voters. In addition to a video where Silverman urged young “Jewish grandchildren” to persuade their grandparents living in ‘swing state’ Florida to give Obama their votes, there was also an interactive website as part of the campaign.

The Obama campaign also picked up the integrated prize for its effective use of three or more different medias combining to deliver a powerful message. It was celebrated as a powerful combination of a creative use of different media across the board from television, new media and online to grass roots door to door campaigning.

The film category also included aspects of Obama’s election campaign, with creator of Budweiser’s classic ‘Wassup’ ads, Charles Stone III, being awarded a special jury commendation for his new version of the ad. The 2008 version showed the formerly happy and chilled out characters going through tough times after eight years under George Bush, suffering under the recession and being posted to Iraq. Unfortunately this ad was not eligible to win a prize in the film category as the rules state that all entries must be commissioned by a commercial client and work towards promoting a corporate identity design, but the judges felt it deserved special recognition for being such a powerful political statement.

Another big winner was newspaper The Zimbabwean, for their campaign which used the country’s almost worthless banknotes on billboards, giving a whole new meaning to sign printing and scooping gold awards in both the Titanium and integrated categories. Other successful campaigns included the “dance” ad for T-Mobile featuring a huge dance sequence in Liverpool Street Station, and an interactive ad for a Philips TV featuring a bank robbery frozen in time.

One of the things that is in need of all businesses is getting more brand exposure.  Especially in these economic times.Customers are more picky on how they choose to spend their money.They will be more likely to spend it in places and businesses that they trust.So in order for businesses to survive they are going to have to brand themselves.They must get customers to have their company pop into their minds whenever they need their type of business.

Well one of the most effective ways for you to do some branding of your business is mobile billboards.  I know it is one of the best ways because I have seen the results first hand running my mobile billboards San Diego company.For this form of advertising you get your brand firmly planted into your customer’s mind.How you want to know?  By having a beautiful ad that grabs their attention.  On the road when consumer’s are driving a well designed mobile billboard can do just that.  It can grab your customer’s attention and embed your ad in their mind.

You accomplish this basically by placing your ads on the side of the trucks.  This is called truck advertising.  I do it myself with my own San Diego truck advertising company.This is much different than those special vehicles that were made to be just a mobile billboard.
Here you transform a regular truck or semi and change it into a mobile billboard by placing ads on it’s side.

It is a very effective method of getting out in front of your customers and advertise.When you think about how low and good the rates are to do this sort of advertising it is easy to choose. 

A lot of different ways are out there to advertise.  You have TV, radio, and newspapers.But all of them gives the consumer to easily turn it off such as TV or radio.When someone is in traffic driving, they have to take notice of these advertisements.That is the reason they are so powerful.

So if you are searching for a method to firmly brand your company, try this method.  You will be pleasantly surprised and how well known you become.  All from simple San Diego mobile billboards.