Once you’ve created your website and filled it with content, you’ll need to go about the business of promoting it. There are many ways you can go about this and the savvy Internet marketer will try many of them in order to find out what works best. You may not have noticed before you had your own website how others promote theirs but start now to notice and see which methods impress you the most.
Although the old adage, “You get what you pay for” rings true in most cases, that is not necessarily the case when it comes to Internet marketing and promotion. That is because there are a multitude of free promotional techniques you can use that can be just as effective as the ones you pay for. In fact, you can lose a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing so you may want to try some of the free promotional techniques before you commit to the paid ones.
AdWords VS AdSense
Both Google AdWords and Google AdSense have the potential to be profitable promotional strategies, however, they are vastly different and it is important to understand the difference between them. With AdSense, you pay nothing and you have the potential to earn ad revenue. Let’s say you have a blog, which is the most popular form of website that AdSense is used on. You would sign up for a Google AdSense account and Google would run ads on your site based on the content you have on your site. Then when visitors to your site click on those ads, whether or not they buy anything, you would earn ad revenue.
That ad revenue comes from the Google AdWords program. Internet marketers bid on keywords and subsequently open a Google AdWords account. These are the people that pay Google every time their ad is clicked on. The idea when you have an AdWords account is to pay a price to Google for the click but then make more money when you make a sale. Obviously, not everyone who clicks on the ad makes a purchase so this manner of advertising works for some and is not as lucrative for others. That’s why it is wise to make good use of the free promotional resources at the beginning of your Internet marketing career so that you can gain valuable marketing experience before you have to pay for advertising.
Other Ads
Some Internet marketers pay for banner ads or other types of ads that are placed on well trafficked sites. Depending on the site where your banner ad is placed, you might pay each time the ad is clicked on or you might pay a flat rate for the advertising space. It is important to know what your advertising budget is before you pay for advertising and then track your statistics so you will be able to see which form of advertising is doing you the most good.
If you haven’t already made your millions then you can’t afford not to use article marketing as a free promotional tool for your website or blog. If the thought of writing dozens or hundreds of articles makes your skin crawl, then you can outsource this chore but it is important to have these articles submitted to article directories across the World Wide Web. If you don’t want to outsource and you don’t want to write the hundreds of articles yourself, you might be interested in purchasing software that will “spin” these articles for you. Some article marketing software will even take care of the submission process as well. Some services even state that you can construct unique articles out of the ones you have submitted so you can write a couple of articles and have those two articles transformed into hundreds of other articles that can then be submitted to thousands of article directories.
Not Just for Bums
You can, of course, write each article yourself and manually submit them to article directories and many Internet marketers start out that way in the beginning simply because they can’t afford the monthly fees or the outright software purchase of these programs. But don’t ignore article marketing altogether because you can build serious backlinks this way and drive, not just traffic, but targeted traffic to your site. This is sometimes referred to as “Bum Marketing” but it is a popular and cost-effective way of promoting your websites or blogs that you can’t afford to pass up.
Try an Article Directory that Pays You
Many freelance writers and Internet marketers get their online start at Associated Content. While they don’t offer much in the way of upfront payment for articles, they do pay a few dollars and this gives you another opportunity to promote your site by writing articles. While there isn’t a resource box on Associated Content like there is on Ezine Articles, you can include links back to your website or blog. In addition to the potential of earning a few dollars upfront for your articles, you can also share in the ad revenue. So this is something you can do to promote your site even if you don’t have a dime to spend and who knows, you might earn enough to pay for the services later on that will submit your articles to thousands of directories for you.
Write Quality Articles
If you’ve ever read any of the articles on article directories, you have probably come across some very well written articles and you have probably seen just as many poorly written ones. Make sure yours are well written so that your readers will click on your link to learn more.