Are you looking for ways to advertise your business effectively to generate traffic without spending a fortune? There are many ways to achieve this - the options are only limited by your imagination. In this article I will provide you with a few options just to get your creative processes started.
The first approach to consider is exchanges or trades. Is there something you can exchange or trade in exchange for the advertising you need? An option many web sites utilise is exchanging banner ads - you display their ad on your site while they display your ad on their site.
To help people exchange banners, a number of services have started that make it easier to do this. For example, LinkExchange.com is a free banner exchange network. You submit your banner ad to them and they arrange for it to be displayed around their network. In return, you display their banners on your web site. The number of times your banner is displayed on other sites is directly related to the number of times that you display their banners.
For example, LinkExchange.com will display your banner once for every two times you display their banners. Therefore, you need to have a reasonable amount of traffic visiting your site to get full value from this.
Just because your banner is displayed on another site does not mean that you will get a visitor to your site. The number of people clicking on the banner and then visiting your site may be lower than 3% so don't expect a huge amount of traffic from limited exposures. However, the better you have targeted your ad and the sites it will be shown on, the better your chances of getting a higher number of visitors.
You can also purchase additional exposures of your banner. Additional exposures cost approximately $3 per 1,000. This cost is slowly increasing. BannerSwap.com guarantees 15,000 people will see our banner for a cost of $100. They guarantee at least 1,000 people will click on your banner and go to your site if you spend $400.
Another option you may consider is free advertising on auto-responders. SendFree.com is providing this new service that many people are becoming excited about. It works on a similar basis to banner exchanges in that you need to utilise an Autoresponder to become part of this system.
An Autoresponder is a way of automatically providing information about your business to people who request it. For example, you place a free classified ad promoting your business and tell people to get more information by sending a message to your auto-responder. As soon as their message is received by your auto-responder, your sales message is instantly sent back to the person requesting it.
SendFree.com provides free auto-responders. They place an advertisement at the start of each message. Your ad would be placed on other peoples Autoresponders and their ads would be placed on yours. Again, the number of times your ad will appear is dependent upon how many times your Autoresponder is used displaying other members' ads.
This is a very good option to consider especially if you do a lot of classified advertising. It can also be useful on your web site too - simply refer people to information available via email instead of as a web page. For example, reports, more detailed information, sales letters, etc. Get them to enter their email address and a message is sent to the Autoresponder and they receive the details in their email box.
A third option to consider is to establish an ezine for your site. This will enable you to capture the email addresses of your visitors so that you can keep them up to date with what is happening at your site. It will also enable you to send them sales messages for your products and services on a regular basis. This is likely to be the most responsive advertising that you will ever undertake.
With an ezine, you are able to swap ads with related ezine publications. This is a good effective way to increase your traffic and boost your subscriber numbers. Swapping ads with other ezine publishers usually requires a simple email request to swap ads. The Ad Barter Network http://members.xoom.com/ad_barter is a new site that aims to help people barter and swap ads. It is worth a visit. A great source for locating suitable ezines to swap ads with is the Directory of Ezines (URL:
http://www.directoryofezines.com/cgi-bin/ezines.cgi?10996 ). This is the place I use to find suitable ezine swap arrangements.
There are many additional ways to market your business on a shoestring budget. The ideas outlined above are simply to help you get started.
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