Free advertising / free marketing / free promotion and its huge potential for individuals and businesses.
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This article relates to:
- Advertising
- Advertising promotion
- Business
- Business marketing and advertising
- Business services
- Affiliate marketing
- Articles
- Business marketing
- Classified adverts
- Enhanced Marketing System
- EMS system
- EMS
- Enhanced Marketing System (EMS)
- Entrepreneurs
- Exchange link
- Free ads
- Free adverts
- Free Advertising
- Free listing
- Free marketing
- Free marketing system
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- Free promotion
- Internet advertising
- Internet marketing
- Internet marketing advertising
- Internet marketing online
- Internet marketing services
- Marketing and advertising
- mlm Marketing
- Network marketing
- Online advertising
- Product marketing
- Promotion
- Search engine marketing
- Site promotion
- Small business marketing
- Small Medium enterprise
- Small business
- Viral marketing
- Web promotion
- Web site marketing
- Web site promotion
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Article overview
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In this article I will be covering an overview of why having your own editable site is important
and 8 steps you can follow to tap into the huge potential of FREE promotion and self promoting sites.
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First, why is having an online site (website or blog) so important?
Having your own site is one of the key essentials to tapping into the huge potential of Internet marketing. It does not matter if you are an individual, part-time worker, small business, group, charity or other entity, if you have something to promote (including just yourself), having a site is a major asset. No business is too small to have a site, even individuals and part-time workers can benefit. You can also benefit by reducing traditional advertising costs if you have your own site.
There are FREE websites and FREE blogs, that can be set up with just basic word processing skills, so anyone can have an online site (presence) within an hour. While FREE websites and blogs are not as good as registering your own domain name and having your own website hosted, it is a good starting point for individuals and small businesses and is a lot easier. Even if you just use a site as an advert, it is worth having and you can use it to both save and make money.
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Your site should be your best advert.
Websites and blogs have a number of benefits, but the most important function of most sites is as an advert. Having your own website or blog that you can edit allows you to change and improve your advertising message / site over time.
Marketing sites, and why you should still have a personal editable site.
If you are promoting affiliate sites, online shops, auction sites, Multi Level Marketing (mlm) sites, Network Marketing sites or other sites that you cannot edit (or provide restrictions on what you can do, like eBay) it is worth having your own personal site that you can edit. There are a number of reasons why having your own personal site can be a major benefit including allowing you to earn from multiple sources and making the site self promoting.
Note 1:
If due to the nature of your business you must have a custom website designed or need features that are not available from a free website or free blog you will need to look at the cost of creating your own website as part of the cost of setting up your business, just like buying a phone.
Note 2:
Free websites and free blogs, do have some advantages and disadvantages. The key thing is that they can be a benefit to individuals and larger entities. Some allow you more flexibility on what you can do, and most include some form of advertising for their benefit. The crucial thing is that it is better to have a FREE site than no site. You can always create your own website when your business starts to take off.
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Having your own editable site is major benefit, and can:
- Allow you to change your advertising message(s).
- Allow you to promote and earn an income from more than one source.
- Allow you to use self promoting techniques.
- Allow potential customers to see examples of your products or services.
- Help to save money on traditional advertising.
- Allow you to earn additional advertising income.
- Allow potential customers to find out information without taking up your time.
- Help to qualify potential customers.
- Improve advertising response.
- Etc.
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Free advertising, marketing and promotion, still needs to be “Cost Effective”.
Free advertising, marketing and promotion (from now on I am only going to refer to marketing for either advertising, marketing or promotion) offers a huge potential for individuals, part-time workers, businesses, groups, clubs, organizations, charities and other entities. However few are cost effective.
To be “Cost effective”, the cost of any marketing needs to be substantially lower than the potential profit or you will be making a loss. Any marketing that generates a loss is of no benefit and needs to be stopped or revaluated. I say revaluated, as sometimes it may be the advert, or some other factor that may be reducing the sales. The ultimate in cost effective advertising is advertising that does not cost much to set up or run, ideally zero.
If I was to offer you some advertising for say $3000.00, and based on a reasonable response rate you were able to generate an income of $2000.00, giving you a loss of $1000.00, would you be interested?
What if I said that this is FREE advertising and will still cost you $3000.00, would you still be interested?
So why is most FREE marketing NOT “Cost effective”. The answer lies in the total operating cost and this includes your time and other resources.
Do not forget that time is money.
Putting a realistic value on your time reveals just how expensive most FREE advertising is, even if you pay yourself just the minimum wage. In fact many forms of FREE marketing are so expensive to use that you will be earning less than 10% of the minimum wage.
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What is a self promoting site?
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A self promoting site is a site that includes a promotional element that will help to promote itself. You can convert any site that you can edit into a self promoting site. Tip: If you are unable to edit a website (i.e. an affiliate site etc.) you want to promote, you can set up a personal blog (MySpace.com) and make it self promoting and drive traffic to your other site(s). See Step 4 to make your website(s) or blog(s) self promoting.
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So where is the HUGE potential in FREE marketing?
The answer is in using truly cost effective marketing; ideally after registering / setting up “Cost Effective Marketing” will run automatically, self promoting sites and having an exponential visitor growth are the cherries on top.
The 8 Step Cost effective marketing plan.
Step 1
If you do not have a website or blog that you can edit, create your own site. Use a FREE website or set up a FREE blog if this will be suitable for your needs, if not create your own website. Many of the high earners on the web do not have fancy websites. You can always create your own website when your business takes off.
Step 2
Social sites, forums, blogging sites and business networking sites.
These can all provide benefits but you need to consider your target market when selecting the sites or forums to focus on (join). Potentially all social sites and forums will include some individuals that will be of benefit to developing your business or as customers. It is however a numbers game, sites containing more of your target market(s) are more likely to provide better results. Business networking sites like this one are great for building business contacts and can help you with tips to build your business. The social site www.MySpace.com has over 180 million members and rising by the second, 80% are over 21, everyone is using it both for personal and business use. How many potential customers do you have on MySpace? Tip: Even if you have your own website or another blog, set up a blog on MySpace there is a huge potential market there.
Step 3
Register your website(s) or blog(s) with the main search engines and site directories. Care should be taken with some of the automated submitters that state that your site will be submitted to thousands of search engines or directories. Many of these directories may make your email address public, or register you in Opt-In lists and not true directories, so you may effectively agreeing to receive junk mail by using some of these services.
Step 4
Register your website(s) or blog(s) and set them up where possible to be self promoting for FREE at
http://www.a2zidx.com/evmspvmp.php
The registration is FREE and there is no usage charge, and it runs automatically, so is both FREE and cost effective. This is an integrated marketing system that includes, FREE advertising, directs new visitors to your site, automatically creates incoming links to your site and can provide automatic promotion on any site you can edit. The increase in adverts, links and visitors grows exponentially and is a must do, like registering on search engines. This directs visitors directly to your site and respects your email. There is also a marketing newsletter with detailed marketing tips.
Step 5
Email marketing, is a valuable tool. We are not talking about spam mail but including a sign off message on each email you send or using your own Opt-In list where subscribers agree to accept your newsletters. In general people are willing to sign up for newsletters that they will consider the information will be of benefit to them.
Step 6
There are two principal benefits to exchanging links with other sites. Firstly visitors who visit the site you are exchanging links with may click on your link and visit your website. The problem with this is that most links are placed on “Links pages” that are seldom visited and the amount of traffic you will receive from most sites is very low. Having your link(s) included in editorial on popular pages on the other site is much more effective, or a personal recommendation. The second benefit is search engines use incoming links to your site as a method of establishing your site's “Popularity”, and the more incoming links you have generally the better. The better your site popularity, the better your site will be ranked in the search engine results. As adding exchange links takes time it is worth only exchanging links with sites that will be of benefit to your business and be worth the effort, sites with more traffic are generally more beneficial. Tip: Do not exchange links with dubious sites, you may
be penalized by the search engines.
Step 7
Articles, are a good method of getting some FREE publicity and back links to your site. You however need to spend the time to write an article and not an advert. As some article submission / publication sites have different rules you may need to tailor articles to meet acceptance requirements. If you write an article publish it in multiple places if possible. Some additional places to publish your article include your website(s) or blog(s).
Step 8
FREE advertising sites.
Some of these do provide benefits but you will need to test these to see how well they work for your business. On most of these sites you will need to repost the advert at regular intervals. Providing the response you get is worth the effort and time taken to post / repost your adverts and is cost effective then these are viable options.
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