Free Advertising Online

Free Ads on Google Adwords, Facebook and Elsewhere

Bille — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 22:34:37 +0000

Google Adwords, Facebook and Yahoo search ads are all key money-makers for ads that work on a pay-per-click basis. Still, they can burn through your money very quickly, especially if you are sill enough to use Adwords without fully understanding all of how it works. (Perry Marshall is a great go-to guy for Adwords info.)

Yet, there is a free option for all of the above, and often for other ad networks as well. Google, Facebook, Yahoo and others regularly offer $50 (or even $100) worth of free advertising to both new and existing account holders. People who have more time than money have been know to sign up for multiple accounts at these places to take advantage of the offers for new users.

The free ads usually come as part of a package, quite often for signing up for a web hosting account. While this is not free, many hosting companies offer hosting at $4 or $5 monthly, and you can leave after one month. Either way, you may actually need hosting, so be on the look-out for these free advertising offers whenever you sign up. If you decide to cancel the hosting, you’ve still paid only a few dollars for over $100 worth of advertising in many cases.

Hosting offers are not the only places to find these free offers, though. They are all over, and can sometimes be had for simply completing a survey or providing an email address.

Places to find them include Ebay, forums, and an endless collection of blogs.

$75 from Google Adwords Now
At the moment, Google is offering $75 in free Adwords ads if you sign up with them via this link. It’s basically a free trial offer for new accounts. While I can’t guarantee it will be there forever, it will likely be around in some form or another for a long time yet.

To find similar deals for other networks, try some creative searching on Google. Search for terms such as “Facebook ad coupons” or “Yahoo ad coupons” or “free Facebook ads.” Also try searching for “vouchers” instead of “coupons.” Since they usually have expiration dates, when you search, go to Google left sidebar and click on “More Search Tools.” Then select results from the past 2 months only. That will weed out all the old offers. A similar search on Ebay won’t be exactly free, but I see $50 (and $75) Google Adwords coupons going on Ebay for $5 to $10 right now.

As a side-note, I should warn you that Google is often hostile to small advertisers, and will ban your account for perceived infractions of their very complex and vague sets of terms. Current accounts are banned even for ads that ran and were deleted years ago, but which their computer recently decided were not up to snuff. For this and other reasons, I don’t recommend any business strategy that depends heavily on Google. Yet, if you can get some free online advertising from them, what’s to lose?

Why It’s So Hard to Find Free Advertising Online… Even When It’s Everywhere

Bille — Fri, 03 Jun 2011 05:19:55 +0000

Want Free Advertising? Well, you’re already here, but just for fun try a little search on Google. That’s where most of us start. I searched for the name of this website, Free Advertising Online, on Google to see how far from the top I am. Of course, as much as I try, I’m really far. It’s a fairly competitive term, which is surprising considering it’s “free.” So I wanted to see who actually is up at the top of page one for the term. What are they doing right? I’m no SEO expert, but whatever they’re doing is likely to make Google happier than it makes the person searching the term for answer to the question “Where can I get free advertising online?”

While there are many sites that do offer just that on page one, they won’t get you very far. Many lack the needed traffic, others are so full of ads that yours will never be seen. Google doesn’t have the facilities to separate one from the other. It’s a case of water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

There are several reasons for this, not least that Google is not as good at separating the wheat from the chaff as they think.

While everybody’s results differ, mine are topped today by a site called Skepter. It looks an awful lot like Craigslist with a Web 2.0 update. You know, everything is a Twitter blue and all the edges on boxes are curved. That’s not enough to make me overlook the relative paucity of users. Well, it’s free, right? But it does take time to make a posting. If you are a spammer and have it all automated, fine. Make 100 posts here, and even one follow up will make it worthwhile. If you have nothing else to do, give it a whirl. However, here’s food for thought from a great little site for webmasters called Sharenator. Skeptor.com gets about 8000 users daily. That’s far more than the 47,000 monthly estimated elsewhere, which I think are more accurate. That would be fine for a little site like FreeAdvertisingOnline.net, but a mere trickle for a Craigslist knock-off. On top of that, 39% of those visitors are from India, which most likely means that they will not become valued customers in your business is based elsewhere (or even there, for that matter). The name was registered in the Ukraine, by the way. I’ll have to remember to favor Ukrainian SEO guys when I look to climb the Google ranks. It’s a good job they did to get this site ranked number one – over Craigslist or any other site that actually has traffic worth talking to.

Below Skepter is a site called BestWayClassifieds. They appear to get about 10 times the traffic that Google’s number one choice of Skepter gets. While this still leaves them out of the big leagues, I would guess that they are worth the effort to post ads to, at least. They have a nice down and dirty look like a real site that used by real people. None of this glossy “here today gone tomorrow while we pass through page one of Google” stuff.
Others at the top include Ad-Mart.co.uk, which will work for you if you are targeting UK customers – though Gumtree.com may be better. Oddly enough, Craigslist is nowhere to be found anywhere near the top of Google for “free advertising online.” They might even be behind this site for all I know.

The only three I use are listed below, and none of them will be found if you search Google for “free advertising online,” at least not from my computer.

Backpage.com
Craigslist.org
USFreeAds.com

When thinking of free advertising, it’s best for you to go beyond traditional thinking. We were all brought up to know classifieds, so we instinctively head that way. The internet has introduced so many varieties of free advertising that we need to broaden our approach. That’s why I have articles on Twitter, press release services and other sources of attention. While a few classifieds are fine, you’ll get much more bang for your efforts if you try other methods. And I haven’t yet started talking about iTunes, Facebook, file sharing, Ebay, Youtube or a myriad of other brilliant ways to get free online advertising.

One things is for sure, though. You won’t find the answers very easily searching at Google.

Maybe if I add the Google +1 button somewhere, it might help? What do you Ukrainian guys think? Call me…

Twitter as a Marketing Tool

Bille — Mon, 09 May 2011 03:49:43 +0000

You probably already know you need to be on Twitter if you have a business. It’s far superior to Facebook, since FB is more a social tool than anything else, and it can be hard to get sales that way. Twitter, on the other hand, is ideal.

Image via Wikipedia

Like most others, my first impression of Twitter was that it was junk. People tweet things like, “I’m having coffee at the new Starbucks near my house.”

Who cares, right?

But then I saw how Paula Abdul used it when she quit (was fired from?) American Idol. By tweeting what she was up to, she managed to take all of her fans with her. In the past, she would have had to hope that the media would cover her activities… a real long-shot. Instead, she took her fans, her brand, along with her.

This works for business as well. Say you are selling coffee beans. By getting current and potential customers to follow you on Twitter, you can instantly inform them of interesting coffee news, some great new beans you have discovered, or a special deal you offer (such as a free mug only for Twitter followers). It keeps your customers thinking about you. This works for anyone, and any kind of service.

That’s enough from me. For the rest of this post, I will paraphrase some information that is found on various places on the net. This is a resource that is sold to several website owners to use as they wish. It’s informative, but needed a bit of editing, and was designed as an email course. To save you the hassle, I’ll reprint the whole thing here. Good luck with Twitter!

If you are new to Twitter you may not realize that you can create
your personal or business brand and virtually dominate your
market, simply by building a list of followers.

Let’s talk about some of the ways you can you achieve this.

Once you’ve set up your Twitter account you will want to work on
your profile. This way you can quickly customize the look and feel
of your page. You will want to pay close attention to your one line
bio. Because this is what people will read before they decide
whether or not they want to follow you. You will only have 160
characters to describe who you are and what you do, so you have
to make it good!

The next thing you will want to do is get followers. If you have
business contacts that are already using Twitter, invite them to
follow you. Put links in your emails, on your websites and blogs
asking people to follow you. You could even put your Twitter url on
your business card, so that you can gather followers offline as well.

Don’t be shy, tell everyone you meet about your Twitter page. Make
is sound exciting and let them know that you will be sharing
important updates, great tips and information with them if they
follow you. You may be surprised to find out that almost everyone
will click the follow button just to see what you’re up too!
Another thing that I feel that is important for Internet
marketers is to seek out and follow the power
users of Twitter. This will benefit you in more than one way. It will
give you a bird’s eye view of what they’re doing on Twitter, so you
can learn how to improve your own results, and it will also put you
in front of all the people they are in contact with.

Curiosity, you can’t fight it, so you may as well take advantage of
it. People are curious by nature! They like to see who is following
who, so often they will click on the links and check out the followers
of people they know and follow them as well and by following the
leaders, so to speak you may naturally end up will new followers
as well. Just try and keep your target market in mind when you
choose which power user to follow.

Now let’s talk about meeting even more people and making
hundreds of new friends by using retweets.

With this method, you take the original twitter message someone
else has posted, and rebroadcast that same message to your
followers. When broadcasting the message, you should definitely
give credit to the original poster. I know at first it may sound like
this will only be good for the original tweeter, but retweeting can
actually benefit you just as much if not more because:

1. It provides more value to your followers.

When you provide value to your followers, you make them happy!
You are also more likely to attract followers. Providing quality
content is always a great way to build your business no matter
what platform you use.

2. It will benefit your brand.

If you point a reader to a source if good information that is truly
relevant and beneficial to them, the amount of trust that they have
in you will increase.

3. It will help you build relationships with the original posters.

Retweeting someone else’s content is an act of kindness, and for
the most part bloggers like to return the favor. You shouldn’t expect
someone to retweet your content just because you retweet theirs.
Still, just keep in mind that your chance of being on the other end of a
retweet increases as you retweet.

Retweeting is all about providing value to your followers so if you
want others to retweet your post then you want to make sure that
you are providing them with quality content worth tweeting about.

The bottom line is retweeting is a great way to add quality and
value to your Twitter page. If done right, retweeting can help you
educate your followers, build your personal brand, increase future
traffic, and connect you to other great people in your niche.

Just be careful if you use it incorrectly, retweeting can actually hurt
your personal brand and future traffic. You want to treat your
followers like gold. Don’t ever send them to inappropriate
websites or spam them with one sales pitch after another.

Remember you want them to like what you have to say, so they will
follow your lead. Then when you do recommend something to
them you will get the results you are looking for every time!
—————————————————————-

Twitter ToolsIn this lesson we are going to go over some tools that you can use
to make your Twitter page more interactive and successful.

Whether you want to generate more traffic to your site or you want
to increase your social relationships, Twitting is a fun and exciting
activity that you can quickly master and use to achieve your goals.

We already know that Twitter keeps people connected at all times.
Some people send tweets regularly (every day) and others only a
few times a week. Since you are planning on using Twitter to build
your business the latter is the best option for you.

That leads us to our first tool, Future Tweets. This works great if
you aren’t able to send important tweets because you have other
commitments. It only takes a few minutes to set up and you can
use to automatically post your prepared tweets.

It is very important that you don’t use this tool to auto spam your
account with worthless information and constant offers. That will
only lose you followers. Here is an example of proper ways to use
this tool would be to remind your followers of upcoming seminars
or meetings, maybe even let them know about products and offers
to help build a buzz.

You can find out more about Future Tweets here:

http://futuretweets.com

Sharing pictures and product images is also possible with Twitter
by using the tool Twitpic. When you make new contacts there may
come a time when you want to share some of your pictures with
them so that they can get to know you and your business better.

Once you’ve created your Twitpic account you can upload your
pictures and quickly post them on Twitter. Another great thing
about this tool is that it is also compatible with mobile devices
which make it easier to share pictures from your mobile device.

You can find out more about Twitpic here:

http://twitpic.com

If you are using WordPress for your blog (you have a blog we hope), there are quite a
few tools that you can use to automate your Twitter activities
from inside your dashboard including:

TweetThis plug-in – This will encourage your visitors to tweet your
blog post. TweetThis also adds a Twitter link in every blog post
you create plus gives you the ability to shorten your blog post URL
to fit the 140-character limit.

TweetMeme button – Helps other people to easily retweet your
post on Twitter and it also shows a count of how many times your
blog post has been retweeted.

Twitter Tools – This plug-in integrates your blog with Twitter
by pulling all your tweets into the side bar of your blog. You can
also use it to post new tweets from inside your WordPress blog.

You can find these and a whole slew of other tools specifically for
Wordpress by doing a search for ” Twitter WordPress plug-in”

Now let’s talk about Twollo. It is another Twitter tool that you
can use to find people you want to follow. Just type in the subject
or topic that interests you and the tool will find people who are
talking about the same thing and automatically follows them for
you.

And the list goes on. I could literally list hundreds of tools that work
with Twitter for you, but then we would be stuck on this lesson for
days, so instead I am going to suggest that you do a little home
work after you are done reading this lesson.

All you have to do is open up your favorite search engine and do a
search for “Twitter tools, plug ins and add-ons” you will find more
that enough to meet your needs. You can narrow your search even
more if you are looking for something more specific.

For instance I did a search for “Twitter tools business” while I was
writing this lesson and came across some that I didn’t know
about.

Before we close this lesson I do want to tell you about one more
tool that you can use to find out who you are following that isn’t
following you back.

It’s Tweepler and all you have to do is type in your Twitter
username and password and it will give you detailed list of who is
following you and who you are following. It also has a very nice
point and click interface, so that you can quickly sort through your
peeps.

It does take it a few minutes to populate the list but it is well worth
the wait. You can find it here: http://tweepler.com

So, go do your homework and find some Twitter Tools that will
work in your niche and start using them to make new contacts,
automate your posts and promote your site even better with
Twitter!

—————————————————————-

3 – Getting New Customers with Twitter

Let’s jump right in and talk about how you can use Twitter to
conduct your market research. Every business has a target
market, but the simple fact is that many business owners often
miss the mark because they don’t know the true needs of their
market.

By using Twitter, you can easily listen to the needs of your
prospects, the issues they are currently facing and the kind of
help that they want.

Whenever you meet someone new on Twitter it’s a good idea to
try to establish a good relationship from the start. Think like your
customer. You buy from people who you trust and like. Your target
market also behaves the same way. It is important, especially in
social marketing that you get to know your clients and do your best
to win their trust and confidence.

A good rule of thumb is to try and keep 90% of your
tweets full of helpful content and try to limit your promotional ones.
By doing so, you can attract more followers and hopefully
customers.

Offering educational materials, seminars, video training and
networking events will also go a long way when you are trying to
convert your followers into paying customers.

As a matter of fast I recently came across a great website that
allows you to stream live video on your Twitter page and chat real
time with your followers, so if you’re not camera shy, plug in your
webcam! This will be a fantastic way to make an instant
connection for you and your peeps.

You can find out more here:

http://twitcam.com

There are so many different techniques that you can use to help
the transition from follower to customer by using Twitter. Just
remember to keep the value of your content high and the volume of
your promotions low and you will begin to see real results from
your efforts.

—————————————————————-

4- Getting Traffic to Your Website

I hope you are learning a lot from the Twitter For IM Professionals
Crash Course. Today we are going to talk about how you can
maximize your Twitter traffic.

As an Internet marketer one of your main promotional goals should
be to dominate social networks and what better way to access the
global market than through Twitter. Simply by attracting followers
and making friends you can quickly build a list of valuable leads.

Did you know that Twitter is considered to be one of the most
effective and impressive ways to increase traffic?

Most people use Twitter simply to send tweets to one another
and keep in contact with friends and family, but as an Internet
marketer you can use it to drive traffic a serious amount of to your
business sites.

Just imagine, with the increased traffic to your website, you can
gain more subscribers, leads and convert them into paying
customers which all leads to increased income.

As we talked about in lesson one, you need to spread the news
that you’re on Twitter. You will want to include your Twitter url in
your email messages, post blogs and on your websites. That way,
everyone will know that you’re using Twitter.

Believe it or not regularly updating your tweets will help you drive
more traffic to your site. Avid Twitter users like people who post
tweets regularly. If you want to gain active followers through your
tweets you will want to set up a schedule for posting and do your
best to stick to it.

You will also want to make sure that you reply to the tweets
addressed to you. I don’t recommend that you stay on the site all
day or spend long hours tweeting away your time. Just pick a
good time once or twice a day and login.

If you have a mobile device, all the better because you can sync it
up with your Twitter account and you won’t have to worry about
being away from your computer.

Don’t worry if your followers don’t become active right away. It may
take some time, but they will begin to notice the times that you are
more active and after a while they will join in your conversations,
which is one of your main goals.

Just remember the basic rule we talked about in lesson three
“keep ninety percent of your tweets full of helpful content and
limit your promotional ones” this way you will keep the followers
that really matter.

While some personal tweets are a must if you want to help your
followers get to know you, you will want to avoid sending out to
many personal or unrelated tweets because it can actually cause
you to lose followers.

After all there aren’t too many of your business contacts that will
want to hear that you took a shower or what you had for breakfast,
so keep your tweets focused!

By taking the time to build good relationships with your followers,
you will be laying the ground work for converting them into lifetime
customer for your products or business.

Establishing a good relationship with your followers is vital if you
want to take advantage of the massive flow of traffic that pours
through Twitter every day.

Here is a little checklist that you can keep handy:

- Let everyone know that you’re on Twitter.
- Send tweets regularly.
- Retweet good content.
- Reply to the tweets addressed to you.
- Pay attention to the kind of tweets youíre sending.
- Make the tweets personal, but not too personal.
- Most of all, build good relationships.

Using Twitter is fun and easy that is why is has such a big draw.
I’ll be honest, not everyone who uses Twitter as a marketing tool
will be successful because it takes time, effort, and patience to
see effective results. But if you follow these steps regularly you
should see an increase of activity and conversion.

—————————————————————-

5- Common Twitter Mistakes

By now you should have a basic plan and schedule for your Twitter
marketing campaign. Have you tacked your checklist from our last
lesson somewhere close to your computer yet?

In this last lesson we are going to talk about some of the common
mistakes that Twitter users make, so you can avoid making them.

Over the last few days we’ve talked about what an exciting, cool,
and extremely profitable social network site Twitter is. The fact is
millions of people are using it to connect with each other all over
the world, but as an Internet marketer there are some common
mistakes that you will want to avoid making even before you start
sending tweets.

Mistake number one:

The picture as your avatar in your profile is not yours.

I’m sure you’ve seen it. Some users don’t post their real picture.
They use cartoon pictures, company logos, or their pet’s pictures.
Although the pictures are quite cute and may grab some attention,
most Twitter users will appreciate seeing a real picture of you,
especially if you are trying to connect on a business level.

When you post your own picture it lets others know that you are
real and that you’re confident enough with what you do to let others
see you. You want people to recognize you as a leader in your
market and having a face to go with a name always helps.

Depending on your niche you will want to choose a photo that
represents business, For instance if you are have a children’s
online book store you will want to choose a picture that shows your
fun side. On the other have if you are selling product to
professionals you will want a photo that looks conservative and
business like. A nice smile never hurts either.

Mistake number two:

Automatically sending the wrong type direct message through an
AutoDM.

In lesson two we talk about using the tool Future Tweets that
automatically sends messages to people who follow you. What we
didn’t talk about was sending the wrong type of message with this
tool and how it can lose you followers.

Direct messages can be seen as impersonal and pushy when
they aren’t written properly. If you decide to use a tool that
automatically send messages to your new followers keep it simple
and friendly. A message saying “thanks for following me” is fine,
but sending automated messages promoting your business or
product is not a good idea and most instances people will click
the unfollow button right away.

Mistake number three:

Trying to build a huge following before you have done some
tweeting.

People will not be interested in following you when they click on
your Twitter page to see what you’ve got, and notice you don’t
have much. You need to have tweeted more than, “Trying to figure
this Twitter out” and “I think I’ve got it figured out now.”

If you don’t know what to say, try “retweeting” (RT) some other
peoples’ tweets that that are related to your niche. Read what
other people are tweeting about and reply to them, this will help
start up a conversation. Talk about market related news, what
you’re doing on your business right now. That will give you several
tweets to get the ball rolling.

Mistake number four:

Tweeting promotion after promotion.

Yes, you are using Twitter to promote your business, but posting
one offer after another will only cause people to unfollow you.
When people look at your timeline and notice that you aren’t
posting anything of value to them they will quickly move on.

There are millions of Twitters to follow, why should they follow you
when you’re only tweeting about promotions? Remember this
basic rule of sales “people want to know what’s in it for me”?
Twitter is a social network and you have to keep that in mind
before you post a tweet.

When you are using Twitter for your IM business you must learn
how to communicate and build good relationships with your
followers before you start sending them with promotions.

Even if you already have a good list of leads, it is still not a good
idea to barrage them with promotions. As we have talked about
before, promotional tweets should be sent only in limited numbers.

These are just a few of the more common mistakes committed by
new and old tweeters alike. Take note of them and don’t make the
same mistakes.

Before we close this final lesson I want to share a couple of more
things with you that we didn’t have a chance to go over in the last
few lessons.

The first thing is using the Twitter search feature. It is a very
effective tool that allows you to check on yourself and your
business. You will be surprised to find out how much chatter
takes place on Twitter.

By using the search tool you can quickly find out what others are
saying about you and your business and learn from them. If you
find out any criticisms, think about them carefully. You can also
make some adjustments to your business if there is a need to so
that you ensure profitability.

The next thing is your Twitter background. The background on
Twitter page tells a lot about your personality. If you plan to use
Twitter for Internet marketing you will want to make the background
look more professional. You can do this by using the basic
customization tools that Twitter supplies to make some simple
changes to the color scheme of your page.

For even more impact you may want to consider a custom
designed background. There are many editing programs that you
can use to create your own graphics if you want to and if you do a
quick search you will also find a variety of pre-made Twitter
background available. If you really want to go all out you can hire a
designer to create one for you.

Capitalizing on Twitter’s popularity can be very rewarding and
profitable for your business, but only if you know what you’re
doing. While I tried to cover the basics during this short course
there is always more to learn and you will want to continue
education as you go along and as Twitter changes and grow I’m
sure more great thing will come.

Just remember the basic rules, keep your checklist handy and you
will be sure to see results from your efforts.

Good luck with your twitter marketing campaign.

And so.. there it is. Enough to get started anyway.

Remember some key points. Make your tweets interesting, so that people look forward to them. If you are a tax accountant, Tweet new developments in tax laws that your clients mind find helpful. If you run a restaurant, mention special deals and discounts, and offer information about interesting foods or even the occasional recipe. If you supply services to offices, sent useful tweets that link to advice on how to increase productivity and management tips.

You will be helping your customers with useful information, offering them special deals for following you (and to bring them back for more business), and keeping your name in front of them so they don’t forget about you the next time they need a product or service you provide.

Free Press Release Services Online

Bille — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 05:15:04 +0000

Press releases have always been great ways to get the word out for free. In the digital age, they can be even more effective, not just at bringing in new leads, but by adding backlinks that should enhance you standing in the search engine results. While paid press releases are most effective, it’s easy to test the waters with free press releases. In fact, the only thing to watch for is that you don’t go overboard.

There are probably 100s of free press release services, though many are hardly seen by real journalists, and others will send your press release to XXX sites, which will be a problem for you unless that’s the industry you’re in. The top paying sites include PRWeb.com and PRnewswire.com, but again, until you know what you are after – and what you’re doing – try some of the more reputable free sites to get your legs.

Writing a Press Release

Here are a few simple things to keep in mind when writing your press release:
• Write in the 3rd person. (Don’t use “you” or “I”.) You want to sound like a news item, not a salesman.
• No sales pitch. Don’t even hint at it. The idea is to be subtle and to just deliver information about who you are and what you are doing in an interesting way.
• Press releases are usually 400-600 words. PRWeb (paid) lets you embed anchor text link every 100 words, so this length will allow you to add a few – though you’re better off not spamming it up and sticking to the important links.
• Explain what you’re promoting benefits the end user – and make it exciting. For example “Doctor claims all natural product found in the Amazon can boost personal productivity by 37% – the equivalent of having 2 extra days each week.”
• Make it fun to read – especially the headline. Remember that journalists may scan 100 headlines a minute. Make your stand out.

Now what are some of the free press release services – the reputable ones? Here are a few:

Free-Press-Release.com Simple press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

PRLog.org – Simple but highly effective

PR.com – Basic service.

1888PressRelease.com – This site allows links in free submissions.

SubmitEdge.com – Another effective site, with SEO features.

24-7PressRelease.com – Free press release submission with limited distribution. Active links OK.

Free-Press-Release-Center.info – PR submission and distribution for free. One link allowed

BigNews.biz – PR submission and distribution for free. One link allowed

PitchEngine.com – Free for llmited release. Also reaches out to social media sites.

Good luck with your journey. Free press releases are some of the best online advertising you can get for the money!

Become a Google News Source

Bille — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 00:57:02 +0000

The Google news feed is perhaps the largest publicly accessed feed in the world. An article by you or about your company in the news feed can bring in considerably traffic, and confers automatic authority to your site. Whether that authority is deserved or not is another question, but let’s deal with what is. For your business, imagine having a top story in Google, even if it lasts just part of a day (as news stories change often). Each time your story rises to the top, it can bring a flood of traffic, not just from Google but from other sites that may copy the story on their blogs or website news feeds.

Now you are probably thinking…”Yeah, but how do I get a news publisher to carry my story?”

There are many ways to do this, but let’s get outside the box and cut out the middleman. You can become a publisher yourself.

If you take a look at the news sources on Google, they’re not all AP and Reuters stories. The vast majority are from websites and news sources most of us have never heard of. You can be one of those, assuming you can meet Google’s requirements. No fame or fortune is guaranteed, but you will have a good chance of being able to advertise your product or services by posting a story that has general interest to Google news feed.

Becoming a Google News Publisher would require that the site meets not just the technical requirements, but webmaster quality guidelines as well.

First, a couple links. Take a look at the technical requirements in the link below. Don’t get too bogged down in this, it’s mainly to give you an idea of what your site needs. You may well already have these requirements covered:
http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/topic.py?hl=en&topic=11665

There are three big points yo want to watch:
Be sure that you have more than one writer/contributor to your news site. Sites with single authors are generally rejected.
Be sure that you have original news content on your site, not just rehashed stuff.
Be sure that you site doesn’t come off as existing solely for self promotion (free advertising). This rule generally applies to successful press releases as well. You want to provide news that is of interest even to people who will never buy your product. You want it to appear as news, not as advertising.

Once you feel your site is ready, go ahead and submit at http://www.google.com/support/news_pub/bin/request.py?contact

Click “suggest news content” and you will be walked through a series of simple questions. Approval can come in as little as a week.

Again, remember that you are to be a news source. It might be a good idea to register a separate domain to build a news site that is relevant to your business. For example, if you sell garage doors, a DUI site that focuses on garage use would be good. If you sell insurance, and insurance news and advice site could be very popular.

If you do this right, you will find that it’s fun, and you will attract fans – who may then become customers.

Of all the free advertising online available, this can be the most consistent and useful. And as a news source, you can build your brand’s authority in the public eye.

Blog Commenting

Bille — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 04:03:29 +0000

Tried and true free advertising online doesn’t rely on tricks. Yet blog commenting is often done poorly, with poor results (no surprise there). It’s a shame, really. Because, unlike many other forms of building backlinks, blog commenting can be fun. It doesn’t have to be drudge work. Sure, you can pay someone to comment on 100 blogs, if you don’t mind having lame comments such as “Great post, thank you very much!” linked back to your website. I wouldn’t recommend it though.

For one thing, crappy comments get deleted, so you’ll be spinning your wheels and spreading ill will towards you from the very people you need most to bring you business. You want bloggers to be grateful for your comments. If you are selling gothic make-up and the blog is a gothic fashion blog, do you want to alienate that person? By posting useful comments, you can build backlinks from a relevant blog that attracts the sort of people who may be your customers. This is good for SEO. It is also good because you can get direct traffic from that blog to your site when people are intrigues by your comments.

And that’s the other reason to post useful comments. The better the information you provide, the more likely a reader will want to see what else you have to offer. So lure them in!

Have fun with it. Go to blogs and share your knowledge. Comment specifically on the post.

Don’t say something that is vague and could apply to any post on any blog (“Great blog ya got!”). Address something specific in the post, and add some useful info. Think of the readers. If they are interested in that post, what might you know that would also interest them?

It’s worth mentioning this:

Even though the numbers might not great in some blogs, the level of interest in what you are selling may be high. Better to have 10 serious buyers than 1000 tire kickers.

Your blog comments are the best free advertising you can have online. Use them to build your brand.

Be King of Your Domain

Bille — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 08:01:57 +0000

Domain marketing is still one of the biggest secrets in the business world, despite multi-million dollar sales of domain names. Or maybe it’s because of those large domain sales that most people think there’s no room for the little guy. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

While it’s not quite free, a mere $8 could buy you the ticket to a constant stream of new customers. And, in a very real sense, you will have zero competition for all those leads.

Let me explain…

Say your business is Skateboard Madness, and your main website is at skateboardmadness.com. Say your business is selling skateboards, especially all terrain skateboards. This is a niche market, but nonetheless there are roughly 1000 people each month searching that exact term – and maybe twice as many if you include all the variation of the term (such as “skateboards for all terrain).” These 1000-2000 people are all interested in getting information about a product you specialize in. Wouldn’t it be nice if, when they went to Google to find that information, the first website they clicked on was yours? Now, if you are handy optimizing your site for search engines, or you have an SEO specialist to do it for you, you could try to target that term with a page from your website at SkateboardMadness.com. However, if you really wanted to not only lock up the top position, but also attract the greatest number of clicks, the clever domain marketer would instead build a separate small site at allterrainskateboards.com.

Why go through all this trouble? Three reasons:

You will have an easier time of getting – and keeping – the top spot if your domain name exactly the matches the keywords being searched for. While your competitors can try to knock you off the top spot through all kinds of SEO ninja tacticcs, the one thing they will never be able to do is to have the exact keywords in a dotcom domain. That’s because you were smart enough to beat them to it. No matter what they do, this is one edge that you will always have over them. This is an edge whether you have an extremely competitive keyword you are after, or if you are in a less competitive niche, such as all terrain skateboards. In the less competitive niches, the domain will have a dramatic effect. I have seen websites with almost no content on them make it to page one of Google on the strength of the domain name alone.
Even if you aren’t at the very top, web surfers will be more inclined to click on a domain that is named after what they are searching for. An exact match in the domain name has been shown through several tests to outdraw related but non-exact domains – both in the organic free listings, and even in the paid listings. More traffic to your website either way. When someone is searching for all terrain skateboards, and they see skateboardmadness.com and allterrainskateboards.com, guess which one gets clicked?
The domain will make you king of that search term. You can lure in the web surfers, greet them with a page that tells them everything they might want to know about all terrain skateboards. And then. you guide them to your main website to close the deal and make a sale. All automatically.

Domain marketing is the smartest and least appreciated investment out there.

Now, you may not get your name $8. You can always try for a dotnet. Or you can try to buy the domain off the owner. Godaddy premium domains and Sedo offer many great domains, some at outrageous prices, some at bargain prices. A few hundred dollars for a domain will be made back very quickly, and pay for itself many times over. That is, assuming it is built as described above.

For your own product go to Google’s keyword tool (search “keyword tool” on Google). Enter your product or service, and you’ll see a list of related search terms. Find one with good numbers, and see if the name is available. Simple as that. Depending on your business, even as few as 50-100 searches per month could be good numbers. If you operate on smaller margins, though, you’ll want to go for considerably more.

Domain marketing can be done across your entire product/service line. Just make the landing page especially to answer the query, and then guide the visitor to your main site for more information.

Advertising on Forums

Bille — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 05:02:28 +0000

While paid advertising exists on forum, nothing beats the free advertising online in forums that can only be had by regular posters to the forum.

This is something that you will want to do in any case – you will want to regularly visit forums that are frequented by your potential customers for a myriad of reasons.

Of course you want to talk to them, you want to establish your knowledge and your bonafides, and sell your product or service. But beyond that, you want to listen. A forum is the perfect place to eavesdrop on the conversations your customers are having with each other. By reading comments and posts at forums, you will learn about your market’s concerns and needs. And you will be on top of trends before they ever are talked about in the mass media.

As a double payback for being so close with your market, you will earn not only respect and interest in your business from new customers, but you will be able to advertise under every single one of your posts by making use of your forum signature. The signature, for those of you who haven’t noticed, is the link or comment you see at the bottom of many posts – each signature is unique to each commenter because they insert those links and comments via their control panel or settings in the forum.

If you sell advertising, and your link says “For great advertising rates click here” (or preferable something much better than that), many forum members will click on that link to visit your site. And many of them will buy advertising through your company. The numbers of people who click through will be directly proportional to the quantity and quality of the posts you write. You need the quantity just to get more eyeballs on your link. You need quality to establish yourself as someone they view as an expert. Someone they trust enough to buy from. Good posts that are useful to the forum members will actually presell your customers before they ever arrive at your website.

As a nice bonus to all of this, the links will be seen by Google as reaffirmations of your site quality, and will help lift your site higher in their search rankings.

So there you have it:

1- Inside customer information.

2-New customers through links.

3-Improved search rankings.

Forum marketing is the best online advertising you can get, in so many ways.

Craigslist Tricks

Bille — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:58:19 +0000

There are some quick and easy Craigslist tricks that will boost your conversions – like these.

HTML Symbol in Title
I’m sure you’ve seen ad titles that had some sort of symbol in front of them.
Like this one: ? Or this: ?

When you implement this symbol on the web in html form everyone will be able to see it, and it will make your ad jump out from the rest.

How do you make these little eye catchers?
In the TITLE of your ad type in ? to make the dart symbol that points toward the title of your ad. Go to Google and type in ascii symbols for more ideas. There are tons. They all start with ‘&#’ followed by a number (amount of digits varies).
All you have to do is type in those symbols &# followed by the numbers suggested (with no spaces). When you submit your ad, the symbol will automatically appear.

Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are not permitted on Craigslist.
If you try, you will get an automated message telling you that affiliate links are not allowed.
If you want to promote an affiliate product, you need to link to your own website, and then get the visitors to click on the affiliate link there. This is good advertising practice anyway, so stick with it.

Ad Content

Don’t overwhelm the reader of your ad with a wall of info and sales talk.

Keep it simple, as you just want people to click through. The sales pitch come after they arrive at your website. An ad that gets the reader curious, or makes them want to read more is all you want. An “…” at the end of it suggests there’s more for them. Don’t forget the link to your website!

“See how ordinary people are earning millions from home, even while they sleep…”http://yourdomainname.com

If you leave a bit of mystery in it, the reader may feel like they HAVE to click on it to get the full story.

Ghosting

‘Ghosted’ means you posted an ad, and it just never appeared on craigslist.
You to go through all the effort of posting your ad. You receive a confirmation email. You click on ‘Publish’ inside the email and it tells you your ad is now live.
Except that it’s not – and never will be.

Cruel, eh? But why does Craigslist do this to you?

Here are several reasons why you may get ghosted:

1. You posted too many ads from the same IP address within a short amount of time (looks like spam)
2. Your IP address has been previously banned.
3. You are posting ads with certain keywords that CL blocks purposely
4. Your email address was previously banned
5. Your URL has been banned because it was flagged multiple times for things Craigslist doesn’t like.
Or a combination of one or more of the above.

How to Not Get Ghosted

Look at the reasons above and try to figure out which one you are.
Or, start fresh. Get a New IP address. Simply call your cable company or dsl and request one. If you have dial-up or a Verizon wireless card, you should have a different IP address every time you reconnect to the internet!

Make your ads unique. Don’t write the same ad scrambled 100 times. Write short, effective ads that are COMPLETELY different from each other. Use HTML symbols in your title and make your titles UNIQUE as well. This is very important.
If you create an ad for a URL that is NOT banned, using a fresh E-Mail address and an IP address that is NOT banned…AND you use short, unique ads that don’t have suspicious key words or titles, your ad WILL SHOW UP.

So, if you have a URL you feel might be banned, check it with a new e-mail address and a fresh IP address if you can. (dial up is always a different IP)
If it is banned, get a new domain name, it’s cheap and well worth it. Just don’t mess things up with Craigslist and everything will be fine.
You could try creating multiple e-mail addresses and alternating between them so that you don’t get ghosted if you are going to create multiple ads (CL doesn’t like this though).

To be very cautious, you could try writing your URL without the http:// in front of it.
This way it shows up as just text. You would have to add something like “copy and paste this URL in your browser for more info…” though. But at least this way, CL won’t notice the link – and they are very suspicious of links

Some More Advice
Look at the ads that ARE showing up and see what they are doing different from you. A lot of people now are making picture html ads. They create an html image in any html editor…then they upload it to a server and link to it in their CL ad. It shows up like a banner and looks like a text ad but is a picture.
Your link is written on the picture but doesn’t show up as a hyperlink or a text.
It is also a very effective way to build a lead list using Craigslist.
These Craiglist tricks should give you a great boost right out of the gate. And it’s all free advertising online, Baby!

Free Classified Advertising Online

Bille — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:23:56 +0000

The most obvious place to find free advertising online is at the many free classified advertising sites, not least of which is Craigslist. These places cost you nothing but time, and with the right approach, not even much of that.

Some of the more common online classified sites are usfreeads.com, adpost.com, and inetgiant.com. A search through Google will turn up countless others.

You want to be careful about using ever site you can find. Some may not have sufficient traffic to make them worthwhile. Others may have a lot of traffic, but not traffic that’s suited to your offer. You want a return on your investment, even if that investment is just your time.

I will say, though, that even if you don’t get any customers from your ad, there is one other advantage to using a classified ad online – and that is SEO (search engine optimization). If your classified ad contains a link to your website, that will add to the backlinks that search engines see, and can only be helpful is raising your website higher in Google rankings. So, keep this in mind as an added feature, but don’t rely on it as your main SEO strategy – your real reason for these ads is to bring in new leads.

When you write a classified ad, be very careful not to try to sell the reader in your ad.

This sounds counter-intuitive. After all, you want to sell your product/service, right?

Well, yes. But the greatest advertising minds of the century all agree on this – a classified ad is simply a way to get readers to ask for more information. If you try to do anything more, the readers will skip right over your ad. You just want their attention and one small action. You want them to call you on the phone, or click on a link to your website, or send you an email. Simple as that. If you try to do any more, you will lose 90% of your business right there.

Once the lead has clicked through to your website or called you, then the selling can start. So, focus on getting their attention in your classified ad. Pique the reader’s curiosity, inspire them, make them concerned…and no more. You just want to compel them to click on the link.

Use your creativity here….but be honest!

Don’t try to lure in readers by misleading them. Catch phrases such as “free money here,” “your ex-girlfriend wants you back,” or “your life is in danger” may inspire a reader to click through and learn more. However, unless your product or service specifically deals with one of these problems he will feel tricked, and will click away as quick as he can. You will have lost trust. This would see obvious, but I see ads like this all the time, with some shocking or titillating info – and when I click through, they say “Now that we have your attention…..(blah,blah,blah).”

Your ad is there to attract the interest of potential customers. If you sell hair transplants, than a good classified ad might be “Losing your hair? There is a simple, effective and permanent solution. And for the first 50 people, it’s ridiculously cheap.”

While this may not be a great classified ad, it has all the elements you need:

1-”Losing Your Hair?” This qualifies the reader. You don’t need a guy with a full head of hair clicking through.

2-You suggest a solution to the problem

3-You create sense of urgency in “the first 50 people.” If you don’t ad some sense of urgency, they may think to click later and then just forget about it.

Lastly, if you want some Craig’s list tips and tricks, see some Craigslist tricks here. It’s advice you can’t do without, and much of it is applicable to all classified advertising.