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General advertising and promotion - Multiple streams of Traffic: PART II
There are a variety of ways that you can advertise and promote your site or
products. In this, Part II of the 'mini-series' on Multiple streams of traffic,
I'd like to take a look at a couple of the more commonly known methods of online
promotion. Some are much better than others, and some are more suitable than
others. Our goal then is to look a little more closely at them to determine if
they are suitable for your needs. Read on for more...
Banner ads
Using banner advertising and displaying banner ads on your site has changed a
lot in the last 2 years. The cost and value (benefit) of banner advertising has
dropped significantly. I won't talk about them too much other than to say that
their main use is now principally as 'branding' tools. A way to get your
name/product/site in the front of people's faces quickly. For the average
person, it is nearly impossible to get the kind of reach required to really get
much benefit from banners. That being said, if you can get good exposure in a
niche that fits your market, go for it, it won't hurt.
On the other side of things, displaying banners on your site as a source of
revenue is only worthwhile if you are getting thousands upon thousands of
hits/month. The average CPM is now only about $2.00 (that means you earn $2.00
for every 1000 banners displayed!). Considering that when you display a banner
on your site you are promoting a product or site that is not your own, you are
giving visitors an exit that does not generate income for you. It isn't any
wonder that the top online marketers (Cory Rudl,
Jimmy
D. Brown,
Ken Evoy etc.) don't display ANY ads (banners or anything) from any other
site.
I am not knocking banners here. They serve a purpose. You just need to be sure
that they suit your purposes. I have found that the
FastClick Ad
Network provides very good service for all your banner advertising needs.
FFA's and traffic swaps
Let me be very blunt about FFA's. They are a waste of time for anyone except the
person who owns it. No matter what the claims may be, they will not produce
traffic. Traffic swaps and exit exchanges have to potential to produce
reasonably large amounts of traffic, however the problem is that for the most
part it is untargeted. Most traffic swaps are based on a system of credits,
where your site gets a visitor in exchange for displaying the traffic swap link
on your site, or visiting a member site yourself. The real problem is that much
of the traffic is simply other webmasters trying to boost their own credits.
They are not interested in visiting your site except to get the credit. I'm sure
you can see the problems with that. In a way, you can think of traffic swaps as
an online equivalent of a highway detour. Lots of traffic gets re-directed your
way, but it doesn't really want to be there. If you are interested in learning
more about traffic swaps, you can go here to take a look at a popular one.
More recently, a slightly different breed of traffic swap has emerged. These
focus on generating ezine subscribers. The way they work is basically the same
as the a normal traffic swap, however because they are directed specifically at
getting subscribers, they don't create junk traffic. Every time you display the
pop-up containing the ezine registration form, you earn an impression for your
subscription link on another site. When visitors see the pop-up with the links,
they choose to sign up for your ezine. There are still very few of them around,
so they are very effective and produce good results. There are a few services
that provide opt-in services for a fee (usually in the range of
$1.00/subscriber), but I prefer free ;-). I have had very good results with this
service. It is 100% free and generates dozens of subscribers a week.
Ezine advertising
Ezine ads (both solo and classified ads) can be very effective if done right.
They can also be utterly useless. The key is to get your ads in ezines that are
very closely related to your product(s), and that don't run tons of ads. There
are literally thousands of ezines out there that are essentially advertising
rags. Their only purpose is to run ads for you and every other person willing to
spend $15. Before you advertise in any ezine, get some information about the
ezine. A decent publisher will know their subscriber base and be able to tell
you with reasonable accuracy how responsive the subscribers are, how many ads
they run, and if someone has recently run an ad like yours (similar products).
If they can't do that, you might want to think twice about advertising with
them. Realistically what you want is an ezine with a reasonably large subscriber
base (1000 or more), that is closely related to your product, and only accepts
limited advertising (e.g. 1 ad/issue). Stephan Peirce's book goes into great
detail on how to find good ezines and what to look for and what to avoid - it
costs less than a solo ad in a decent ezine, and will save you tons of money in
avoided mistakes.
A final comment:
Anyone who claims they can provide you with 100,000 (500,000, whatever)
guaranteed visitors is selling junk. Think of it this way, if it were so easy to
get that many targeted visitors (and you only want targeted visitors), you can
bet companies (scammers) wouldn't be selling them because they would be raking
in millions in profits by directing those visitors to their own products and
sites! Do a little math, 1% conversion (a very low rate) from 100,000 visitors =
1,000 buying visitors. Sell a $10 product and you have $10,000. If such a profit
is possible, why the hell is this kind of traffic sold for $50-$200? Quite
simply because it is junk traffic, frequently created by piggy backing on
traffic exchanges and FFA's.
In the next section of the series we will start to look at some of the less well
known methods of traffic generation, and how you can put them to use to generate
a more stable and consistent base of traffic for your own sites.
---------------------------
Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide
useful tips and guidance for those who are new to personal online marketing.
Learn more about programs, techniques, and software that can help you reach your
online marketing goals. Come on by and have a look.
http://www.newbie-guides.com/?aa
Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com
About the Author
Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide
useful tips and guidance for those who are new to personal online marketing.
Learn more about programs, techniques, and software that can help you reach your
online marketing goals. Come on by and have a look.
http://www.newbie-guides.com/?aa
Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com
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