There are some sources in my book,
Internet Marketing for Beginners:How to Start or Jump-start Your Business Using Free Marketing Techniques
that were not mentioned. I thought about them later as I was completing
some internet marketing tasks so I thought that I would mention them
here just to keep you up-to-date on the various methods that you can
employ in your internet marketing campaigns.
SocialMarker
is a social bookmarking tool that you can use that will post to about
17 of the top social sites that carry a high page rank. Due to the
recent Panda and Penguin algorithms implemented by Google you will want
to make sure that the links that you build are on hub pages and
authority sites so that your efforts will be recognized for years to
come. Posting to social sites is within the parameters for having your
links remain relevant in the future with Google.
Keep in mind that
in order for Google to maintain their integrity and to keep us honest,
from time to time, they will change their algorithm. When this happens
some website owners experience what is called the 'Google Slap.' This is
when a website has been ranking on the first page of Google where they
are experiencing a lot of traffic and sales and are suddenly removed
(slapped) to pages 3 or 4 or higher where they will experience less
traffic and fewer to no sales.
Unfortunately, I have a couple of
friends and acquaintances that experienced this phenomenon recently with
the new Panda and Penguin algorithm. One in particular was slapped
pretty hard and is no longer earning the online income that was keeping
them afloat. Since none of us want to experience this, it is imperative
that you build your links on social media sites and hub pages and
authority sites.
In my book mentioned above, there is a
Link Directory list.
The list is no longer valid as of the Penguin and Panda algorithm and I
would not use those directories to build links. I will update this in
the book shortly. In fact, I would recommend that you simply spend $5 on
Fiverr and delegate that task to someone there. If you can't spend $5 on your business, you should not be in business!
There
was a time when I would do all of my marketing myself. I didn't want to
spend money on marketing at all and I even took pride in the fact that I
refused to spend money on marketing. However, once you become
accustomed to delegating your tasks or out-sourcing them, your life
becomes a lot less hectic and a lot less complicated. It actually allows you to breathe
a sigh of relief.
It frees you up to do more important tasks. At
first, I could not really comprehend the importance of out-sourcing
because I truly didn't want to spend any money, but once I tried it and
found
Fiverr I was hooked. For $5 you can't beat it! And, these people at Fiverr really put out highly professional products.
Safelist Marketing
is free and can be beneficial especially if you are promoting free to
join opportunities. If you are really ambitious and would like to own
your very own Safelist it will give you an opportunity and a platform to
further advertise your products and services. Owning your own Safe-list
is fairly inexpensive and it will require work on your part at the
administrative level.
If you decide to do only marketing on this
platform, you will need a list email address and a contact email
address. I would recommend you set them up on Gmail because you are
going to get a ton of mail. You will also have to set up a lot of
Safelist accounts in order for this type of marketing to be effective.
Try to set up as many as you can. At least 50+. You can Google 'free
Safelists' to find the ones that are available.
When I want to
promote a free offer fast, I will use this type of marketing. You
will get some sign-ups quickly. It is time-consuming so you will want to
set up your ad in advance along with the url you are promoting. Do this
in Notepad and copy and paste as you go along.
If you have a long
url you can use an url shorteningand url cloaking service like
Viralurl where you will
get paid for promoting the url that you shorten. These short urls are
very good for promoting on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus and any of the
social media sites.
Craigslist
is a good place to post anything. You can post free to their classified
section, post ads for cars, room-mates, motorcycles, rentals and just
about anything that you can think of. I am sure with all of the media
publicity about Craigslist that you are familiar with them. I used them
to sell a motor-cycle and it was snatched-up within hours. Rabid buyers
with cash were lining up to purchase it!
Webinars are a good way to promote your products and/or services. You can check out
Web-Ex, while
GoToMeeting seems to be the one that most speakers prefer. You can sign up free for 30 days and hold a
Webinar
free of charge. If you are a good speaker or if your forte is making
presentations you could attract a lot of attention for your product or
service. You teach your audience something noteworthy during your
presentation and at the end of the presentation you can command a higher
price ticket item.
Google Plus
is a very hot social media platform right now. As a matter of fact it
is being touted by some experts that the hottest social media sites right now
are
Face Book,
Twitter and
Google Plus.
These are the 3 must have social media sites. So if you are not
utilizing this service it would be in your best interest to set up your
site as soon as possible.
In
my book, I mentioned that
OnlyWire
is a social bookmarking tool that you can use to post to 47 social
media sites free of charge. However, after signing in to use the site I
was informed that there is now a $9.95 monthly fee to join and that my
username and password were no longer valid.
Therefore, I sent them
an old e-mail that I had received from them dated in the year 2007
asking them to re-instate my account as a free member as I have been
with them utilizing their free service for all of these years. Well,
they did re-instate my free account.
However, I noticed that you
are now able to submit to 300 social media sites for the $9.95 fee.
That is all good, but as I mentioned in my book, you can use
Fiverr and there are people who will post to 600+ social media sites for $5!
Classified Ad Sites
are a good place to advertise depending on your product or service. I
have had good results sometimes using classified ads and some times not
so good. It just depends on what you plan on advertising .
I would
recommend that you look through the ads and if you see some that have
been listed for a very long time then you know that they are obviously
effective, or else they would not have been there over the long-haul.
Notice what products or services the ad promotes and if that is akin to
what you are promoting, you can place your free ad as well.
If you
are unfamiliar with some of the topics covered in this article, go
Google it. Become accustomed to doing your research online. It is
imperative that you get in this habit from the beginning because you are
going to come upon terms or concepts that you have no idea about. So,
if you are wondering what I am talking about in any part of this
article, again, Google it!
Keep in mind that things change very
fast on the web. So, if you are truly new to online marketing, you will
see many websites come and go. Change takes place so fast that whatever
is happening now may or may not be valid 6 months from now.
So, if
you see a company online that has been around for a year or two you can
pretty much bet on that site's relevance, for now anyway. If I am
straddling the fence about a business opportunity and I see that they
have some longevity, meaning a year or two online, I might take my
chances on them. However, on occasion I have based my decision on their
longevity and they have still gone out of business within months of me
making the decision! So, you just never know.
The last thing that I
want to mention is that if you are thinking in terms of purchasing a
product or service and you go to the check-out screen and then cancel
out, you will be given a message not to leave the page and will be given
a second opportunity to purchase the product at a discounted price.
Sometimes you will be given a third or even a fourth discount if you
keep trying to leave the page. So, leave the page as many times as
possible so you can get the best price.
My point is simply,
Do not purchase the first time.
Click the purchase button as if you are going to purchase and then
leave, but hit stay on page, and this usually takes you to a discounted
price. Now, on rare occasions you will not get a second chance for a
lower price. But in most cases you will, so never buy the first time!
Okay, that's my hot tip of the day!
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