Advertising and Integrated Brand Promotion

by: Eric Koshinsky

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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

Advertising - Does it matter?

by: Gert Ljungqvist

When advertising, you need to sell your opportunity,
your products, and yourself. What sets you apart from
everyone else?
Maybe you produce a newsletter with a specific content
where there is a demand from a particular group of people,
or you promote your own special product that no one have
not yet seen. That´s a huge benefit! That´s what you
need to sell in your ad campaign, and those are the things
you need to do in order to become successful.

You don´t have to be worried that network marketing
prosperity is difficult. It isn´t. In fact, it has never been
so easy to make a decent second income or even a full time.
But it takes time, persistence and uniqueness.

The people looking at your ads and reading your follow up
letters are going to judge you and your whole business
not only by what the materials have to say, but also by
their appearance.

Be sure you send a powerful, positive and convincing message.
Invest some time and money on your marketing materials, the
payoff will be well worth it.
Look at others ads in the Internet, See what´s attracting you,
this will most likely attract others too.

Do you see what I mean? Your advertising campaign will be
the propel to your business success.
By now you think "How do I create one of those successful ads?"
After all, it´s the words that sell your opportunity.
Write a good ad and it´s taking you to the top.
Let your friends take a look at it and say what they think.

Now where to put your ad? If you place your ad in a pets
publication and the ad is promoting toys for children
you might not get a single response.
But placed in the right publication it will be a winner.
It´s very important that you from the beginning know
exactly where to put your ad. Just think about you having
spent hours on that ad and then you put it in the wrong
publication and get no response at all, that´s a big waste
of time and effort.

My best advise is that you always work on your ads.
Write them down, leave them for some time, go back to
look at them again, let others look at them and after
a while you will see the picture of your ad and you will
see if it´s working or not, if not then you have to start
from the beginning and write a new one and follow the same
procedure again.

The Internet are full of ads, start clicking around and
read others ads, this is the best way to learn what is
working or not. You probably can tell instantly when
an ad is good or not at least after a while.

Now I wish you good luck with your marketing.

Gert Ljungqvist - Mailto:gertljungqvist@runbox.com

Learn How to Develop $6,569 a month
With 30 days of step-by-step Training
From Experts by visiting:
http://www.EliteTeamMarketing.com/37698

About the Author

Gert Ljungqvist works as a Internet Business Entrepreneur part time. He also work with economy in the Swedish Church

Affiliate Strategies Of Pay Per Click Advertising Networks

by: Stan Hauser

The Untold Secret Of Pay Per Click Advertising:

An often misunderstood reality of Pay-Per-Click advertising is that many times you can't determine where you ad will be displayed once you sign-up with one of the PPC Search Engines. In the incestuous world of online advertising, companies are often simultaneously competitors and partners. This is never more true than in the case of Search Engine Advertising.

Even The Big Guys Do It:

If the Pay-Per-Click program you're using is from one of the major brands that has it's own consumer search destination site (Google, Yahoo, Lycos etc,) it's a little easier to tell where your ads will show up. However, even if you're working with the major players, your ads won't be limited to the Search Engine you signed up with. For example, Google has agreements with Lycos, Ask Jeeves, AOL, and other lesser known brands, to display ads from the Google AdWords program. Yahoo has relationships with MSN, and CNN.Com to display ads from its Overture Pay Per Click Program. Lycos owns HotBot.Com and has partnered with affiliates outside its network to increase the distribution of ads from the Lycos AdBuyer Pay Per Click program.

Distribution Strategies Of Smaller Search Engines:

Once you go beyond the major Pay Per Click Advertising programs it becomes increasingly difficult to know where your ads will appear. Most of the second tier Search Engines rely exclusively on networks of unknown sites for their distribution. FindWhat.Com, Kanoodle, Enhance and Search 123 don't operate sites that consumers use to search the web. Because of this they have developed relationships with thousands of smaller sites to display ads from customers who sign up for their Pay Per Click programs.

Affiliate Traffic Isn't Necessarily Bad:

Just because a Pay Per Click Advertising program doesn't have its own search site to drive traffic doesn't necessarily mean that the traffic is of lesser quality. Like everything else when it comes to a successful PPC Advertising campaign, the key is to track and analyze results on a daily basis. Set-up independent tracking URL's for each PPC Search Engine you are working with, or use a third party tracking tool like Atlas One Point to track how many clicks you're getting from each Search Engine, and how much of the traffic is converting into sales.

Can You Cherry Pick Affiliates?

As a rule, most Search Engines won't divulge the list of affiliates they are working with to display your ads. Even if you are able to determine which affiliate sites are converting better for you than others, the Search Engines generally won't allow you to cherry pick which affiliates will display your ad. However, some Pay Per Click Search Engines like Google allow you to opt out of their affiliate network.

Conclusion:

Driving traffic by displaying ads across a network of affiliate sites is a fact of life for Pay Per Click Search Engines. It's not necessarily bad, but it is something you need to be aware of as you analyze which PPC Search Engines to use, and which ones perform. By displaying your ad on affiliate sites your marketing message is put in front of more people who are looking for the products you sell. The downside is once you move beyond the big brands and venture into the vast mysterious world of affiliate networks, there is a chance the quality of your traffic will decline. As long as you monitor your traffic sources for volume, and conversions, and adjust your campaigns accordingly you should be able to benefit from the increased distribution affiliates provide, while maintaining the profitability metrics for your Pay Per Click Advertising campaign.

About the Author

Stan Hauser is a leading expert on effective Pay Per Click Advertising strategies, and the creator of http://pay-per-click-advertising-guide.com