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Understanding the Different
Methods of Online Promotion
Copyright © Stone Evans, The Home Biz Guy
http://www.Home-Business.com
Did
you realize there are only three types of online promotion?... This statement
may seem odd and even untrue in your mind, but I am speaking in more general
terms than you might be thinking.
Let me explain.
The three
types of promotion are Junk, Active and Passive
promotions.
JUNK
PROMOTIONS ARE MONEY PITS
Junk promotions are those that seem to produce
results, but by
their very nature are really only illusionary
promotions.
For example, let me begin with FFA (Free For All) pages.
You might find yourself subscribing to a submission program that tricks
you into believing you are submitting your links to tens of thousands search
engines.
According to the Open Directory website, they have only
approved
1705 search engines and directories for inclusion in
their database (http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/).
I
like using the DMOZ directory as an example because submitted
links are
tested by human beings with integrity, for the honesty
used in site
description. Search Engine Watch and other search
watchers tend to show fewer
than these 1705 engines, primarily
because a lot of the engines provide very
little value.
Yes, you can submit your URL to a FFA page, but FFA’s
usually
only permit 100 or 1000 links on their page at any one time.
So,
if ten thousand people are submitting a link to an FFA page on a
daily
basis, then the average life of your link is between seven
minutes and 144
minutes. I suspect the actual number of
submitters is much higher and the
results are much worse. Given
that few people surf FFA pages, the chances of
your submission
being of any real value is practically nill!
Most of
the people telling you that you can submit your site to
tens of thousands of
search engines are truly only submitting your site to FFA pages! Beware of
the false promises.
Another junk promotion method is Safe Lists. A safe
list is a
mailing group that is signed up to be received by people
who want to submit their own ads. Now, most safe lists have thousands of
subscribers who are able to submit their ads daily or weekly. The person
signed up to receive the list will receive anywhere from twenty to 140+
messages a day from the list. These messages will be received by people only
interested in promoting their own thing who do not have the right motivation
to open, let alone read Your Advertising. As a result, thousands
of messages go out daily or weekly that will never be seen by anyone but
the sender of the ad. Where is the value in that? There is
none.
ACTIVE PROMOTIONS
Active promotions are the type that
require you to go out on a
daily basis or a weekly basis and put out your
advertisements.
With active promotions, you will either place your
advertising
or you will not sell your products or services. Your choice
is simple --- work or starve.
Examples of active promotions include
Pay Per Click Search
Engines (PPCSE’s), Direct Email, Ezine Advertising, Solo
Ezine
Ads, Newsletter Publishing, Ezine Ad Swaps, Classified
Ads,
Auctions, Site Sponsorship and Banner Ads.
Some people are able
to utilize these methods very productively,
while others are destined to drop
their money into the bottomless pit of failed Internet
promotions.
PASSIVE PROMOTIONS
Passive promotions are those
promotions that can continue to
provide results for you long after you have
invested the work to
make them available to the Internet
community.
Examples of passive promotions include: Link
Exchanges, Articles, Ebooks, Content Exchanges and Writing Testimonials
for
others.
Let’s look at articles as a solid example of my
point.
You are reading an article that I have written to promote my
own
business. This article is timeless and therefore could have
been
written five years ago and still have been as valuable as it
is
today.
Due to the fact that the article is timeless, it can and
will be
placed in newsletters/ezines and their accompanying
online
archives, on websites and in ebooks for many more years to
come.
As a result, this article will continue to serve me well
beyond
the time in which I wrote it and submitted it to publishers
and
webmasters for public consumption and publication.
This is the
best example I can give you of an excellent passive
promotional
method.
AVOID THE MONEY PITS
Many try and even fewer succeed
to conquer the Internet and to
produce their dreams of online
wealth.
My hope is that you will be one of the people who conquer
the
challenges before you and to make a nice living while working
online.
It will take drive, determination, study plus trial and error, but you can
make it work for you.
Please continue to educate yourself so that you can
avoid the
money pits - instead, strive to find the money barrels. It
can be done. I am living proof.
About the
author:
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Stone
Evans owns the Home Business Resource Directory where you can find everything
you`ll ever need to start, run and grow a home based business at: http://www.Home-Business.com
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