Today's issue, "Internet Marketing With a Very Limited Budget" was
written by Craig Lock.
I hope that you enjoy this article.
Three years ago I was a total "computer dummy", not even knowing how to
turn one on (a computer, I mean!). However, fortunately I developed
associations with some "computer geeks", who suggested marketing my
various books on the internet. This subsequently developed into on-line creative writing
courses (the first one was free and I was completely overwhelmed and
going broke fast), which have been very successful.
In spite of a huge amount of time and effort put in, our first attempts
at marketing products were minimally successful. As "newbies" we tried
the usual techniques:
search engines (all of them with automatic submissions), web rings,
banners, links (with sites getting fewer hits than ourselves), free
classifieds and a guest book - all with very limited success.
(I never did try newsgroups). However, all we got was other "internet
pros" trying to sell us something (we still get that many times daily -
trash bin). Fortunately, we had no money to spend on promotion, so
capital was not wasted. With our "learners plates" on, this was all
done on two "freebie sites" (Geocities and Tripod). However, the steep
learning curve and persistence gave us a great deal of new knowledge
regarding internet
marketing.
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Things changed drastically once we got our own domain at NZ
Enterprise.com (with Webcom), and suddenly all our sites got listed with
Yahoo, as well as all the major search engines. Must have been the
PERCEPTION that we were "successful" and "bigger" than we were. Image
is everything (as in life!). It also helped having quite a unique
product in getting a high ranking ("creative writing courses"). Eureka,
Hooray! Incidentally, we submitted to Yahoo (Australia and New Zealand);
so I suggest you try the regional Yahoo, rather than their main
database. We also get quite a few hits from some of the lesser known
S/E's (see even I'm learning the internet terminology!),
like Looksmart, Snap and Northern Light. ( we also tried Goto.com,
but with limited success). The traffic to our
various sites started
increasing substantially and sales started materialising. Mostly, our
creative writing courses and money management courses, but a few books
too.
Incidentally, we do all our marketing on-line; but hope to do some
off-line too as more money comes in. We are presently getting 200 hits a
day plus, and a few sales most weeks.
Whilst sales are still nothing like we would like (and I realise it's
much harder to sell products on-line than off-line), we started to
make a small profit after 18 months on-line and sales a have increased
substantially since then!
As part of our marketing strategy to INCREASE TRAFFIC, I do a lot of
submitting articles on
self development and writing to e-zines (extracts from my books) and
this has been the main focus of our marketing strategy. We've found
submitting my various articles (with a resource box at the bottom of
each article) to ezines and publishers who bring publishers and writers
together, has made a big difference in getting
our sites noticed - in terms of both "hits" and SALES. It's FREE
ADVERTISING AT ITS MOST EFFECTIVE.
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Living in a small isolated " city" of 30000 people near the bottom of
the world with , made us realise the tremendous benefits of
distributing useful information
around the world at minimal cost via the www. I truly believe e-commerce
is the way of the future (especially for geographically isolated, like us). Also I
started this one man business with NO capital (just one or two "very clever" friends
with technical expertise) in the most economically deprived region of "little old New
Zealand". This has now developed to 3 people working (and having heaps of fun) in
"Sleepy Hollow", together with an American associate. I believe an
idea, a big helping of enthusiasm, together with a great deal of time
and effort in implementing it,
belief, faith in yourself and persistence (not necessarily in that
order) is the key to internet marketing success.
Do the basics, then "hang in there, mate" (as good Kiwis, New Zealanders
say) and the results will surely come.
Hope this helps.
Craig Lock is an author of numerous books and the creator of the
ORIGINAL online creative writing course. He has been writing
full-time for the past "lucky" seven years. Craig has had five
books published on various subjects with another 12 manuscripts being
published and marketed on the internet.
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Create action on your site (more visits, more transactions, and
longer visits) with eTopics from NewsEdge. eTopics uses real people, industry experts, to filter through thousands of news
stories, delivering just the targeted content users need.
Register or transfer your domain name today with Catalog.com,
an ICANN Authorized Registrar, and receive FREE web hosting forever!
We at the Editorial Team would like to thank all our readers for reading WebProNews.
We hope you find this information useful.
Peter Thiruselvam
Editor
The WebProNews Team
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