When you pay for advertising, whether it's buying a solo ad to a
large opt-in list or pay-per-click search engines, your results
will be many times greater than free ads, because your leads are
very targeted. Targeted leads mean quality leads, and quality
leads mean better results.
The downside to paid advertising, is that it costs money. Plus,
not all paid advertising is quality advertising. A good example
of low quality, paid advertising are the so-called "safe-lists."
Don't be taken in by their sales pitch, these lists are nothing
but a waste of money. All they do is flood your in-box every
day, with hundreds of junk emails that no one reads. It's like
paying to be spammed.
The bottom line is, there are some good ways to advertise for
free, and you can make money doing it. You'll just make a lot
more if you pay for good quality advertising. Just make sure to
track your ads, so you know where your ads work and where they
don't. If you don't spend your advertising dollars wisely, you
will lose your money.
In order to determine how effective your advertising is, you must
use a tracking system. I cannot stress this point enough. By
tracking your ads, you'll not only know exactly where your
visitors are coming from, but which ads work and which ones
don't. Simply put, if you don't track your ads, you're throwing
your hard-earned money down the drain.
When you know where your visitors are coming from, then you can
stop paying for useless advertising and concentrate your efforts
on effective advertising. For example, I placed an ad in ten
different ezines and tracked the results. Three of them gave me
a whopping 20-24% response, while the other seven pulled less
than 3%. Needless to say, I stopped advertising in the seven
that didn't produce responses and spent my advertising dollars
in the three that did. It's really that simple, and will save
you tons of money by showing you exactly where your paying
customers are coming from.
The best service we've found, and the one we use ourselves, is
HyperTracker. They provide you with a variety of statistics for
analyzing the success of each campaign. It's fully automated,
works around the clock and offers all the vital statistics you
need to make important decisions. This is a MUST for any serious
advertiser! Go to: http://www.hypertracker.com/index/45706
Now that they've been to your website, the trick is to keep them
coming back. That's why you MUST have an opt-in mailing list.
With your own opt-in list, you can substantially boost your sales
by using sequential autoresponders to follow-up with potential
customers. A sequential autoresponder sends a pre-written email,
on a pre-set day, to anyone who opts-in to your subscriber list.
You set how many emails to send, and how many days apart to send
them, and the autoresponder takes care of the rest.
Research indicates that it often takes up to eight exposures to
an offer (or more!) before a person will act. The more someone
sees your offer, the more they start to trust you. By
continually and automatically following up with your leads, you
can increase your sales by up to 400%!
You can get an excellent autoresponder at:
http://www.getresponse.com/index/45706
With GetResponse, there are no other links in your emails except
yours, so there's nothing to distract your customer away from
your offer. You also get unlimited follow-up emails, so you can
send as many as you want for months or even years!
Remember, your subscriber list is your life-blood in marketing.
They are the loyal ones who trust you and want to see what you
have to offer. Treat them well, and don't take advantage by
over-emailing them. You don't want to become a pest.
If you want to make money online, you have to get people to your
website, and once you get them there, you have to get them to
join your mailing list. The only way to do that is through
constant promotion. Test your ads and track the results and
you'll be able to generate steadily flowing sales! That is the
key to internet success!
Copyright (c) 2002 eMoney Enterprises ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
About the Author
Dave Barrett is editor of the Internet marketing
ezine eMoney Monthly. Subscribe now for free access
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