By Donovan Baldwin
One of the earliest lessons that many beginning Internet marketers learn is that you cannot simply put up a great website, and sit back waiting for the money to come pouring in.
Your website is going to be your store, of course, but, in some ways, there is no prime real estate online.
If you build a store in a town or at a shopping mall, there may be some foot traffic or car traffic passing by. These people may learn about your store simply because they have seen it with their own eyes. If you do not advertise, or market, your business, however, they may still be the only ones to learn about it. On the other hand, if you are in the right location, the traffic may be great enough to create a large number of visitors, many of whom may eventually become loyal customers.
On the Internet, however, hardly anybody is going to notice your website unless you effectively and efficiently advertise it.
Just like elsewhere in the off line world, advertising and marketing can get expensive and many just learning how to start an Internet business will seek out free Internet advertising tools and marketing resources. Additionally, paying for advertising and marketing services when you don't know much about how things work can turn out to be an expensive form of tuition when it comes to Internet marketing.
I speak from pretty expensive experience!
Unfortunately, it was only AFTER I began to make money online that discovered the Corey Rudl Internet Marketing Course, bought it, and read about, for a couple of hundred dollars, what I had paid thousands of dollars to learn. Not only that, but after bloodying my nose by running down many blind alleys and pursuing many unprofitable ventures, I saw that I could have saved myself a lot of frustration and depression had I simply gotten myself an education in the first place.
Anyway, let's talk about six free Internet advertising tools and marketing resources which you can use to get your Internet business off the ground.
1. Free Classified Ads: Many will tell you not to waste your time with free classified ads because nobody reads them. Well, they actually ARE read by a great many people. The problem is that most people will shy away from a free ad that offers to sell them something or teach them how to make money. If the product or knowledge is so good, why try to sell it in a free ad, or why use free services if you are successful and should be able to afford good advertising and marketing methods?
Free classified ads can lead others to your website, both humans and search engines. I am not going to get into search engine optimization right now, but having a lot of the right kinds of links (discussed below) can bring you more website traffic through search engines, and, as point out in my article "1, 2, 3, Numbers are the Key", sheer volume can help increase sales.
The trick for using free classified ads is to offer something of value for free. For example, if I wanted to sell a group of Internet marketing tools or resources, I could offer a free report on Internet marketing to those who visit a certain webpage. On that webpage, I would have links to, and information about, the product I was trying to sell.
The problem with free classified ads is that they are a one-shot deal. It is fairly well known that for a large group of potential customers, it will take several exposures to your ad or product to produce recognition, interest, and sales. This is where we turn to...
2. Autoresponders: There are many free autoresponders around. They work by delivering a message or stream of messages to anyone who contacts them. Following up on the free classified advertising discussion above, what if I were to offer a free course on Internet marketing to be delivered in a series of, say, 10 emails. Each of the emails, a lesson in the course, would contain information about, and links to, my relevant product.
Over the course of these emails, my recipients would be constantly receiving a stream of valuable information for free, thus making them understand and believe that I am on their side and mean them well. At the same time, they are reaching, and passing, that recognition threshold we mentioned earlier.
There are more free internet advertising tools and marketing resources, but I can continue to use my free classified ads AND free autoresponder messages by making use of...
3. Forums: For almost any interest, there is a forum of some kind or another set up somewhere to discuss it. Most of these forums allow its members to add a signature to any messages they post on it. It is a simple matter, if you have your free classified ad and series of free autoresponder messages set up, to use a non-advertising link to that, or at least to a page of valuable information (the page we probably used with our free classified ads) where the visitor can elect to receive that series of messages. There is another way to get people to that page, and that is through the use of...
4. Links: Your website can be more easily found by both humans and search engine spiders alike through the use of links from other websites. Links from quality websites on topics related to yours can not only improve your appearance of knowledge and respectability in the field, but they can also improve your search engine ranking, putting your website higher in the lists of websites returned when people use search engines to find pieces of information. One of my favorite free Internet marketing tools and marketing resources can also improve your image among visitors by establishing your professionalism and knowledge, while providing additional links to your website.
You can create a huge mass of free advertising simply by means of...
5. Articles: Before we go any farther, let me tell you that you do NOT have to be a professional writer or have a PhD in some field to write articles of value which can establish you as an expert and attract visitors to your website. Just write what you know about. If you are selling a product you know about, this should be simple. You don't even have to get into deep details and analyses of the subject. You can write about your own personal experiences, or review the product simply by restating the information provided in its own advertising in a new, personal, way.
Once you have written an article, you can post it as an informational piece on your own website, or you can post it on an article directory. Not only does this create a link to your website, contained in the "About the Author" area, but others may copy the article, and your link, and post it on their websites. I have only written a few hundred articles, for example, but they appear on thousands of web pages.
Okay, among the free Internet advertising tools and marketing resources we have discussed so far are free classified ads, autoresponders, forums, links, and articles. It is the goal of most of these to get humans, and search engine spiders, to your website. However, once there, it is also important as to how the website has been designed and built. I am not talking about the visual effect, however, I am talking about...
6. Search engine optimization: This, often also referred to as SEO, means that you have taken steps in the creation of your website to make it of more interest to search engines. In other words, you have "optimized" what your website has that search engines are looking for. They are obviously looking for information on what the potential visitor has searched for, but they are also trying to determine which of the many sites which MAY have that information are of the highest potential for satisfying the searcher's needs and the search engine's own internal system (algorithms) of ranking pages presented to the searcher.
This is a much larger subject than can be handled here, and I have written about this in many articles which are available at EzineArticles.com and on my own website. However, it is not a difficult subject, and it is important to any Internet marketer that they learn at least the basics of search engine optimization.
That is all I have to say here about free Internet marketing tools and marketing resources for the moment. However, do not stop there. Paid resources can be of value if you can afford them, but I do recommend that you get some sort of education on Internet marketing, such as the Corey Rudl Internet Marketing Course, before you begin pouring money into the potential black hole known as selling online.
Also, do not ignore the potential of offline advertising and marketing efforts as well. The magnetic sign, stick on letters, and the common business card can create a fair amount of traffic on their own. However, these are adjuncts to your efforts with free Internet advertising and marketing resources which will provide the lion's share of your website traffic.
Once you are into marketing online, you are in a world which cannot be covered in depth in an article like this one. You will need to learn about search engine optimization for your website, advertising methods and techniques, how to use forums to your advantage, the value of off-line advertising, and so on.
Again, you can either pay someone to do all this for you, or you can do it yourself.
I guarantee that if you try to teach yourself how to start selling online, you will pay a lot more money and waste a lot more time than you will if you simply invest in a good Internet marekting course. You may eventually get very good at it, but you will pay a lot of "accidental tuition".
I have assumed that if you are reading this little article, you are probably planning to do some selling online yourself, and one of the best places to start this project is with the proper training. Get the Internet Marketing Course which will teach you how to be a successful Internet marketer.
Most Internet marketers, yours truly included, acquired the Internet marketing tools currently in their toolkit at great personal cost...both in time and money. However, if you know how to go about it, you can have access to the Internet Marketing course which teaches genuinely successful Internet marketing techniques at a cost far less than the thousands of dollars many of us have spent! In fact, as I write this, the foremost company in this field is providing a trial of their highly acclaimed Internet marketing training online for only $2.95!
Click Here for more information about how to acquire a vast education in Internet marketing, how to start selling onine, and how to learn the same array of Internet marketing techniques that I have used for years to help build an online income of $100,000 a year.
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is 100% free to join. It instantly gives you the ability to
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without any cost or obligation on your part.
To start maximizing the profit-producing power of your web
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The Internet Marketing Center Affiliate Program
... and take advantage of the arsenal of Internet marketing
techniques they provide you with just for joining!
===========================================================
Free Internet Advertising Tools and Marketing Resources
Internet Marketing Company, Internet Marketing Strategies, Internet Marketing Secrets
===========================================================
The top of the line affiliate program provided by the Internet Marketing Center
is 100% free to join. It instantly gives you the ability to
GENERATE AN ONGOING STREAM OF INTERNET INCOME
without any cost or obligation on your part.
To start maximizing the profit-producing power of your web
site in the next 10 minutes, go to...
The Internet Marketing Center Affiliate Program
... and take advantage of the arsenal of Internet marketing
techniques they provide you with just for joining!
===========================================================
Free Internet Advertising Tools and Marketing Resources
Page Updated 12:36 PM Tuesday 5/26/2012
