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-Promotional Tools & Tips –
If you have a website
you will know just how hard it is to get those “all important” hits to your
site. If you have a site then it is important to get it noticed and for
people to know what you are offering. In this part of the site we give you
our experience of what has worked and what hasn’t and we tell you of some
of the best promotional tools around. This saves you time rather than
having to spend precious time hunting round the internet trying to promote
you site. There are many different ways in which one can promote their
site, and the list below shows some of them. Click on the name of the promotional
tool to be taken to a comprehensive guide on each of them. Alternatively if
you would like to download this page of tools and tips click here!
Online
Promotion | Offline Promotion | Useful Links | FTP Programs
Online
Promotion - Below are a list of the best ways to promote your site online. The list
offers different but most importantly free ways in which you can promote
your site to boost the all important hits to your site!
Banner
Exchanges - Banner Exchanges are pretty easy ways of promoting your site but
don’t always guarantee clicks. Basically
you sign up to a banner exchange program and they ask you to place a small
snippet of HTML on your site. This is the banner and it displays someone
else’s banner. On another site someone will be given some HTML that
includes your banner in it so more people will see it. Banner Exchange
programs also offer certain ratios on how much your banner will be
displayed. For example, if the Banner Exchange program offers a 2:1 ratio
this basically means that for every two banners you see they will display
your banner once on another site. It is complicated to get your head around
but it does work. Some exchanges also offer referral programs where you
earn credits for referring others and in turn this means you will earn
banner impressions. Click here to see some of the best Banner Exchange
Programs on the net!
E a s y W e b C a s h
Ezines – Ezines, what are they?
You may never heard of what an Ezine is before but basically it is an
online magazine that is sent to your inbox. There are thousands of Ezines
on the net and the Easy Web Cash Newsletter is similar to an Ezine. Ezines
are email newsletters that people voluntarily subscribe to. You can find
Ezines devoted to every possible topic. They often contain interesting
articles, useful information, and other things that you would expect in a
normal magazine, including advertisements. Often these advertisement slots
are sold to the likes of you and me to promote your site or business. These
slots are generally priced on CPM – Cost per thousand readers, and
obviously the Ezines that have a higher CPM charge more. Ezine advertising
can range in price. Some are free, whereas some charge up to $20. Some
charge as little as $1. Click here to see
the best Ezine programs on the net!
E a s y W e b
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Online Clubs/ Chat Rooms
- Online clubs are
really easy places to promote your site in, however, you must be careful
when doing this as some clubs class site promotion as spamming and this can
lead to your site and hard earned referrals being cancelled! However many
online clubs like Yahoo have specific clubs that cater for every topic
under the sun! All you need do is sign up for one or more of these clubs
and then post messages and chat in the actual club. I reckon if you target
specific people like webmasters or people that have some experience of what
you are trying to promote then you are more likely to get them to visit
your site than someone who hasn’t a clue what your talking about and Online
clubs are ideal for this! Another place that you can promote your site is
Chat rooms, however, again be very careful as some people will consider it
as spamming if you go into a chat room trying to promote your site or other
offers. Regardless to say another way to guide people to your site! Click
on one of the links below to be taken to a site that offers online clubs
and chat rooms!
Yahoo Clubs
Excite
http://chat.yahoo.com/
www.talkcity.com
www.uproar.com
E a s y W e b C a s h
Classified Ads
- It is
possible to place classified ads in places of the net for free. This is
another really easy way and relatively cheap way to market and promote your
site. One of the best places for classified ads is on Yahoo. You can
post your own classified ad there if you follow the "Classifieds"
link from the main Yahoo page. Yahoo only allows you to post one classified
ad per account. The newest ads are shown at the top with older ones below
it. In order to keep your ad on top, you need to either repost it with a
different Yahoo account, or cancel your current ad and post it again.
Another excellent way to promote your site or programs you offer on your
site is to get in touch with the webmaster of that site. At Easy Web Cash
we offer both a classified ad of the week on our main page as well as a
classified section in our newsletter giving you the chance to promote your
site free of charge. Click on one of the links below to be taken to a site
that offers classified ads.
Adland
Pro Marketing
Yahoo
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Contacting
Webmasters -
I personally believe that the best
way to promote your site is by teaming up with other webmasters and
swapping links. The reason for this is that the more people that you swap
your link with the more people who are going to see your page and visit it.
Plus, if you are linked to a page that is top of the search engine display
results, then your site will almost certainly be seen and this in turn can
boost your search engine ranking. Another excellent reason for contacting
and forming a team with other webmasters is that you can critique each
other’s websites and also tell each other of the latest programs. To learn
how to contact webmasters properly click here, or click here to be
taken to the link page where you can submit your link to me, and others
free of charge!
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Search Engine
Submitters
- I heard once that 80% of web users
use search engines. Therefore to target the largest amount of people it is
important to place your site on the major and less major search engines.
However, this is not always a sure fire way of promoting your site. It
often takes up to 8 weeks to get your site listed and even then it could be
ranked 100 out of 100 search results, which just doesn’t do anyone any
good. However, it is worth submitting your site because as your popularity
grows so will your search ranking, thus meaning a greater amount of
traffic. Click on one of the links below to submit to a search engine
manually. Alternatively, there are many software packages on the net that
submit your site to thousands of search engines automatically. The software
listed below are free demos, so do not submit to all search engines, but
some packages offer as little as $10 to submit your site to 6000 search
engines. Check them out!
Altavista
Google
Excite
Lycos
Goto
Link-o-Matic
URL Submitter
Submit Wolf
Page Submit
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Web Rings - Web Rings are free groups that you can join and
through it promote your site. There are web rings for nearly every topic
available and signing up for them is free and easy. Yahoo offers one of the
largest communities of web rings. Basically you sign up to the group and
they give you some HTML to place on your page, and that is it! I belong to
a web ring and it is below. You can go into other peoples sites of similar
categories from it and also find other information out from the web ring
central. Give it a go!
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Summary - Of course there are many other ways of promoting
your site on the net. I think that the most important thing to do when
marketing your site is to read as much information as possible. If you know
what is involved when you start you will have a pretty good idea of what to
expect. Try as many promotional tools as possible and this will hopefully
maximise your results!
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Offline Promotion
- Offline promotion is just as
important as online promotion, however with offline promotion don’t expect
to receive as many hits and don’t expect it to be as quite easy as online
promotion. Below is a list of free ways in which to promote your site
offline.
Business
Cards - Business Cards are an excellent way of reminding
people about your site and you can leave them virtually everywhere. Another
positive point of business cards is that they are very cheap! Not only is
it possible to make your own companies charge ridiculously small prices to
make them. You can leave them anywhere; restrooms, include with a tip, give
them to friends, colleagues, send them with your bills and thousands of
other places. It really is very easy!
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Adding your URL to letters
etc… - There are thousands of possible ways to promote
your site offline and another way is adding it to any letters, emails,
bills, surveys that you take part in or write. You never know the person
who opens these things may be interested and may tap into your site. It is
worth trying.
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Ring up Random people in the
phone book -
I personally have never tried this
method but know of people who have and it has worked believe it or not.
When phoning the person up remember to be kind, courteous and patient. If
they don’t want to know about it then leave them. Don’t try forcing it down
their necks. That only annoys people and can also be classed as spamming so
be careful. Good luck with this one.
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Flyers - Like business cars flyers can also be a very easy
and simple way of promoting your site. Most software packages that come
with any new PC offer a design package – I have publisher, which can be
used for making flyers. Alternatively there are always companies offering
to make them for you for a low cost. One thing I would say if you are
considering making a flyer is make it professional. If you knock up a flyer
in two minutes and it looks like it has been created by a four year old no
one is going to give you any credibility. Make it look good and get people
interested in it. Try and include some pull off tabs so that people can rip
them off rather than taking the whole flyer. This way when they are
emptying their pockets they will see it and may check it out. I would
suggest printing it on coloured paper to catch peoples attention and trying
using pictures rather than reams of text. Try it out and see what happens.
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Summary - Although it can be quite easy to promote your site
offline it does not improve your traffic ratings quite as significantly as online
promotion. The problem with offline promotion is that it is only possible
to target a minority whereas with online promotion you are targeting a
majority. However, offline promotion is just as important as online
promotion and I would suggest that if you want to maximise your results
then the only way to achieve this is by undertaking both types of
promotion!
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Useful
Links - Of course to promote a
website you need to actually have a site. The links below are to free
website hosting where you can make a site free of charge! I have also
included other tools to get you online and working!
Freeservers
- Who I am with. They offer free website hosting with around 100MB
webspace. Good for the beginner or pro and I chose it mainly because it was
free and easy. My only complaint – they often have server problems meaning
uploading pages immediately is not always possible. Place a fixed banner at
the top of your page. Offer web page builder.
Homestead
- Another popular choice. They offer a similar deal to Freeservers, however
your URL looks like this – http://www.homestead.com/YOURNAME. They have an
excellent site builder, which I highly recommend and a good support team.
Free which is always nice! Place a fixed banner/ bar on your page.
Geocities
- Another very popular choice with millions of members. The service is free
and they have joined forces with Yahoo. Also offer a site builder but they
display this rather annoying banner/search thing on your page, that can be
removed but does look ugly!
Angelfire
- Similar to Geocities, offers free hosting and a site builder and
uploader. Easy to use and easily accessible. The URL they give you lets it
down though. Example- http://www.angelfire.com/???/YOURNAME.
Refmaker -
These sites are for the lazy webpage makers amongst us. You sign up to
their program and they make your site for you. All you do is place your
referral ID codes where they tell you. Very simple and easy. Check my site
out at:
MaxReferral
- Exactly the same as RefMaker. Take a look and choose the design that
suits you best.
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FTP Programs- FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol, and it is
basically a program that uploads your webpage to your server. Below is a
list of some FTP programs that I recommend. All these programs can be
downloaded from http://www.download.com/
free of charge!
Terrapin FTP - This is what I use. It is incredibly simple to use,
quick easy and hassle free. I recommend this!
Cute FTP - Another very popular program that is very easy to use.
WS_FTP - More text based and a more complicated layout. Not as
popular but still worth having a look at.
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