General advertising and promotion - Multiple streams of
Traf
by: Eric Koshinsky
You are free to publish this article online in your ezine
website, ebook, or other online publication. The full resource box, including
'By line' must remain intact and be published with the article. If you publish
this article, please contact me and let me know where you are using it.
Contact at: artpub@newbie-guides.com
---
**Article info**
Word count: 1085 approximately
Hard-wrapped at 65 characters
---
General advertising and promotion - Multiple streams of Traffic: PART II
There are a variety of ways that you can advertise and promote your site or
products. In this, Part II of the 'mini-series'
on Multiple streams of traffic, I'd like to take a look at a couple of the more
commonly known methods of online promotion.
Some are much better than others, and some are more suitable than others. Our
goal then is to look a little more closely at
them to determine if they are suitable for your needs. Read on for more...
Banner ads
Using banner advertising and displaying banner ads on your site has
changed a lot in the last 2 years. The cost and value
(benefit) of banner advertising has dropped significantly. I won't talk about
them too much other than to say that their main
use is now principally as 'branding' tools. A way to get your name/product/site
in the front of people's faces quickly. For
the average person, it is nearly impossible to get the kind of reach required to
really get much benefit from banners. That
being said, if you can get good exposure in a niche that fits your market, go
for it, it won't hurt.
On the other side of things, displaying banners on your site as a source of
revenue is only worthwhile if you are getting
thousands upon thousands of hits/month. The average CPM is now only about $2.00
(that means you earn $2.00 for every 1000
banners displayed!). Considering that when you display a banner on your site you
are promoting a product or site that is not
your own, you are giving visitors an exit that does not generate income for you.
It isn't any wonder that the top online
marketers (Cory Rudl, Jimmy D. Brown, Ken Evoy etc.) don't display ANY ads
(banners or anything) from any other site.
I am not knocking banners here. They serve a purpose. You just need to be sure
that they suit your purposes. I have found
that the FastClick Ad Network provides very good service for all your banner
advertising needs.
FFA's and traffic swaps
Let me be very blunt about FFA's. They are a waste of time for anyone except the
person who owns it. No matter what the claims
may be, they will not produce traffic. Traffic swaps and exit exchanges have to
potential to produce reasonably large amounts
of traffic, however the problem is that for the most part it is untargeted. Most
traffic swaps are based on a system of credits,
where your site gets a visitor in exchange for displaying the traffic swap link
on your site, or visiting a member site
yourself. The real problem is that much of the traffic is simply other
webmasters trying to boost their own credits. They are not
interested in visiting your site except to get the credit. I'm sure you can see
the problems with that. In a way, you can think
of traffic swaps as an online equivalent of a highway detour.
Lots of traffic gets re-directed your way, but it doesn't
really want to be there. If you are interested in learning more about
traffic swaps, you can go here to take a look at a popular one.
More recently, a slightly different breed of traffic swap has emerged. These
focus on generating ezine subscribers. The way
they work is basically the same as the a normal traffic swap, however because
they are directed specifically at getting
subscribers, they don't create junk traffic. Every time you display the pop-up
containing the ezine registration form, you
earn an impression for your subscription link on another site.
When visitors see the pop-up with the links, they choose to
sign up for your ezine. There are still very few of them around, so
they are very effective and produce good results. There are a few services that
provide opt-in services for a fee (usually in the range of $1.00/subscriber),
but I prefer free ;-). I have had very good results with this service. It is
100% free and generates dozens of subscribers a week.
Ezine advertising
Ezine ads (both solo and classified ads) can be very effective if done right.
They can also be utterly useless. The key is to get
your ads in ezines that are very closely related to your product(s), and that
don't run tons of ads. There are literally
thousands of ezines out there that are essentially advertising rags. Their only
purpose is to run ads for you and every other
person willing to spend $15. Before you advertise in any ezine, get some
information about the ezine. A decent publisher will
know their subscriber base and be able to tell you with reasonable accuracy how
responsive the subscribers are, how many ads they run,
and if someone has recently run an ad like yours (similar products). If they
can't do that, you might want to think twice about
advertising with them. Realistically what you want is an ezine with a reasonably
large subscriber base (1000 or more), that is closely
related to your product, and only accepts limited advertising (e.g. 1 ad/issue).
Stephan Peirce's
book goes into great detail on how to find good ezines and what to look for and
what to avoid - it costs less than a solo ad in a decent
ezine, and will save you tons of money in avoided mistakes.
A final comment:
Anyone who claims they can provide you with 100,000 (500,000, whatever)
guaranteed visitors is selling junk. Think of it this
way, if it were so easy to get that many targeted visitors (and you only want
targeted visitors), you can bet companies (scammers)
wouldn't be selling them because they would be raking in millions in profits by
directing those visitors to their own products and
sites! Do a little math, 1% conversion (a very low rate) from 100,000 visitors =
1,000 buying visitors. Sell a $10 product and
you have $10,000. If such a profit is possible, why the hell is this kind of
traffic sold for $50-$200? Quite simply because
it is junk traffic, frequently created by piggy backing on traffic exchanges and
FFA's.
In the next section of the series we will start to look at some of the less well
known methods of traffic generation, and how you
can put them to use to generate a more stable and consistent base of traffic for
your own sites.
---------------------------
Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide
useful tips and guidance for those who
are new to personal online marketing. Learn more about programs, techniques, and
software that can help you
reach your online marketing goals. Come on by and have a look.
www.newbie-guides.com/?aa Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com
About the Author
Eric Koshinsky: webmaster and guide at Newbie-guides.com We aim to provide
useful tips and guidance for those who are new to personal online marketing.
Learn more about programs, techniques, and software that can help you reach your
online marketing goals. Come on by and
have a look. http://www.newbie-guides.com/?aa Join our newsletter: news@newbie-guides.com
