Guide to free advertising
by Rebecca Gilbert
When I first started my internet home business, I realized that in order to make money I would have to bring visitors to my website. I didn't have a lot of extra cash laying around, and my mentality at the time was "Why would I pay for it, when I can get it for free"? So, I starting searching the internet for places that would accept an ad for my product for free. I was very happy to find literally thousands of sites willing to accept my ad.
As the weeks went by I worked hard and learned a lot. The phrase that comes to mind when I think back is, "you get what you pay for". I was placing ads on the internet every free moment I got and was getting very little results. Not being one to quite, I figured I would move on to another form of advertising or figure out what I was doing wrong with the free advertising.
As soon as I placed my ad, I would go back and look at it. I expected my ad to be at the top of the list since I had just placed it. Much to my surprise, my ad was listed down the list a little way. I realized that at the very moment that I was placing my ad, others were doing the same. And as each person placed an ad, mine moved further down the list. In my infinite wisdom... I realized that potential visitors would probably not search past the first page before choosing a product.
So then I decided that I would go into that site and place my ad every few hours. This way I knew it would always stay close to the top of the page, and hopefully be viewed by a potential customer. How right I was!!! Eventually, I had my first customer and had made my first sale on the internet! What a feeling! I was ready to take the internet by storm...
The week ran into the weekend, and I continued in the same way with my free ad campaign...and no luck. Several weeks went by were I was getting visitors and making sales through the week, and none on the weekend. Are you seeing a pattern here? I sure did. I soon discovered through statistical data that I pulled up from a search engine that the internet traffic on the weekend is super low compared to the weekdays. I also learned that the internet traffic is at its peak around the noon hour in the US.
From that day forward, I didn't waste my time advertising on the weekends. Instead, I would sit down around 11:00 a.m. every morning and run as many free ads as was humanly possible. I could just about plan each day at noon that I could get a potential customer, affiliate, sale.
I'm also a firm believer in the phrase "work smarter, not harder". It didn't take me long to figure out that I could utilize copy and paste and run the same ad in every category that it applied. I also used the back button on my browser a lot. Most of the time by using the back button, all my information was still there and I could just choose a different category.
It wasn't long before I had several paying customers and was bringing in a small monthly income from my small internet business. I often try to teach this method to my members who cannot to pay for advertising to start out with...without much luck unfortunately. Many will not sacrifice their time to this extent, or they will run one ad on the internet and expect to get up the next morning and be a millionaire.
For those of you who don't have the money to invest, you will HAVE to invest your TIME. How much is your time worth? Many are drawing 6-figure incomes from the internet within 2-5 years. The internet has made more millionaires from the average Joe than any other vessel in history. Is 2-5 years a hard pill to swallow? It shouldn't be. How many of you are going to work your nine to five job for 40-50 years and have nothing to show for it?
Am I still running free ads? No, I'm not. I took my very first paycheck that I earned from free advertising and put it back into paid advertising. I can reach a vast number of customers with paid ads with no effort on my part at all. Instead, my time has been filled with teaching others to do as I have done, and building my own business day by day.
Not a day has gone by in the last year and a half where I have not built onto my business. I started out running free ads, then I moved on to paid ads, ppc's, email lists, enzine ads, then I built and optimized my own website, got link partners, got listed with the search engines, etc...
If you want to turn your life around and live without any financial constraints, then the internet is the place to be. All it will take is patience, persistence and the will to succeed on your part.
Best Wishes for your future success and prosperity!
Sincerely,
Rebecca Gilbert
http://www.101homebusiness.org| DISCLAIMER: The content provided in this article is not warranted or guaranteed by Developer Shed, Inc. The content provided is intended for entertainment and/or educational purposes in order to introduce to the reader key ideas, concepts, and/or product reviews. As such it is incumbent upon the reader to employ real-world tactics for security and implementation of best practices. We are not liable for any negative consequences that may result from implementing any information covered in our articles or tutorials. If this is a hardware review, it is not recommended to open and/or modify your hardware. |
More Website Advertising Articles
More By Developer Shed
 developerWorks - FREE Tools!
|
You'll get answers to many questions and more from David Barnes, Lead Evangelist for IBM Emerging Internet Technologies. David will discuss aspects of Web 2.0 that bring value to corporations, academia, and government. He'll also discuss IBM's vision around Web 2.0, including the importance of remixability and consumability. The discussion will culminate with examples of various IBM Software Group solutions you can use to get ahead of the Web 2.0 adoption curve.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
David Barnes, Lead Evangelist for IBM Emerging Internet Technologies will discuss aspects of Web 2.0 that bring value to corporations, academia, and government. He'll also discuss IBM's vision around Web 2.0, including the importance of remixability and consumability. The discussion will culminate with examples of various IBM Software Group solutions you can use to get ahead of the Web 2.0 adoption curve.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
You probably have thousands of lines of COBOL code loaded with business intelligence and being used to run your business, along with an army of developers maintaining these applications. Learn how to prepare your applications and developers so you can keep that competitive edge and move to a service-oriented architecture with the IBM Rational Enterprise Modernization solutions. Replay is available for 9 months.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Download the IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1 beta code and learn more about the rich features and enhancements in IBM WebSphere Portal V6.1. WebSphere Portal provides a composite application or business mashup framework and the advanced tooling needed to build flexible, SOA-based solutions, and scalability to meet the needs of any size organization.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to download a free trial version of WebSphere Extended Deployment Compute Grid, which lets you schedule, execute, and monitor batch jobs. Because online transaction processing and batch jobs execute simultaneously on the same server resources, you can avoid costly duplication of resources. Compute Grid supports job types of Java transactional batch, compute-intensive and a new type called "native execution", which enables non-Java workloads to run on distributed end points.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Learn from the best! Find out how developers use Rational ClearCase to be more flexible, innovative and deliver higher quality code in the Rational ClearCase Power Users eKit. This complimentary eKit provides a collection of materials, like articles, whitepapers, and demos that can help you become a power user of Rational ClearCase.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Discover how Rational tools and best practices for testing can make your job easier. The new Rational Testing eKits provide you with valuable resources – including demos, webcasts, tutorials, and articles – that help you address your specific testing needs across the software lifecycle. Five new eKits are available covering the topics of Requirements and Test Management, Functional Testing, Performance Testing, Code Quality and Embedded Systems, and SOA and Web Services Testing.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Regression testing -- in which code is thoroughly tested to ensure that changes have not produced unexpected results -- is an important part of any development process. But many testing environments neglect the terminal-based applications that still form the backbone of many industries. In this tutorial, you'll learn how the Rational Functional Tester Extension for Terminal-Based Applications works with other Rational Functional Tester to help test terminal-based applications quickly and easily.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Visit IBM developerWorks to try the IBM SOA Sandbox for process. The SOA Sandbox for process focuses on providing a trial environment with the necessary tooling and components required to gain a better understanding of business processes and how to best improve existing business processes to derive value quickly.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
Viper 2 brings a great value to developer communities including SQL, XML, PHP, Ruby, .NET and Java. You probably already know that DB2 Express-C is free for developers to develop, deploy and distribute. Viper 2 provides a variety of means that help move your application from the development stage to deployment more rapidly. This webcast shows how to best utilize the latest tools available for developing DB2 applications.
FREE! Go There Now!
|
|
|
|
All FREE IBM® developerWorks Tools!
|
