Like many want-to-be entrepreneurs,
when I started marketing on the Internet I wasted
valuable time, money and motivational energy because
of some wrong assumptions. Let me explain.
Most people start a home based business with a
limited budget. Primarily for that reason they
need to find inexpensive or free advertising methods.
I did the same. This is a good way to begin, but
the problem comes when you assume that spending
more money on advertising will increase your sales.
Business online or offline just does not pay off
on that kind of assumption. Paid advertising may
increase your traffic flow to your web site without
increasing your sales and therefore your profits.
So instead of increasing revenues, you might dramatically
increase your expenses, which in turn means a
higher sales ratio is needed to pay for the higher
expenditures.
It would be much easier
if you could assume that paid advertising meant
higher quality traffic to your web site. Sadly
this is not always the case. There are reputable
Internet companies who work hard to achieve quality
traffic for their customers. They are just hard
to find.
So when does it make good
business sense to use paid advertising? Free advertising
methods can take a long time to build consistent
traffic to your web site or business opportunity.
The traffic you do generate can be higher in quality
because it may be more genuinely opt-in. Paid
traffic can be useful when you need to get the
word out on a product or opportunity quickly and
your opt-in list is too small. And some forms
of advertising are not available free.
A word to the wise: Make
sure your weekly or monthly budget has a firm
limit on the amount you want to spend on advertising.
You can also budget your time resources to be
spent on free advertising methods which are often
more labor intensive. When you are ready to spend
some money on ads, match the method to the result
you want to achieve and then check out a variety
of sellers. If their “help“ or “support“
pages do not tell you, ask them how they obtain
their traffic and if you don't like the response
then move on.
I've worked hard to collect
a wide range of Internet advertising methods and
distributors for the people in my organization.
At my “Online Ad Warehouse” (http://www.ad-warehouse.com)
you will find both free and paid advertising.
I have personally used all of the companies or
programs listed and I have also taken to selling
some ads myself. I have found viral advertising
to be one of the most effective of the free methods
and have several great programs listed.
The only guarantee about
online advertising is that if you do nothing at
all you might as well start buying lottery tickets
- you will get rich faster! Always do something,
whether it is submission to search engines, writing
articles, publishing ezines, or clicking in a
traffic exchange.
Should you pay for advertising?
When you have money in your budget and you have
done your homework then give it a try. Track your
results and you will soon know whether it pays
for you.
