Posts Tagged ‘market your business’

Here’s a question that I answered lately from a person named Pokey that is new to affiliate and Internet marketing:

Pokey:

I am new to affiliate marketing. I haven’t even started with a program. The problem is, I don’t have money to spend on programs. What are the best free sites? And how can I get started? Anything would help…

ME:
Pokey,

Here is what you should do. Since you do not have much money I would start a blog. I love helping people and I would charge you nothing to help you set one up. I also can easily make you a free template and banner to get started because you need something that is unique. Ok, that’s the easy part. Here is the work.

1. Sign up for an affiliate program. I would do Google Adsense because even though you are starting out making a small amount, you will at least be making some money and that will spur you on to greater heights.

2. We’ll put the Adsense ads on your blog.

3. We will write at least 40 original, fresh articles based on what your niche is. One of my niches is electric bikes. There are millions of them and you need to consider if you are interested in the subject matter before you start writing about them. Also you need to consider whether or not there is a NEED for what you are writing about. If you are going into a niche make sure there are others into the niche because if nobody is in that niche chances are that there is no money to be made there either.

3. Post the articles as you write them. Do not post them all at once because Google likes to see growth over time.

4. When you post, make some of the postings long and some short. SEO experts have determined that posts with about 1200 words with pictures and video from Youtube are for some reason subscribed to the most through RSS feeds.

5. Get an RSS feed from Feedburner.

6. Find a mentor that knows some of this stuff.

7. Buy books on Amazon on Internet Marketing and learn as much as you can.Never stop learning and educating yourself.  People who don’t have much money have book collections smaller than their TV’s.   I’m not talking about romance novels either, I’m talking about How to books and books on business and finance.

I know this is a lot, but you want to have a fast start. I have so much more I could tell you, but I have to run

God Bless!
ELMO
Ellistrated Websites

To get some really good advice for anyone just starting out in Internet Marketing and Affiliate Marketing you should really listen to Mark Ling.  For a young guy he really knows his stuff and he has a site (of which I am not affiliated with in anyway) called Affilorama – Learn How to Build an Affiliate Business.  The reason why i like to highlight Mark and his business is because I followed his advice onbuilding my first affiliate business.  Anyway, check out his site, it might help you out.

Here’s a clip of Mark Ling at Affilorama:

ELMO

I like to have fun.  I also like watching people having fun with their businesses.  As a matter of fact, I can’t forget the time I saw Donald Trump wearing chicken suit on Saturday Night Live.  As ridiculous as that sounds, it was a great promotion for his business and branding. ( If  branding is really the term I wan to use here.)  Anyway, you are gonna have to market your business somehow, you might as well have fun when you do it.

For example, I used to have an artist make single panel comics for one of my music websites.  I would then offer a prize to anyone that could come up with the funniest caption for the comic.  It amazed me how many really fine captions that people came up with.  I would then take the best one and have the comic reproduced into coffee mugs, T-shirts and other promotional items that I could sell or give away later.

Here’s an idea  that I think is really funny and I’ll bet it will stick in the minds of people long after the see it.  Advertise on your animals.  There was a farmer that at  one time, that used to advertise on the sides of his cows.  He would shave or use a non-toxic type of dye to put messages on his cattle.  People would drive by and freak out at the bovine marketing messages. So, you too can utilize this type of advertising if you have your own cattle or  if you run a dairy farm or an ice cream business. You could put your message on the side of  ol’  Bessie and send out a marketing message that people which were driving by would really get a kick out of .

Really funny bumper stickers are another marketing method that if used properly, can get a memorable message out.

You can put your web address onto a bumper sticker as well as a call to action.  You could probably tell someone that they can get a free e-book if they go to your site and sign up for your free newsletter.  A good thing to always keep in mind about your promotion, not matter how wacky it is, that you must make sure that it has some sort of call to action to it.  You’ll notice that in the above bumper sticker, that there is a very brief call to action which simply says “call”.

If you want to get really noticed, then you will want to get your hands on as many industry publications that you can which are related to your industry and business.  There are tons of marketing ideas and methods in those industry publications that you could easily use.  In the information age it is pretty easy to use trend spotting sites like Google’s Trends site or you could actually use Amazon.com to spot trends as well because they carry best sellers lists across a wide variety of products (Not just books!!)

One other  method of self promotion that I think that is very important to utilize right now is on-line video.  On-line video, if used properly can boost your company’s message all over the Internet.  I will write extensively on this easy to use method in my next blog piece.

Oh, and by the way, here is a real wacky method of getting your message out there:

Peace Out & All that Junk!

Elmo