Write It and They Will Come

by: Nandang S Nugraha | Total views: 85 | Word Count: 1167 | View PDF | Print View

 by: Judith Tramayne-Barth

Write it, offer it for free on your site and they will come. Yeah right and then you woke up.

Or
stay in your happy little daze, constantly check your counter 80 times
a day and be the only unique visitor your site gets. Either way you are
deluding yourself if you don't think marketing is the key to your
success on the Internet.

So easy to say -- market your site -- but so hard to do. Especially since the Internet is so vast, where do you start?

You
start by taking it one step at a time -- otherwise because of the size
of the Internet, you'll go insane, get depressed because you feel like
you're tap dancing in place or quit. None of these are viable choices
so let's see if I can help you on your journey to success.

But
first, understand this -- it takes sheer hard work, persistence and
loads of time to be successful on the Internet. Marketing is an every
day job because the Internet is dynamic and constantly changing. What
worked yesterday, won't today.

If you have a minimal
budget (read that non-existent) at your disposal, it means you must be
creative in your marketing endeavors. But before you become creative,
you'd better get organized or you'll still be dancing in place. This
means, you build a marketing template to place links on when you go to
sites.

This is simply an HTML page with headings so when
you visit a site you'll need to return to next week or month, you just
copy and paste the URL and put it on your template. It should be a
hyperlink (i.e. <

The first place you're going to visit is your:

==> Browser's Favorites Folder

If
you're like most people, it is chock full of sites you thought might be
useful later but now is so disorganized you don't even like opening it
anymore. Or it's so organized with folders, all the sites are out of
sight which means out of mind. This is neither efficient nor effective
when marketing. You need to place these sites on your new HTML template
page.

Yes,
I can hear your gnashing of teeth and groaning but the time spent
organizing this wealth of information will be worth it. Think how you'd
feel if your computer crashes and you lost all the URLS. By placing
them on your template, you can easily back up this information onto a
floppy disk or rewriteable CD.

Before
you merrily go placing the link from your Favorites Folders onto your
template, you need to click on it and make sure the site is still up
and running. Also, you'll want to make sure it goes to the exact page
you need. This is so you do not waste your time going to the index page
and clicking links next month when you use it again (i.e., the link for
search engines should go directly to their Add URL page).

Now the second step is to go to:

==> Search Engines

This
is where creative thinking comes into play. You are going to have to
figure out who your target audience is so you might want to read my
article "Targeting Using A Mind Map" to find out. The object in
marketing is not to get the most hits but the most TARGETED hits. You
can have a million visitors to your site but if they aren't buying your
products or services, what's the point of marketing? Bragging rights
doesn't put food on your table or a roof over your head.

No,
what you're looking for is places your target market hangs out. So you
are going to look for portals or sites that cater to these people. Now
this can take time as search engines are notorious for spewing forth
less than stellar results. So go to their instruction pages and find
out how to do advanced searches. Once you know what you're looking for
your searches become easier and produce better results.

Normally,
these portal sites have message boards and owners who are receptive to
products which will benefit their visitors. You'd be surprised at how
many owners love it when you offer them something free they can give to
their members.

And
usually, this doesn't take anything more than offering them a content
rich article or free ebook where you put an upsell message at the end
(see my articles "How to Make A Free eBook" and "Upsell For Free" at my
site).

Also
click on people's sites who leave messages on the boards because their
sites usually have links to other like minded (theme) sites you will
find useful. Pretty soon, much to your surprise, you'll find yourself
just surfing these link pages to find your targeted audience and you
won't be using the search engines all that much.

While
you're at the search engines remember to copy and paste the link for
the Add URL page to put on your template and also you might as well add
your site information again. Although this is getting harder to do now
that most of them have gone to making you pay.

The third step is:

==> Group Lists

In particular, http://www.yahoogroups.com and http://www.topica.com.
Both are a gold mine for marketing purposes. Their search boxes will
lead you to lists which pertain to your targeted audience. For instance
on my Trabar.com site, I sell a yarn holder my husband makes. It's
pretty unique and the only people interested would be a niche audience
of knitters and crocheters so I put these two "keywords" into their
search box and on yahoogroups alone, I came up with 207 knitting lists
and 112 crocheting lists.

My intent is not to spam any
of these lists but I will join the ones I find interesting and post
useful information along with my signature line (if their lists do not
have rules against this).

Also, I look at their group list
main page because a lot of the list owners have their site addresses on
these pages. I know if I go to their sites, I will also find a
wonderful amount of link pages leading me to other sites. Some will
have message boards which let you leave links to useful products but
most times you will just join their community and reply to posts with
useful information. You, of course, include your URL.

This does two things:

1. Allows you to help people

2.
And if message board accepts HTML, allows you to leave a link which
search engines pick up on thus increasing your popularity rating.

Remember
when you're doing this to include each site's URL as a hyperlink on
your HTML template because you'll want to go back and post on a regular
basis.

As I said earlier, marketing on the Internet takes
hard work, persistence and loads of time but these three suggestions
should help. Learning how to market smarter not harder is the key to
being successful on the Internet.

About the Author

Judith Tramayne-Barth

MARKET SMARTER NOT HARDER! A Good Read CD doesn't tell you "how" to market -- the 600 link marketing ebook takes you to actual PLACES to market. Why reinvent the wheel when I have done the work for you. To find out more, visit: http://www.agoodread.com

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