What are the Best Ways of Advertising on the Internet Part One of Two

There are two main areas for advertising your website if we exclude any "word of mouth" eg personal recommendations by family, friends etc. (Not to be overlooked!)
The two types are Online Marketing and Offline Marketing.

It may seem strange that you should advertise your online website off line but most people do not realise the potential of this marketing. This is the subject of another report.

Online Marketing

There are various methods of advertising online and I have broken them down into nine main areas.
Space precludes me from going into depth regarding each type so I am giving a brief overview. There are or will be other reports available where I will go into more detail for each one of them.

Blogging
A blog is a special type of website which displays entries (called posts) in reverse chronological order.
That is to say the last written post appears at the top.
The posts themselves can consist of text, images, perhaps links to other websites and normally a means for readers to leave comments about the post.
Basically blogs can be about anything you want from online diaries to comments about the latest news.

The number of subjects you can choose are limitless.
It is important to decide from the outset what your theme/subject will be and who will be your audience.
If you want to use your blog as an internet marketing tool then you will have to decide how to go about publicize it.

See the separate report

The main advantage of blogging is that it is simple and cheap.
Perhaps the real disadvantage is that advertising through blogs tends to be frowned upon and care must be taken to avoid upsetting your potential customers!

Email Marketing
When done properly this method is very effective.
However a word of WARNING.
Be very careful you are not accused of Spamming.
You must comply with the Federal CAN-SPAM act which lays down rules for email marketing behaviour.
Even if you are not marketing in the U.S.A. I suggest it is still worth while ensuring you comply. Please, please study this method in more detail before committing yourself to action.
To avoid your email being filtered out there are tools available which enable you to see if your email contains subject(s) making this likely. Search the web for further information.

Safelists/Ezines/Solo Ads
Opt-in email safelists are one of the best ways to get your product/service in front of many people quickly.

Advantages are:-
The potential to email thousands of targeted people.
It is immediate
Suitable for testing your advertisement
Possibly low cost
The ability to track ads.
You cannot be accused of spamming since all subscribers have opted-in.

See my separate report regarding the best way to use safelists.

Ezines are basically an online magazine or an electronic magazine hence the name.
The advantages are;
There are many ezines available you can select those which are pertinent to your offer and hence get a very targeted audience.
Also the cost compared with the traditional magazine is much cheaper.

There are four main ways to advertise in an ezine:-
Top Sponsor Ads (Basically the "front page" of the "magazine")
Middle Ads ( hopefully self explanatory)
Classified Ads. (Like the classified ads in a "normal" magazine)
Solo Ads. (A bit like the flier tucked into an offline magazine)

However the solo ad is sent to the ezine data base separately so it stands on its own hence the name solo.

Though generally more expensive most advertisers find they obtain better results than with the other methods.

TO BE CONTINUED

John Beaumont
Internet Marketer