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How to Market on the Internet

Dear WAHS Leslie,

I have been trying to make money at home with affiliate programs and business ops without success. Each thing I join I'm told to market my website and follow all the instructions for classified ads, search engine listings, and other recommendations. But nothing seems to work. I have read about Google Ad Words and Oveture but I don't have extra money to spend on that. Is there a way to make money on the internet without spending $100's? Sarah in NC

Hi Sarah,

Good for you to recognize that marketing is the key to your success. So many people begin their work-at-home ventures without a thought to the importance of marketing. It takes more than an ad and a flyer. In fact, since marketing is so important, you should have a detailed marketing plan that includes marketing activities to do everyday.

It is possible to market your business without spending too much money but you should begin to set aside some of your profit to use towards marketing as your business grows. 

The first step to marketing is to become a student of internet marketing. Techniques that worked 3 years ago...heck even last year, don't work now. This is particularly true on the Internet. Look at the prevalence of pop-up blockers. Pop-ups were once touted the absolute best way to build your customer list. Today, no one sees those pop-ups. To keep abreast of the best marketing strategies, I recommend reading Seth Godin's books (you can download Unleashing the Ideavirus free. Requires Adobe Reader) and subscribe to his Blog. He pioneered the idea of permission marketing which is the idea of promoting your products or services to people who ask for the information.

Next you need to determine who your target market is. Even if your product is something the whole world could use, you will do much better to target a specific market and gear your marketing message to them. Pick a market you'd like to develop and then determine the following: 1) What specifically do they want or need that your product or service can give them; 2) Where can this target market be found? (What websites do they visit? What ezines do they read? What groups do they participate in?) 3) What are their hot buttons? (What concerns or excites them such that they take action?). This information will help you design your marketing plan and be the focus of your advertising message. Remember, people are looking for information or assistance when searching the web. Your marketing should focus on the benefits of your product or service to your customer in providing the assistance they are looking for. 

Develop a marketing plan. To many people fail to plan their business. They erroneously think a few posts and a few ads will lead to success. But even if a person is letting Oveture drive traffic, he spends a great deal of time studying and evaluating how the campaign is going day to day. There are many great low-cost and free marketing techniques but they can only work as well as the person who uses them. Offering free reports, e-courses and ebooks through an autoresponder has been very successful in one of my businesses. These free resources offer something my visitors want at no cost. It allows them to test my knowledge and see that I'm knowledgeable in the topic. But it wouldn't work if my freebies were not helpful. The freebies allow me to build my credibility. Further, they wouldn't work if I gave them away without asking something in return. In this case, visitors can only get my freebies by submitting their email (a legitimate one) to me. This allows me to continue to send them great free info as well as to promote my products or services. So you see, free reports and autoresponders are great tools but they need to be used correctly and have value to your customers.

The best free ways to advertise include writing articles, using autoresponders (there are many free services for this) to deliver freebies, and participating in discussion groups. These efforts can take some time to work. I don't recommend placing free classified ads even through a service or software. I have found these just generate spam type mail back to me. 

Low cost ways of marketing include ads in ezines or on websites. Again, make sure these ads are placed in front of your target market and that your ad message really speaks to them. I usually advertise my freebie and not my main product or service. This increases my response rate tremendously as 1) people like freebies and 2) most other ads are just ads..."come buy my stuff". 

Depending on your product or service, Google Ad Words and Oveture can be affordable. But to make the most of this technique, you need to choose your keywords carefully, develop a great ad (again target specific), and monitor how the campaign is going so you can make changes to improve it if needed.

There are other great ideas and more developing all the time. For example, Blogs and RSS systems are currently growing in popularity for online marketers. That is why always studying the internet and marketing is important.

To summarize, I recommend you do some reading about internet marketing. Seth Godin's resources are helpful in developing creative permission based marketing. Another ebook I found helpful is The SuperAffiliateHandbook. Next, determine your target market, develop a marketing plan, and design all your marketing materials to speak directly to your target market. 

Marketing is not something that usually works right away. Like many things in life, it takes time to develop and consistency of practice to grow.

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Ask WAHS Leslie is Leslie Truex a stay and work-at-home mom who has been helping people work at home since 1998 with her web site Work-At-Home Success. She is also the author of Jobs At Home: A Complete Guide to Finding a Work-At-Home
Job. Ask WAHS Leslie is a weekly column. You can submit a question to Ask WAHS Leslie by emailing here.