So Many Ways to Advertise?

These are wild times with an unprecented amount of home based opportunities being available especially with the corporate downsizing of America but more so due to the insidious awareness that most Americans are cultivating regarding their freedom;freedom of choices.

Whether you want to be a daytrader or a MLM/network marketer or a writer/consultant/freelancer-the choices have never been more abundant. The majority of us are having a difficult time not running into something internet-related. It also seems that regardless of the product or industry,most of these companies are moving with the times and incorporating systems,back office admin access,platform training,support forums,etc. that are all web-based. It is only a rare few that may still elect to use the direct mail system ONLY and door-to-door sales may be a dinosaur unless you are selling encyclopedias and Fuller brushes.

Some of these systems are really getting into simplifying the marketing onus that normally would weigh very heavy on the newbie by taking over virtually all of the responsibilities. Many of the hipper avant-garde companies are acutely aware of how the average person can't or simply abhors selling of any kind. For this reason,they are innovating systems design in their marketing/training that eliminates such. In some select cases,the only thing left for the new recruit to shoulder is his/her advertising. After all,we all need customers or traffic driven to our websites that will eventually convert into sales with the help of a steady streaming verbiage of communication otherwise known as autoresponders. So,here we are ! Time to talk turkey on the topic of advertising.

The first continental divide we draw in the wacky,wonderful world of advertising is offline and online as this day and age provide us many different avenues in both realms.

I'll start with the more conventional that most people will be familiar with (offline).

Media /display ads such as small classifieds in newspapers and the back of magazines ranging to FP (full page) ads that are as large as the name suggests often reach a circulation of approximately 150,000-250,000 for anywhere in the ball park of $100 for a 2-5 day classified run depending on the size of that paper's circulation to $5,000+ for an FP ad in one of the more big-name magazines.

Card decks are also very popular. These are typically 2 sided 3" x 5" cards that get bundled with another 25-50 offers in cellophane wrap and are mailed out in 50,000 allotments typically with a broker's list perhaps reaching in the neighbourhood of 200,000-300,000 subscribers.

Typical cost will be $600-$900 per 50 M (50,000). Fliers are a low budget way of reaching the masses as they can be reproduced for next to nothing and distributed in high traffic areas like a sports event or major shopping area.

In the online arena there are many exciting and varied ways for one to reach their target audience. One that is increasingly popular but getting expensive due to the growing competitiveness centred around its main catalyst-keywords-is PPC ( pay-per-click) advertising. You can set a daily budget with many of them but remember you pay every time one clicks on your ad. They do not have to buy so you need to get up to speed on this one first.

Another decent choice on the lower end of the budget spectrum is ezine advertising where one advertizes to a group of subscribers of an electronic magazine that comes out at regular intervals. This one can be a little frustrating as there is a lot of hit and miss in reaching the publishers of many of them but one can reach tens of thousands for $40-$60 or hundreds of thousands for $200-$300.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is for the technically minded as this predicates largely off of keywords that were embedded into your site at the time of design and can do a lot to enhance your ranking with various search engines as well as reciprocal linking with other like-minded sites.

The common denominator,once again,being the target group. There are companies who can perform this service for a nominal fee but do your due diligence and get a solid performance driven guarantee.

This service often comes in at the $3-$5 K range.

One other highly effective way to reach your prospects en masse is permission-based email marketing.

There are companies who will sell quality lists if you do your research,There are companies one can hire as an alternative ISP (Jaguar and Roadrunner are two good ones)so that they are not getting their hand slapped for spamming nor jamming up their daily,personal use ISP. Lastly, you will need a quality,true bulk email software and there are a few real good ones. Groupmail out of Ireland may be the elite. This is a great method to build your own warm database of opt-ins that you can market to at your leisure and pace.

Article submission and press releases are very reasonable methods for the shoestring budget that may take awhile (6-8 weeks) before they get some impetus going but they allow the author to create an author's resource box that accompanies the article and within this box they are permitted to place a URL to their site.

There are job hunter companies who create a profile for you online at their site which will list your opportunity,product or service at the very top of a criteria of 5 of the appropriate categories where you will hold a top position for about 7 of the 30 days your campaign runs.

These can be very effective as some of these larger name outfits get traffic in the 10-20 million a month ballpark.

The price range I have encountered is approx. $1650-$2300 for this service .

I would just caution to do your homework as there are many unscrupulous sorts looking to reach out with services of a similar nature that fall way short of their claims or simply put-will soon part you from your money-with no pure intention ever.

This is a sad constant on the internet landscape but unfortunately true.