How to market your online business on a budget

How to market your online business on a budget

Do you have a great online business but few customers,and a very limited budget to work with?

Just uploading your site onto the internet is not enough, even submitting to the main search engines and directories takes time. Often it may take months for a website to get listed.

You don't have to spend a fortune on marketing your site, the best methods are often very inexpensive or free.

1) Pay Per click search engines

Pay per click search engines work by bidding for keywords. This is an immediate way to get your site listed.
They work by bidding for specific targetted keywords related to your site.

You pay only for hits to your site and bidding can start as low as $0.1 depending on the popularity of the keyword.
Only bid for words that are specific to your site.
For example if you sell blue widgets then "widgets" is to vague. "blue widgets" will get visitors who specifically want to buy blue widgets!!

"Widgets would probably be more expensive as it has a more general audience but "Blue widgets" is more targeted to a particular audience and would most probably be cheaper.

http://www.overture.com Overture can get you listed on the majority of the leading search engines and portals, including; AOL, Ask Jeeves, Freeserve, Lycos, MSN, Tiscali and many more. You set up an account with them and deposit an initial £60

http://www.go-click.com You can create an account from $10 and they have a minimum bid of $0.1

2) Submit ezine articles

Submitting ezine articles is free and often one of the best ways of getting visitors to your site.

Write an article about a subject that relates to your site giving useful information, but don't use it as an advert for your site or it probably won't be accepted.

You can however advertise your website in a resource box at the end of your article.

Articles should be of a 65 character line length. textpad enables you to word wrap your document. For a free trial download go to http://www.textpad.com/download/index.html

Submit your articles with online article directories at
http://www.ezine-writer.com/article-lists.html
http://www.ezinewriter.com op10.html
http://www.ideamarketers.com
http://www.articlecity.com
http://www.goarticles.com
http://www.webmasterslibrary.com
http://www.marcommwise.com
http://www.mailbiz.com
http://www.UltimateProfits.com
http://www.vectorcentral.com
http://www.freezineweb.com
http://www.smarteremarketing.com

Make sure that your article is in keeping with the directory before submitting it. Some directories are specialised in their subject matter.

If your articles are of value with good content they will soon be circulated amongst many other websites providing you with links back to your site. Search engines love sites with lots of links so it will increase your website's popularity.

In time you will find that traffic to your site has dramatically increased. This will be targetted traffic from visitors having read your articles.

Success doesn't happen overnight and takes hard work and perseverance but if you write a couple of articles a week you will soon find an increase in visitors to your site.

3) Write your own ezine

Start your own ezine and publish it regularly. This is a good way of informing your visitors of any news and updates on your website. Have an opt in form on in a prominate place on your site so that people can subscribe to it.

The ezine should also have an unsubscribe option as well. Any visitors who do unsubscribe should be deleted from your database immediately.

You can install some free cgi scripting that enables visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe to your newsletter or ezine. Go to http://www.siteinteractive.com/subscribe/index2.html
There are tutorials as well to help you install the script.

A good idea is to have a pop under box for visitors to subscribe. This will appear after they have closed your site. I personally find pop up boxes annoying, but with a pop under box the visitor has already left your site anyway.
You can get the cgi script for a pop under box at http://www.clickforcontent.com/pop_under_script.htm

If you need articles to put in your ezine there are many sites that have databases of free articles that you can use. Try http://www.freezineweb.com and http://www.ezinearticles.com

Submit your ezines to the following ezine directories
http://www.bestezines.com
http://www.ezinesearch.com/search-it/ezine
http://www.ezine-universe.com
http://www.escribe.com
http://www.e-zinez.com

4) Offline methods of getting traffic to your site

These are just some of the methods that you can use to get traffic to your site.
There are also many offline ways as well including just talking to people you meet!!

You could design and print out some flyers to advertise your business and place them in cafe's, libraries, supermarket customer advertising boards, and even place some on car windscreens in car parks that you are passing through. I have often gone back to my car after a shopping trip and found a flyer on my car advertising a business or local event!!

Design and print out business cards. You can get some nice quality paper for printing these out on to make them look professional. Hand these to everyone you meet and leave one with a bill whenever you eat in a restaurant. Use different colour paper as well to add interest.

How about designing a car sticker and place it on the rear windscreen of your car.

Placing an ad in your local paper is a good idea and reasonably inexpensive.

Always make sure that you carry some cards and flyers whenever you leave the house you never know when an opportunity will occur!!