Getting Started in Internet Marketing (Part 5) – Promotion

Now that you have your product ready and your website set up, it gets more exciting because it is time to promote your website. In other words, it is time for traffic generation. There are literally tons of ways to drive traffic to your website. But broadly, they can be divided into two main kinds of traffic generation. You can either pay for it or get it free.

There are pros and cons to both ways. Obviously, the paid traffic generation methods cost money but on the positive side, they get you fast and often targeted results. On the other hand, the free traffic generation methods do not cost money but on the negative side, they are generally slower and may not produce much targeted traffic.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to traffic generation. Every method works to some extent, so you need to choose which ones suit you the best. But generally, traffic generation is a numbers game. This means the more you do it, the better results you get in the long run.

If you can afford it, it’s better to start promoting your website with paid traffic methods. This includes Google Adwords, Yahoo Search and MSN Adcenter. These three major search engines work roughly the same way. You design your advertisement according to the search engine’s specifications and specify certain parameters like the countries you want to advertise in and the dollar limit on advertising you want to spend in one day. Generally, you are billed for the number of clicks on your advertisement. Each click brings the searcher to your website where they are presented with your product. Some will buy and then you profit.

As you can tell, there is a danger of losing a lot of money in these paid advertising methods when lots of people click but no one buys. To reduce the possibility of this happening, there are two things to do. Firstly, put your long tail keywords into your advertisement. This ensures targeted visitors going to your website. A targeted visitor is one who has been looking for a solution to his problem that your product gives. Such a visitor to your website is much more likely to buy your product than a less targeted visitor.

Secondly, avoid advertising in certain countries known to have lots of browsers but not many buyers. Two of such countries are India and the Philippines. Chances are, you will get lots of clicks from these countries but few sales.

Besides text ads, you can also make image ads on the paid advertising networks of the search engines. Image advertisements consist of banners of certain sizes specified by the search engines. Image ads are not as popular as text ads so that makes it generally cheaper. But they work fine and are certainly worth a try.

The reason it is better to go for paid traffic generation methods first is because with paid advertising, you can get quick results. You also can determine which keywords produce good ROI. Once you have carried out paid advertising for a few weeks, you can switch to free advertising using the same keywords that have produced good results for you.

Free traffic generation methods will be the topic for the next article.