Methods Of Website/Product Promotion
Search Engine Optimisation
This is undoubtedly the most powerful internet marketing technique out there. Without question the people who make the most money, or get the most traffic, are those who are in the top five spaces in the google rankings for their particular category. In a perfect world you could get to the top of the google search engine with no money and very little effort. Unfortunately it doesn't work this way. These days you have to either be a SEO expert, or have enough money to be able to hire one, and believe me they don't come cheap.
So unfortunately, nowadays search engine optimization is only an option for the experienced or the rich. In any case, using this technique will usually take weeks or even months to show any real results. We live in a world where what used to take hours or days can now be accomplished in seconds. Impatience is programmed into us at birth and enforced through our early years. We want it now!
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
It was absolutely fantastic when pay-per-click advertising first came out. Those of us who got in there early were able to make a killing in our niche market. Yes it took a bit of work, but it was worth it. Qualified clicks to your websites were cheap yand if our sales letter was good enough you could do extremely well for yourself. How quickly things changed.
Whilst some people believe that pay-per-click advertising is still a hugely effective advertising technique, others disagree. BIG companies are now getting in on the act and they have the budget to pay a heck of a lot more than the one-person businesses that used to be able to profit from pay-per-clicks. And with so much competition out there, pay-per-click is yet another option that the average marketer would be wise to avoid.
The possible exception here is "Google Adwords". I don't know because I haven't tried it. Let's move on ...
Buying Traffic
Why, oh why, do so many of us internet marketers fall for these silly pie-in-the- sky schemes and software packages? We've all seen the adverts:
"100,000 visitors for just $47."
"Brand new software will get 1 million hits on your site GUARANTEED!"
Spare me! I know of one or two people who have tried this and trust me, NONE of them work. Yes you might get the amount of "hits" advertised, but they won't be visits and they certainly won't be from the kind of target market that will be interested in what you have to offer.
Link Exchanges
Now we're getting somewhere. Getting links back to your site DOES bring you a lot of traffic. And it will be good, qualified traffic too!
The only problem is setting up and getting all these links back to your site. You have to go through banner exchanges, link exchanges, set them up, sometimes even pay for them. So yes it works, but it IS time consuming and can be fairly costly.
In a perfect world you'd be able to get tens of thousands of links back to your site with little effort and no money.
Welcome to the perfect world ...