Promotion - Don't Do It (this way)!
There is a lot of promotional activity to get on with - and even if you spend the suggested 90% of your time on promotion, there will always be more you could do.
The activities in the previous traffic sections are the key, tried and tested, best return on investment type activities for you to cover in your first days and weeks.
The following items are things that may well have some merit - but to do them right (if at all) is going to require some experience, time, tools and/or investment, that frankly is not likely to be worthwhile in your early days.
As you become active in promoting your PDCB, you will come across many invitations, offers and requests to participate in various promotional activities, so I simply pass on these notes to equip you in advance ...
Paid Advertising
You will receive offers of advertising space in newsletters and e-zines, and some of the rates will look appealingly low. Yes, you can buy an ad in an e-zine with maybe 40,000 readers for perhaps only $20. But the number of readers who will fit your target profile, and who will read your ad, and act upon it, will probably be very small - and the income you generate from each sale in the PDCB model will not make this economically viable.
I've recommended Make Your Words Sell! elsewhere as an essential tool for creating your site. Please don't consider buying ANY advertising space until you have bought and read that book!
Link Exchange
You often see link exchanges promoted as a "great way to get traffic" - have your site listed in other compatible sites and have them send you interested traffic for free! All you have to do is put up a link to their site.
I have to confess I don't understand why this is a good idea. Surely the only time we ever want to encourage anyone to leave your site is if they are going somewhere there is a reasonably good chance they will spend money that you will receive a commission on?.
Keep your visitor on your site as long as possible - and give them every reason to return at some point in the future. Never encourage them to leave.
Banner Exchange
See Link Exchange above - but this time with pictures!
Free For All Link Pages
There are thousands of sites around the world that have links pages that anyone can post anything on - FFA for short. They don't have the editorial staff that the big search engines have, and they only exist for one reason - to get your email address so they can try to sell you their ideas - almost universally in the "Get Rich Quick" and/or MLM categories.
It is however possible to get some hits from these sites, but the small amount of extra traffic is only worthwhile if you can completely automate the process so it does not eat into your promotion time.
Submit Wolf (see Search Engine section) includes a large database of FFA sites for submission - and ROIBot goes one step further by automating the process with scheduled submissions so you can have them sent in the middle of the night - great use of your valuable time.Free Classifieds
Free Classified sites are an extension of the FFA concept to capture email addresses, and should be treated the same. This does not apply to subject related sites you might find that include a classified section as part of the overall content - in those cases, it may well be worth posting a carefully worded ad.
SPAM - Not Under Any Circumstances!
SPAM, UCE, Bulk Email - many names, same sin.
Don't EVER buy lists of email addresses with a view to sending out hundreds, thousands, or millions of unsolicited email ads to people.
I'm not going to waste a lot of time on this.
- The lists are rubbish.
- It will result in your internet connection and/or web site being closed down.
- It will create a massive hate-filled backlash.
- It doesn't work.
If you send unsolicited email to anyone, do it one at a time - and take the care to explain who you are and why you are emailing her.
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