By
Robert W. Bly
How
do you drive traffic to your Web site without burning through your available
cash in a couple of weeks? Here are 8 cost-effective ways to get hits to your
site:
1. Google. The world’s largest search
engine, Google facilitates 250 million Web searches per day for its users. As
an advertiser, you can buy preference in Google’s search engine, based on key
word, on a cost-per-click basis.
It
could cost you as little as a dime a click or more than a dollar a click,
depending on the popularity of the key word you want to buy. If the cost of the
key word is 30 cents per click, and 100 people click on your site that day as a
result of a Google search on the key word you bought, Google charges you $30. Google
lets you put a limit on how much you spend per day, so the cost can fit any
budget.
2. Overture. Another search engine that lets
you buy preferential rating on key words. Overture reaches over 80% of active
Internet users by displaying your business in search results on leading sites
like Yahoo!, MSN, and Alta Vista.
How
to you determine what you can afford to pay? Say your product costs $100 and
out of every 100 clicks on your site, you get one sale, for a total of $100.
You can afford to pay $1 per hit if breaking even on the initial sale is your
goal.
3. Affiliate
marketing. Find Web sites that cater to the same market you do. Arrange for
them to feature your products on their site and in their e-mails. Online ads,
e-mail blurbs, and Web pages talking about your product link to your site where
the user can purchase the product under discussion. The affiliate receives a
percentage of the sale ranging from 15% to 50%. To recruit affiliates or make
money being an affiliate for other marketers, visit http://www.affiliatesdirectory.com.
Amazon.com
runs one of the largest affiliate programs, enabling you to feature books on
your site that are related to your topic and of interest to your audience; when
the user clicks on the book page, he is automatically linked to www.amazon.com where he can buy the book
online. It’s a service for your visitors, and you earn a small commission on
each sale.
4. Co-registration. In co-registration
marketing, the user who visits a Web site is served a pop-up window containing
a number of special offers; most frequently these are subscriptions to free
e-zines. By arranging to have your e-zine or another offer featured in these
co-registration pop-ups, you can capture many new names for your online
database at a relatively low cost compared with traditional e-mail marketing.
There
are a number of companies that can find such co-registration deals for you. One
of these is VentureDirect Online, www.venturedirect.com.
Another is E-Tactics, www.e-tactics.com.
5. Banner ads. Banner ads have seen a resurgence
thanks to the increasing sophistication and popularity of Macromedia Flash; in
an attempt to recapture the attention of the overloaded Internet user, animation
and effects in banners have become more sophisticated and dynamic. Banner ads
can work but should be tested conservatively and cautiously, and don’t get your
hopes of a breakthrough up too high. Banner ads usually supplement other
traffic generation methods, and are only occasionally a primary source of
unique visits. Exceptions? Of course.
6. E-mail marketing. Sending solo
promotional e-mails to a rented list of opt-in names is an expensive way to
acquire new names. Say you rent a list of 1,000 e-mail names for $200, get a 2%
click-through, and 10% of those sign-up for your e-zine. Your acquisition cost
to acquire those two new subscribers is a whopping $100 per name.
Business-to-consumer marketers have a better chance of success with careful
testing of e-mail marketing, since consumer lists are more reasonably price
than business-to-business names.
7. Online ads. While sending a solo e-mail
to a company’s e-list can run $100 to $400 per thousand, a less expensive
option is to run a small online ad in their e-zine. Cost can be as little as
$20 to $40 per thousand. The e-zone publisher specifies the format and length
of your ad, which are typically 100 words of text with one URL link. The higher
up (earlier) your ad appears in the e-zone, the higher the response.
8. Viral marketing. At its simplest, viral
marketing entails adding a line to your outgoing e-mail marketing messages that
says, “Please feel free to forward this e-mail to your friends so they can
enjoy this special offer.” To work, the e-mail you want the recipient to
forward must contain a special offer, either a free offer (typically free
content) or a discount on merchandise. According to Bryan Heathman of 24/7
Media, 81 percent of viral e-mail recipients will pass the e-mail on to at
least one other person.
About the author:
Robert
W. Bly is a freelance copywriter and the author of more than 50 books including
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Direct
Marketing (Alpha). His e-mail address is rwbly@bly.com and his Web site
address is www.bly.com.
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