A Beginner's Checklist to Promoting an Online Business
by Angela Wu


The Internet's full of hyped-up promises of the 'ultimate'
marketing secret that will singlehandedly skyrocket your
business to instant success.

Naturally, this is ALL it is: hype. There's no single 
'secret' that will magically transform a fledgling business 
into a powerful money-maker. Instead, every business owner 
is responsible for testing and refining various techniques
until he or she has developed a solid, effective base that
produces the desired results.

What works for one business may not work for another!
Likewise, another business may have poor results with
one method, while others experience great success.
Here's a quick checklist of some of the more popular
-- and completely free -- marketing techniques to help
you build your online business (note: this is a 3-part
series).


PART 1:  FREE ONLINE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

1. Build and use your own opt-in list of targeted and
   interested prospects. Offer a free newsletter that
   provides fresh, interesting, and relevant content.
   You'll receive feedback from your readers about what's
   important to them, and over time they'll come to know
   and trust you. Your products, services, and even
   recommendations will then be taken much more seriously
   because you've developed credibility with your readers.

2. Contribute to newsgroups or discussion boards. Establish
   yourself as a helpful member of a community. Other
   members of the community who come to know and respect
   you will often refer you to others.

3. Niche directories or search engines. Find all the
   highly-targeted directories and SEs for your market,
   and then work to get listed. You'll be surprised at
   how many niche sites there are! Good places to start
   looking are http://yahoo.com/ and http://www.dmoz.com/ .

4. Build your link popularity. For example, you can trade
   links with other businesses in your market so that you
   can 'share' each other's traffic. Most of the major
   search engines take link popularity into consideration
   when ranking your site.

5. Endorsed mailings to other lists. Find the editor of a
   great newsletter, and offer your product or service to
   him for free in return for a review or an endorsed ad
   to his list. Endorsements from the editor can far
   outperform regular 'ads', since they come from someone
   they know and trust (the editor).

6. Testimonials. It's fine for you to say that your product
   or service is wonderful... but there's far more 'punch'
   when someone else says it! Testimonials show prospects
   that you have happy customers and helps them to make
   the decision to buy.

7. Use autoresponders to follow-up with your prospects. It
   has been proven time and time again that autoresponders
   can dramatically increase your profits! They're also
   great time-savers, saving you from following up with
   each prospect manually.

8. Ad swaps. You can get extra exposure for 'free' (no
   out-of-pocket expenses) by swapping ad space with another
   editor that caters to your audience. Plus it's a great
   way to put 'remnant' ad space to good use.

9. Join a webring. Link to other sites like yours and
   build an online 'community.'

10. Offer coupons or gift certificates to entice visitors
    to make a purchase *now*.

11. Make good use of referral marketing. Ask happy
    customers to refer prospects to you. Many people are
    so busy these days that they're willing to rely on a
    trusted friend or contact's advice -- it saves them
    the time necessary to do all the research themselves.

12. Write and distribute articles in your area of
    expertise. This is a great credibility-builder!
    People who appreciate what you have to say are much
    more likely to check out your business. Another 'bonus'
    is that articles are often archived on websites for
    visitors to refer to time and time again.

13. Become an 'expert'. If you like to write and have the
    time to do so, consider partnering with a high-traffic
    site within your niche market and offer to write a
    regular column or article. You establish credibility
    and get exposure; your partner site and their readers
    get great content.

14. Use a 'Recommend-It' or 'Refer-A-Friend' script. These
    scripts let visitors send your URL to friends.

15. Make it easy for others to link to your site. Consider
    adding a 'Link to Us' section where you provide the
    HTML that visitors can simply cut and paste to their
    own web pages. Again, this helps to build your link
    popularity (see point #4).

16. Hold contests. For example, every month you could give
    away one of your products to a lucky subscriber or
    customer.

17. Use a signature. Also known as 'sig files', a signature
    is a brief blurb about your business along with your
    URL and/or contact information. Put a signature on
    every piece of email you send out, as well as on any
    message board posts (if appropriate).

18. Give away a quality free eBook or report. eBooks and
    reports can be excellent viral marketing tools. You
    can even offer them as a 'premium' to other businesses
    within your niche, so that they can give it away to
    their own customers or subscribers. This is an
    effective way to build a network that will willingly
    promote your business for you! More on promoting free
    eBooks and how they can help you can be found in the
    article, '10 Quick Tips on How to Create, Distribute,
    and Profit from Free eBooks':
    http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/articles/ebooktips.html


Hopefully this has given you a few helpful ideas on how
to market your online business. In the next installment
of this series, you'll read about several marketing
techniques that may cost you money, but that can be worth
the investment many times over. The final installment is
all about marketing your online business in the 'offline'
world! Stay tuned.

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Angela is the editor of Online Business Basics, a practical
guide to building a business on a beginner's budget. It's
a proven hit with beginners, for the down-to-earth style
and loads of instantly useable tips! For details, visit
http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/article.html
OR request a series of 10 free reports to get you started:
mailto:businessbasics@workyourleads.com
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