What are the best ways to promote a site? (limited budget)

[Lohengrin]

[Baggs]

Have you thought of setting up a blog on a seperate domain, on a related subject that you can then use to promote your affiliate site.

It is often easier to promote a site where you are not overtly selling a product.

[Lohengrin]

Yes, I have thought about a blog, but I don't think having a novice talking
about products would draw in a lot people (I could be wrong though).

The main thing I'm wondering about is what are the best options if you have some money to spend on promoting your site.

[alexc]

So in addition to setting up your own blog, you could post comments to other more well trafficked blogs in a similar niche, and link to your site in those comments. It's free. Only problem is that it doesn't have a ton of exposure. Buying ads isn't a bad way to go, but with a limited budget you aren't likely to get many ad views. Also look into link exchanges, or paid link posting. Both of those might help you get a few more views on the cheap.

[KirkhamsEbooks.com]

[deannatroupe]

You could also set up a podcast. One easy way to do that is http://www.blogtalkradio.com
You can then have an interview with the owner of the product you are promoting on the podcast and mention that you're selling the product on your website.
The person you're interviewing will tell their list and that will bring listeners to your podcast. I hope that helps.

[kidino]

About viral... well, normally, we think about the viral thingy before building the website. And when you do build the website, you build it to support your viral efforts.

Let me explain... when I built my DIYMiniSite.com, I knew that I wanted to use viral marketing. And one way to FORCE the viral effect is to bribe for referral. I have a little system that I coded where I reward members for referring new members. It opens up secret hidden links. But some other rewards that you may have heard about are like affiliate commissions.

Anyway, if you don't have something like this built into your website, here's something else you can do. But this one requires manual labor...

What you can do is write an autoresponder message where you will give your readers a free ebook (that is worth something) when they blog about your website or put up a banner to your website. Tell them how to claim for their gift, ie, send an email to you with the link of their blog.

Alright, another idea -- build a list quickly and tell them about your website. Here's how... write an ebook that you can sell for $47. But then, contact JV partners to sell it for $17 where they will get 100% commission -- you get to build a list of course. You can easily do this with the $7 Script (Google it up if you don't know about this). Where to find your JV partners -- $7 Offer vendors of course, at 7DollarOffers.com. You also want to encourage your JV partners to plug your product into their autoresponder -- that'll guarantee you ongoing traffic.

Another viral idea, which is quite similar to the above. Write an ebook and sell master resale rights. But the best part is where you have an unannounced bonus. You tell about your bonus in your ebook. Customers would have to come to your squeeze page and subscribe to your mailing list. And again via your autoresponder, you tell your new subscribers about your main website. You see, as long as people are selling your product, selling the master resale rights, and others are selling it again and again ... it goes viral.

Now this can go crazy, but you have to get creative. It's about word of mouth marketing or creating buzz. Maybe you can create something funny, weird, outrageous ... and just plug your website somewhere along there. Hmm... I know that something that really took off sometime ago was when a blender company did videos about "Will it blend?", and one of the video was them blending an iPod.

Now this doesn't have to be a video. It can also be an ebook, poster, cheatsheet...

Oh yeah, cheatsheet is a good thing to create where people will willingly share with others. Don't forget to tell them how to share around. Tell them the link, create banners...

And don't forget to plug in your URL in all of your cheatsheet. This also works for some tools or useful resources. I created the Micro Niche Calculator (Google it) and the Underachievers liked it... Brought in a lot of traffic.

Alright... enough with viral.

You may also want to try article marketing. Write articles and submit them to directories like EzineArticles.com, GoArticles.com. You can do this yourself and it shouldn't cost much. If you are really into this, doing one article a day, or about 20-30 per month can really work wonders. Make sure you do some keyword research too. Go for 3-4 word phrases that people are looking for. Even if you pay for this, this would cost about $100 to $200 per month.

Other basic things you want to do is press release. Similarly like writing articles, but this time your submit to press release distribution service. Press release and articles not only bring in traffic but can also boost your search engine ranking.

Hmm.. what else. How about link buildings? The most basic thing to do is submit your website to some directories. I think you can easily find people who'd be willing to do it for pennies and submit your website to hundreds of directories manually.

After that, it's wise to network via blog comments. Don't just think them as link building but also for networking. Sometimes commenting at blogs can be like foruming. You start to build rapport with the blogger and also other readers.

Alright... I think I shared some really good ones here. Do update about what you are doing and the outcome. All the best...

[Lynn Terry]

Advertising and pay-per-click will both eat up the dollars really quick.

I would start instead with this list:



You also want to optimize your new site for free search engine traffic. If you arent sure how to do that, see my simple tutorial at:
http://www.clicknewz.com/634/keyword-placement/

Let me know if you have any questions

[Li Weng]