Free ways to promote your site

1. Direct e-mail is the most effective way of promoting your web site. We will examine other methods of promotion, but none are as cost effective as direct e-mail. With the proliferation of free e-mail services such as Hotmail, many people as choosing this as their primary means of web site promotion. One reason for direct e-mail's effectiveness is that everyone who receives your message will read the subject line. No other form of commercial promotion can claim this. A catchy subject line can guarantee a high percentage of recipients will open your message. 2. Advertise in E-zines. E-zines offer most of the advantages of direct e-mail, without the risks or the effort. Additionally, e-zines usually reach very specific, targeted markets. This is the real beauty of e-zine advertising. General, untargeted mailings advertising a good product at a reasonable price generate responses on the order of 5%. Of these responses only about 3% will actually make a purchase. You can see how untargeted mailings could generate the need for you to do a large amount of work for very little return. With targeted advertising, I have experienced numbers more on the order of 7% response with 40% purchases. The reason for the dramatic difference is obvious. The readers of the e-zines were pre-qualified as interested in my products. Higher interest equals higher sales percentage. 3. List your Web site with the search engines. There are many search engines available on the Internet, with more coming online every day. The process of registering is very simple, but can consume a large amount of time. This is especially true when you consider that you will probably need to resubmit your site on a regular basis. www.freewebs.com/vorite My suggestion is that you focus your attention on the major search engines. Excite, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Lycos, Alta Vista, Hotbot and Yahoo probably account for 80% or more of the searches performed on the Internet. Also, I recommend that you avoid the myriad free submission services and take care of the submissions to these seven yourself, by hand. If you want to try the freebies for submission to the minor search engines, give it a shot, but your listing in the big seven is too important to take a chance on. 4. Buy banner ads. This does not mean avoid banner exchanges, however, you will receive better quality visitors from good banners placed on carefully selected, high volume web sites that receive visitors who may be interested in your product. There are many brokers, such as WPRC or Web that can assist you in placing your ads. To test the effectiveness of your banners, link each different ad to a different "doorway" page and monitor the traffic through your web site statistics. 5. Place ads on high traffic links pages and negotiate reciprocal links with complementary businesses. The links pages may not generate traffic for you directly but it is an inexpensive way to get your URL on many pages. This can improve your standing in search engines that use link popularity as part of their placement algorithm. Be cautious of who you exchange reciprocal links with. Try to find businesses that compliment yours, not compete with it. If you offer accessories for automobiles, link with auto dealers or auto parts suppliers. 6. Put your e-mail address and URL on all your company's print literature, letterhead, and display advertising. If you provide people a means to find out more about your products or services in a low pressure way, many will do so and some of those will buy. www.freewebs.com/vorite 7. Utilize the news groups. First, find the groups that are likely to be frequented by people interested in products such as yours. News might be of help to you as you perform the necessary research. It can search thousands of groups for particular subjects, revealing the groups for your to target. If you want any more info email me at voritecorp@yahoo.com.au