“Doing business without advertising is like winking at a girl in the dark. You know what you are doing, but nobody else does.” — Stewart Henderson Britt

Are you not getting the visitors to your web sites that you hoped for?

Perhaps it is because you are not exposing the opportunity to enough people.

Advertising your business is crucial to your success. It’s a requirement that you expose ENOUGH people to your opportunity on a REGULAR basis if you want to achieve the levels of success that will give you financial freedom. Perhaps the number one reason people fail online or offline is advertising and lack of advertising. If you are going to succeed, you must advertise.

It’s all about what they call in the advertising industry…”eyeballs.” You absolutely have to get enough eyeballs looking at your message. Trust me… those who are most successful with building a business on-line are consistently showing the opportunity to people on a regular basis.

Consistency is key
Another factor any successful advertiser will tell you is to be consistent in your advertising efforts. You want to be always exposing your message and not buying 10,000 visitors one month and then waiting 4 months to get another 10,000 as that does more harm than good.

There are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of ways to get those eyballs looking at your message. Your challenge is to find what works best for YOU and what YOU can afford.

Where do you advertise?
The short answer is anyplace and everyplace you can. Advertising opportunities are all around you and you are only limited by yourself.  My strategy has been to get my message in as many different places as I can and to expose it to as many eyeballs as I can. I’ve paid for some of the advertising I do, but I’m sure, like you, I don’t have deep pockets.

Here are a few paid methods to find people to look at your business:

Purchased leads – You could simply buy leads from a lead company online that does the advertising for you.

PPC – Pay Per Click is a good way to get really targeted prospects, but it can also be very expensive. Before going this route, be sure you understand how to set up your PPC account with the measures in place to protect you from explosive advertising costs. Make sure you put limits on the amount you want to spend and choose your keywords very carefully. If you’re unsure about all this, you might consider hiring someone to do this for you, but you also need to be careful when doing this.

Classified Ads – You can place a classified ad in your local newspaper or even regional or national ones. You can also run small ads in on-line ezines and sometimes can get a free classified ad for subscribing to the ezine. I don’t generally recommend wasting your time placing on-line classifieds in some of the on-line classified services as they will not produce very good results. Some exceptions might be to CraigsList that produces better results.

In case you don’t have much of an advertising budget, you can still get some good advertising by exchanging a bit of sweat equity… your time.

Below are some free advertising options for you to consider:

Article Writing – This is a great way to generate passive advertising. You write an article related to your business and submit it to the article directories on the net. You can also find companies who will do the submission for you but beware of these as they can get pricey and you never know for sure whether or not they will submit as they promise.

Safelists and List Builders – If used consistently, you will generate some prospects. Matching the right advertising message to the list you’re using is the secret of success with these. Safelists and List Builders are full of the freebie chasers who won’t ever buy anything online… unless you offer something that they want. I recommend you don’t try to sell your primary program with these, instead build your list of prospects.

Social Networks – These are great ways to get your business and yourself known, but just like any advertising there will be work involved and there are many ways to do things wrong, but only a few ways to do things right. For example, you don’t want to post blatant ads on social sites… instead you want to add value to the conversation and brand yourself as an expert others would want to follow. The good news about social sites is they are free and they have hundreds of millions of prospects. The bad news is you can waste a lot of time at these sites if you are not careful.

Traffic Exchanges – This is another usually free advertising service but instead of you getting emails like Safelists and List Builders, you generate advertising credits by viewing other websites in the traffic exchange. You want to be careful with Traffic Exchanges as they can be very distracting and you can waste a lot of time, but if you are consistent and you have the time to spend on these, you can generate some prospects over time. You’re not likely going to get a lot of sign ups or sales, but you can generate traffic to your squeeze pages where you should be capturing opt-in addresses. You can then communicate your message over and over again and as people get to know you better, they are more inclined to buy from you.

Email Signatures – This is one of the easiest ways to advertise because you simply include the link to the program you are involved with in all your emails. This is one of those little things that add up over time and also uses the power of viral advertising and marketing for you.

Your Own Website or Blog
You could pay to advertise on other people’s websites, but I really like advertising on my own website… mainly because it’s free.

Banner ads are seen all over the web and are clickable. If you have good traffic to your website or blog, consider putting up a few banner ads. You’ll find banners you can use in the members area of your primary business. Beware though, that click through rates on banner ads are not as plentiful as they were a few years ago. If you are using Traffic Exchanges, you should also submit your banner ads to those.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) – This is a very specialized kind of marketing and advertising but can pay off big for you over time. Don’t expect immediate results with SEO and plan on constantly working this type of advertising. You can get listed high in the search engines, but it will take some time and effort on your part. Also, don’t fall prey to the many SEO companies that promise high rankings for your site. Many of them will get you ranked for obscure search terms that won’t do you any good.

Perhaps you’ve heard it said, “Knowledge is Power.” Well, I would suggest that it’s not “knowledge” but the application of that knowledge that is real power. You might “know” what to do, but until you do it, nothing will happen.

So what is your time worth?
You must answer this and decide how you want to spend your time online or offline because every minute you spend online searching for free traffic and advertising is another minute you lose with your family or/or friends or doing something else.