After reading about the frequently used methods, and somewhat used methods, of course a post about the rarely used methods was in order. The thing to remember when advertising and growing your business or website, is that what works for others will not necessarily work for you. You need to broaden your horizons and present your ideas to a variety of potential customers. How many people are interested in making money online, but do not have the time or are unsure of where to find ideas?

Rarely Used Methods

Word of Mouth

This one may be obvious, but many people do not advertise their business using word of mouth. Unfortunately, many “advertisers” who use this method come off too strong and leave a bad image for their company or website, which leaves their potential customers with a bad taste. You need to be casual and less forward than a salesmen when you are using this method.

Although it is done incorrectly very often, sometimes telling your friends, co-workers, or family members about your idea can definitely help it grow. As always, think about the exponential effect. You tell two friends and two family members. If each one of them tells two people as well, and you take the chain down until you reach level 5, that’s well over 100 people that heard about your idea because you told 4. Of course, as I tend to do, these are assumed statistics, but you might have a friend who tells their whole class about it. Either way, it can be an extremely effective way to advertise if you market towards the right crowd.

Facebook

(Alexa.com)

Although this is becoming increasingly more popular, still, many people fail to utilize Facebook. Like yesterday when I wrote about Myspace, Facebook is an extremely popular website. Now that anyone can join, it is very easy to build a network and market yourself. Likewise, you can mix this method with word of mouth, especially if you have or build a network of friends and family members on Facebook. When doing that, it becomes extremely easy to market your idea(s) to friends and family, and beyond that, there are many ways to advertise at no cost as well.

Forums

Many people shy away from this method as well. When I explain forums, I do not mean you need to purchase advertising, or plaster your advertisements and spam the users. I simply mean make a few posts a day until you become well known (which is not difficult if you write well and are kind to people), and put a few links in your signature. You can also ask for help analyzing or reviewing your layout or content. You never know, somebody who reviews your website may be interested in the content as well. If you are unsure of what forums to use, I would suggest Digital Point as a great place to start. Otherwise, simply Google “your_niche forums” and you will find a variety of different places to use.

Print Media (Business cards, Newspaper, etc.)

In the online business, it may not be shocking to many why this is rarely used. Similar to the other methods, this can be extremely beneficial as well. I got 250 free business cards, and I set a stack of 5-10 out randomly in various public places (restaurants, classrooms, computer labs, libraries) and if I am sitting around I will notice at least one person each time pick a card up. If you can attract someone to pick up your business card, that is half the battle. The rest is up to them. Especially if you are not advertising directly (trying to sell something to them), but instead informing them about potential ideas and, in my case, what my blog is about.

My Thoughts

I would recommend taking advantage of some of these lesser used methods, as in the end, they can play a large role in increasing your traffic. Aside from that, posting in forums, using Facebook, and talking to people are all 100% free, aside from your time. I think you need to pay shipping on the business cards, but still, that is a great way to do it as well. I even decided to throw in a stack of magnets as well, and those are pretty cool to stick on doors or garbage cans. You would be surprised how well a business card that looks like money would attract someone’s attention.

As promised, here is part 2 of the series (total of 3) about thinking of different ways to promote and gain exposure for your business. Part 1 dealt with the frequently used ways, and here we will touch base on the somewhat used methods. Of course, within part 3 I will explain some of the rarely used methods.

After understanding the differences between PPC (pay per click) and PTC (paid to click) advertising, you can realize why these methods are most frequently used. To clear up any confusion, PPC advertising is advertising you can purchase via AdWords, Yahoo Search Marketing, or Microsoft AdCenter. On the other hand, PTC advertising is where you pay to have your advertisement shown, but the people clicking your ad are actually being paid to do so. With PTC advertising, you will get a lot of clicks for a very low rate, but unfortunately some of the people are only there to make money as opposed to read the material.

If you understand why PPC and PTC advertising is most frequently used, you would probably realize a few of the types of advertising that are somewhat used.

Somewhat Used Methods

Private Advertising

Private advertising is becoming increasingly more popular. However, even at that many people are unsure of the benefits of advertising privately. Many cases people are unsure of the real value of the advertising they are receiving, and do not care about potential clicks per month based on impressions. Another reason that private advertising is not used very often is that many people would rather spend $10 per month on targeted PPC advertising, or even less on PTC advertising and will work on building their traffic from there. Speaking from personal experience, I did not touch base on any private advertising until last month (more than 6 months after I began blogging).

In order to effectively utilize private advertising, I would suggest having a decent amount of content to influence reader’s and make them want to return. Especially if these readers are coming from a notable blogger, it is always a good idea to make a first impression. After all, you only have one chance to make a first impression. Make it good.

Myspace

Whether people use Myspace to spam popular users profiles (I have honestly done that in the past before I started blogging to “promote” various offers - Needless to say, it did not work at all, but it did waste a lot of my time), or post bulletins, it is becoming more popular as well. As you will notice, 5.585% of internet users worldwide visit Myspace each day (Alexa). This may be shocking to some, and before I began researching Alexa daily, it was definitely quite the eye-opener for me as well.

Stay tuned tomorrow for the rarely used methods of advertising. I realize I may have missed some here and there, but these are the big ones. As you may have guessed, there are more rarely used methods than there are frequently or sometimes used methods.

What does that mean for you?

Take advantage of the methods that are not being utilized and maximize your traffic when doing so.

I wrote about thinking outside the box to make money a little while back, and I believe that this notion of thinking is widely overlooked. Whether you are using abstract ideas to make money, increase traffic, or simply to test statistics, these ideas can be extremely beneficial to you as a blogger or businessperson. There are many ways that people attempt to gain exposure for their affiliate links or their blog/website, and the advanced marketers and webmasters are affluent with many of this different types of marketing. However, it is those people who are beginning their “careers” online that are unsure of other ways to make money. As always, diversification is key. Saving a 25 page business report on a single media is not a good idea, so why would advertising in a single way be any different? It’s not. I will explain to you the different methods of gaining exposure, and explain to you why some of these ideas are overlooked.

The Most Used Methods

Paid To Click

Of course there are methods out there to help generate traffic and potentially make money, but they usually come at a high cost. However, if you are looking for quick exposure, and have something that will interest users, such as a funny picture, short joke, or catchy article, it would be useful to post advertisements on a site like AdBux or Online Cash Clicks. In fact, I think I spent $5 on an advertisement on AdBux and got over 1000 clicks. That’s a great deal, but I was just doing it as a test factor on a different website of mine to see the results. If I had linked to a funny picture or something like that, I’m sure the traffic would have done more browsing, and in turn, made my investment well worth it.

Pay Per Click

Similar to PTC sites, PPC advertising is very well known and can be extremely effective if you are smart with your advertising expenses. Of course it is good to test the waters and see how your traffic numbers are looking, but you can make a lot of money from affiliates, or increase your traffic significantly if you are a good internet marketer.

There are many other ways to increase your exposure, both sponsored and not. I will touch base and explain the Somewhat Used Methods, and The Rarely Used Methods later this week.

If you have not yet read part 1 of this series, I recommend doing so. As I explained, many people believe there are more benefits than hassles to blogging. However, there are always people who stray from the pack, and these people believe that blogging is more of a hassle than it is a benefit. Regardless of the earnings checks you present them, and the idea of having an office at home, they disregard the issues of simplicity, cost efficiency, and the ability to publish information instantaneously. Of course there can still be community interaction outside of the internet, but the ease of use on the internet is very different than that of the “real world.”

Blogging Hassles

Although everybody is becoming more technologically inclined, there are still people that believe technology hinders their performance. That is the “older” style of thinking, but some of the most successful businesses came about without the use of technology.

1. Technological Errors

Some people believe they would be better off performing business without using technology. Whether these errors come about via databases, networking, or the computers themselves, some people would rather not deal with that.

2. Lack Of Time

Others believe that the learning curve is too large for them to become technology inclined, and would rather keep out of the new age. After all, if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

3. Lack Of Instant Material

As I explained in part 1, publishing your content online is a great way to inform people instantly worldwide. Without the use of blogging (or websites in general), the ability to instantly publish knowledge goes out the door.

What Does This All Mean?

If you read both parts, you would notice that it was a lot easier to understand that blogging is more beneficial to new, small, and existing businesses because of the simplicity, cost effectiveness, and time you can transmit information. I had a hard time scraping together hassles of blogging because I believe it is extremely beneficial, and if you spend time working on and improving your online business, the sky is the limit. Make the most of the opportunities you are given, and if not, try to make opportunities happen.

Bloggers run into various problems and benefits when they go on their way in their careers. Some people view blogging as a waste of time and find better ways to network or communicate their ideas and products with others. However, there are some people who make their living online and can explain to you that it is extremely beneficial to blog and be able to do so from their home. Aside from the obvious facts about blogging, there are many reasons as to why blogging is beneficial not only to the blogger, but to their readers as well. In most cases, there seem to be more benefits to blogging than there are hassles if you have enough time to do so.

Benefits

The main idea of blogging is because you wish to teach or present your information and ideas to others. If you enjoyed writing but did not care if anybody read your work, you would simply publish your articles or posts in a word document and leave them on your computer for you to read. However, you want your material to be read and you want your e-voice to be heard. This is where the benefit of blogging plays a role.

1. Simplicity

Purchase a domain, buy some hosting, download blog software. For under $20 and a matter of minutes, your “business” can have a website up and running. I don’t really have to go into detail with how simple it is to create a blog or a business, but this reason is why there are so many online businesses appearing now. I cannot stress this point enough. Anybody, anywhere, at any time can make a website and have it up and running in minutes for anybody, anywhere, any time to read their material. I will explain this a little more in the 4th point.

2. Community Interaction

One you get up and running, you want to be heard. As you write content, you are essentially interacting with a community. You are publishing content so those people who are interested can read it. If you are a business blog, it is a great way to network and share your knowledge with an extremely large viewer base. Community interaction is the sole reason that there are so many businesses appearing now. It is extremely easy to be heard, and that is a very cheap way of marketing; word of mouth.

3. Extremely Cost Efficient

As I mentioned above, for less than $20 you can have a website up and running in a matter of minutes. Along with that, if your content is produced well (whether it be written, images, photography), your chances of thriving greatly exceed those of the people who copy content. Another reason that this is so beneficial and efficient, is if you become well known in your industry, word travels extremely fast and that is free advertising. Pretty cool that just doing what you do well will bring more people to your website because other people enjoy your material.

4. Instantaneous

Aside from being easy to use and cost effective, the second you publish your information in New York, it can be viewed in China, Australia, Canada, etc. This is common knowledge to many people, but you would be surprised how second nature this has become, yet how essential this is to an online business. This can make or break you.

What Does This All Mean?

Make the most of your opportunities. If a great opportunity presents itself to you, take advantage of it. I recently published an article about how to create a million dollar idea. These concepts are very similar, and the advantages of blogging for a small business or a sole proprietor far exceed the hassles if you ask me. Stay tuned for part 2 of the series where I will highlight the hassles of blogging.

The ecommerce web hosting is providing hosting to the growing business industries which are willing to go global. Whereas the cheap host facilities are taken up by the small businesses only catering a selected market on the net. The web hosting services are getting much popularity with the growing trend in internet marketing. The web site hosting facilities are offered by the web designers to anyone who is willing to pay a substantial amount. With search engine optimization tool the efficiency of the search engines enhances providing quality services to the end user. The wireless internet is thus in much demand with the increasing demand of internet marketing program.

This is part 3 of the series. You can find the previous posts here: Part 1: Balance, Part 2: Hard Work, Part 3: Stand Out From The Crowd.

As you previously read, I am writing this series to try to explain to bloggers how to be successful. Through my experiences and a lot of research I have been able to narrow successful blogging down into three main parts. The third part deals with making yourself and individual, and not just another robot blogger. What I mean by this is you need to make sure you are providing something different that other bloggers are not.

First and foremost readers will be drawn to your site layout or design. Whether poorly designed or well designed, readers will notice. This is why you should spend a decent amount of time creating a blog that is put together professionally, and do not just copy the template of another blogger. I have seen this time and time again, and I refuse to return to those blogs, simply due to the fact that they cannot individualize themselves.

Another key point that I have realized is the implementation of imagery. Make sure these images pertain to your topic and are placed properly throughout your articles. When doing that, you will notice that many people are drawn to these articles and will tend to read them. Would you rather read a complete page of text, or a page of text that is broken down by some neat looking images?

As you all knew already, one of the more important things to differentiate yourselves would be your content. Not only are duplicate pages frowned upon by viewers, but the search engine and page rank calculators are not friendly with duplicate pages either. As well as seeing the exact same template on various websites, I have seen articles that have been copied and pasted, with very few changes. Personally, I will also not visit those blogs again, as if you cannot even produce your own content, why are you even blogging?

The last thing I have noticed a couple successful bloggers doing would be free prize giveaways. Whether these prizes are for the most comments in a week, randomly drawn from the pool of commentators, or you create some other system, prizes are definitely a way to keep readers interested. After all, who doesn’t like free stuff?

That last point brings up a pretty neat idea. Once traffic grows a little here, I might have to create some type of free prize giveaway myself. Does anybody have any ideas? I would be happy to hear suggestions of how to hold the prize giveaway, and also what people would like to get.

This is the second of three parts in this series. Part 1: Balance, Part 2: Hard Work, Part 3: Stand Out From The Crowd.

I’m happy to announce and publish the first series here. Included here you will find the second key to success when blogging. That key is hard work.

Many people claim all of these get rich quick schemes, or easy money online. In all of my experiences, to make any decent money, some amount of work must be put in. The most success I had with the least amount of up front work was my experiences with eDataJob. I will not try to sell you on that, as I already provided a post, but there was very little up front work to make the amount of money that I did from that opportunity. However, work was still needed, and that is the key of this post.

After reading multiple articles about successful blogging and working hard, the general assumption is that where there is hard work, success is not far away. However, this hard work must be consistent in order to be successful. By that I mean that you cannot work hard for a week or two and then instantly think you will be one of the more successful bloggers. A friend told me a quote about working out:

When I run, I go for 21 minutes. If I can go for 20 minutes, why not do 21?

I countered with the response of “why not do 30, 60, 90″ but that’s another story. The point is that if you are working on your blog anyways, make it worth your while. When you are doing something, go at it 100%. Do not half-ass your work. With a substantial effort, your time and work will be rewarded.

I have been working on this blog for just over 2 weeks, and I have worked hard at creating an encouraging learning environment to help teach people about making money online. With my work, I have recognized my Technorati rankings on the rise (which isn’t saying much because of how “young” this blog is, but still). Traffic has also increased substantially, in fact increases have been upwards of 300% unique visitors per day.

Enough of my short earned success though. The underlying point is that you are reading this because you wish to be successful. Therefore I can assume that you want to put forth some effort to reach your goals. Remember that when you are working, make sure you work 100% so you are not wasting your time. Your efforts will be rewarded.

As with anything, the key to success is balance. Maintenance of this balance is probably the most important key to success. According to the USDA Dietary Guidelines:

Consume a variety of nutrient-dense foods and drinks among the basic food groups. Choose foods that restrict your intake of saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, added sugars, salt, and alcohol.

I would be willing to bet that many of you are wondering what this has to do with blogging. The whole issue dealing with variety is an umbrella statement that you must remain in balance with whatever you plan to do, or you will fall. Time and time again, being unbalanced will result in failure. Whether you are eating an unhealthy diet and not exercising enough, or working too much and not resting enough both have detrimental effects.

Although blogging requires a lot of work, you must balance your time between writing, reading, editing, and taking breaks from your blog. The common misconception is that more is better. With blogging, however, balance is the key. As I have said previously, make sure your frequency of posts is consistent. I have seen blogs fail time and time again due to inconsistency. Bloggers begin publishing 1 post per day, and gradually increase their posts until they reach 8-10 posts per day. However, publishing 8-10 content-rich posts is extremely hard to maintain, and then it becomes too much of a hassle for the bloggers so they stop completely. This is where balance remains important. I would recommend a post count of anywhere from 1-5 per day, depending on your backlog, and the material you are writing about. This way, your readers know how many posts to expect from you, and are not sitting there wondering what happened if your post numbers have very little variation.

This is part 1 of a 3 part series. Still to come - Part 2: Hard work, Part 3: Stand Out From the Crowd