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 Did you realize there are only three
types of online promotion?... This statement may seem odd
and even untrue in your mind, but I am speaking in more
general terms than you might be thinking.
Let me explain.
The three types of promotion are Junk, Active and Passive
promotions.
JUNK PROMOTIONS ARE MONEY PITS
Junk promotions are those that seem to produce results,
but by their very nature are really only illusionary
promotions.
For example, let me begin with FFA (Free For All) pages.
You might find yourself subscribing to a submission
program that tricks you into believing you are submitting
your links to tens of thousands search engines.
According to the Open Directory website, they have only
approved 1705 search engines and directories for inclusion
in their database (http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Searching/).
I like using the DMOZ directory as an example because
submitted links are tested by human beings with integrity,
for the honesty used in site description. Search Engine
Watch and other search watchers tend to show fewer than
these 1705 engines, primarily because a lot of the engines
provide very little value.
Yes, you can submit your URL to a FFA page, but FFA’s
usually only permit 100 or 1000 links on their page at any
one time. So, if ten thousand people are submitting a link
to an FFA page on a daily basis, then the average life of
your link is between seven minutes and 144 minutes. I
suspect the actual number of submitters is much higher and
the results are much worse. Given that few people surf FFA
pages, the chances of your submission being of any real
value is practically nill!
Most of the people telling you that you can submit your
site to tens of thousands of search engines are truly only
submitting your site to FFA pages! Beware of the false
promises.
Another junk promotion method is Safe Lists. A safe list
is a mailing group that is signed up to be received by
people who want to submit their own ads. Now, most safe
lists have thousands of subscribers who are able to submit
their ads daily or weekly. The person signed up to receive
the list will receive anywhere from twenty to 140+
messages a day from the list. These messages will be
received by people only interested in promoting their own
thing who do not have the right motivation to open, let
alone read Your Advertising. As a result, thousands of
messages go out daily or weekly that will never be seen by
anyone but the sender of the ad. Where is the value in
that? There is none.
ACTIVE PROMOTIONS
Active promotions are the type that require you to go out
on a daily basis or a weekly basis and put out your
advertisements. With active promotions, you will either
place your advertising or you will not sell your products
or services. Your choice is simple --- work or starve.
Examples of active promotions include Pay Per Click Search
Engines (PPCSE’s), Direct Email, Ezine Advertising, Solo
Ezine Ads, Newsletter Publishing, Ezine Ad Swaps,
Classified Ads, Auctions, Site Sponsorship and Banner Ads.
Some people are able to utilize these methods very
productively, while others are destined to drop their
money into the bottomless pit of failed Internet
promotions.
PASSIVE PROMOTIONS
Passive promotions are those promotions that can continue
to provide results for you long after you have invested
the work to make them available to the Internet community.
Examples of passive promotions include: Link Exchanges,
Articles, Ebooks, Content Exchanges and Writing
Testimonials for others.
Let’s look at articles as a solid example of my point.
You are reading an article that I have written to promote
my own business. This article is timeless and therefore
could have been written five years ago and still have been
as valuable as it is today.
Due to the fact that the article is timeless, it can and
will be placed in newsletters/ezines and their
accompanying online archives, on websites and in ebooks
for many more years to come.
As a result, this article will continue to serve me well
beyond the time in which I wrote it and submitted it to
publishers and webmasters for public consumption and
publication.
This is the best example I can give you of an excellent
passive promotional method.
AVOID THE MONEY PITS
Many try and even fewer succeed to conquer the Internet
and to produce their dreams of online wealth.
My hope is that you will be one of the people who conquer
the challenges before you and to make a nice living while
working online. It will take drive, determination, study
plus trial and error, but you can make it work for you.
Please continue to educate yourself so that you can avoid
the money pits - instead, strive to find the money
barrels. It can be done. I am living proof.
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