We currently live in a frugal society. With talk about financial meltdowns and potential looming depressions, people are trying to find out how to save a dollar wherever they can.
While many internet marketers have decided that they’re not going to participate in a recession and that they’re going to keep thinking positive and working toward their financial and entrepreneurial goals, it’s not a bad idea to make every online advertising dollar count and cut costs wherever possible.
Online Advertising can be expensive but it doesn’t always have to break the bank. Instead of working solely at pay per click type campaigns with a tier one search engine, here are some creative online advertising methods that will cost you less.
Tier 2 Pay Per Click Campaigns
You might think all the best traffic is on Google but there are a lot of tier 2 search engines that cost substantially less to advertise on but that do reach a wide audience.
Another bonus of advertising on tier 2 Pay Per Click programmes is that it can be much easier to get to the top of the SERPs with your organic campaigns as well. Some people spend a lot of money on these campaigns and if you’re in a seemingly saturated niche, there is a lot less competition on some of the tier 2 sites.
Look for the most popular search engines that are tier 2 in a local area that you’re targeting as well. In Australia, for instance, Web Wombat is really popular and costs substantially less than Google.
Free Online Advertising Trials
A lot of free trials are given out for new PPC campaign clients. If you’ve never before done one, you should spend plenty of time reading up on them and then utilise a coupon code to see how well you can fare.
Plenty of new networks will offer two for one deals or discounts for ad space as well and a free trial can help you ascertain whether or not a particular Online Advertising programme is worth an investment from you.
Bartering
Trade links with people and see if you can help one another get more traffic. You can do guest posts on each other’s blogs and do social bookmarking for one another as well.
If you write a great article, ask your friends for a Digg. If you put sharing tools on your site, people could bookmark your article on Delicious or Twitter. Social media can be very helpful in terms of getting you free traffic!
Consider bartering with banners and link signature space as well!
Affiliate Programs
One of the best ways to sell more of what you want to sell is to set up an affiliate program and incent others to sell for you. Sites like ClickBank have steeper setup fees than some others so you might consider doing some research for high yield / low cost networks.
E-Junkie, for instance, charges a low monthly fee instead of a percentage of each sale and this can save you money while also attracting affiliates who will sell for you.
Website Advertising
You can pay a few dollars for a link on someone’s high traffic blog, a low monthly cost to display a banner in a prominent place on a popular website, and you can find forums with high traffic that charge a low fee for advertising services as well.
There are going to be times when you need to pay for expensive advertising to get the best results but due to the social nature of the internet and due to the vast amount of Online Advertising options, you can definitely diversify and find that some of the lesser expensive options could bring about great results.
Have a most outstanding day.
Sean RasmussenAussie Internet Marketing
www.SeanSEO.com © 2008 - 2010
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
Good tips, Sean. Doing proper research before buying banners is a good idea…a banner can send a ton of traffic!
Hi Sean,
Again, this is excellent advice. I read about the tier 2 search engines in an earlier post and I ‘m going to make use of them. Thanks for letting us know that we might be able to get a free PPC trial. That would be awesome. There’s just so much information to apply.
Clever idea to go to Tier 2 Search engines for paid advertising. I have received some vouchers from Google for PPC, unfortunately they expired by now
Hi Renee,
It’s okay, Google always offers more coupons. I often see them advertised on my gmail account when I’m reading my emails. The next time I see one, I’ll send you one.
Hi Sean,
Online advertising is something probably all Internet Marketers need to think about at one time or another. There are cheaper options then Google and it’s really good to know about them before starting an advertising campaign.
So pleased to learn in this article that an Australian search engine, Web Wonbat is available. It’s a cheaper option for advertising that Google so I’m interested. Also interested in having a look at the E-Junkie Affiliate program site. Wow! A great information article here Sean.
There are lot’s of really good ideas here on how to save money on online advertising.
This is a very good reference to have as I build my online presence and blogs.
I am quite interested in affiliate programs.