Thanks to “Johan” from the SFI Discussion Board…

Contrary to what some may say, free advertising on the Internet is NOT a waste of time. Many SFI Affiliates have successfully used free classified ad posting to build strong SFI home businesses for themselves. Although it typically does take more of a time investment than other, more costly methods, when used effectively, free advertising can truly take your SFI business to the next level!

If you’ve tried free advertising in the past and have not gotten the results you were looking for, it may simply be that you’re just not going about it the right way. This guide discusses how you can effectively use this form of advertising to successfully build your SFI home business, increase your sales, and raise your commission checks.

Before You Start With Free Ads

Before posting free ads, it’s STRONGLY recommended that you set up an extra business e-mail address. Free classifieds are free for a reason: When you post ads, you will receive “confirmation e-mails” that your ads were posted. If you post to classified networks, you can receive hundreds of confirmation e-mails per day.

Simply set up a free Hotmail or Yahoo account to catch these emails. Then once a week, clean up your e-mail account by deleting all e-mails, so your inbox doesn’t get full. In many cases, you must register and verify your business e-mail address before you can post your ad. Use the same password for all registrations so you easily can remember it.

Why You Should Post Your Ads On A Tuesday 12 Noon CST

Statistics are very important for a successful ad campaign. For example, you can use statistics to figure out when it’s more likely that people will find your ad. First, let’s take a look at some charts that display statistics collected from personal Websites:

Here is a graphical chart that displays how Internet traffic flows during the hours of the day:

This chart displays how traffic flow during the days of the week:

This chart displays how much of that traffic comes from different timezones:

When you combine these statistics, you’ll see that it’s best to post an ad on a Tuesday, 12 noon CST, the day and time when most people you target are active on the Internet. You can also see that it’s a waste of time to post an ad at 5 a.m. on a Saturday. By taking advantage of these facts, you can improve your results by 10 times or more.

Stay Focused!

Try to stay focused when you post ads. It’s easy to get distracted by some advertising that says: “Post 2000 ads here!” or “This submit software posts to 500,000 sites with a click of a button!” or something similar. You will find a lot of attractive offers on those sites because they know that you are a targeted customer! One good rule is:

You will never find anyone advertising effective advertising.

Logic: If the advertising is effective, it will be used by the owner himself.

Submission software is useless, because it posts to sites no real human visits. All good classified ad sites have protection against those type of submission programs. Posting manually or with the help of a typing program like AdWizard are the best methods (the only methods).

How To Place Your Ads

Place your ads in categories such as, Business Opportunities, Work At Home, Home Business, MLM, and the like. Do not post ads in unrelated categories. If you have to option to post in several relating categories, do so.

In many cases, there is a form where you can fill in your Website URL. Sometimes you have to include your URL in the ad description. Either way, ALWAYS include your site’s URL. When you start to post free classified ads, you can do it without adding the sites to the AdWizard program mentioned above (if you have chosen to use that software). But as soon as your tracking shows that a site is giving you visitors, add this page to the AdWizard or-at the very least-save or write down the URL.

Your goal is to find as many classified ad sites that bring a positive result; those sites will be your goldmines! A site that gives you a visitor per day or at least every second day is a good site. Don’t waste your time posting ads to sites that do not give you any visitors. As you go along, you’ll see that the more ads you post to different sites and track the results, the more and better sites you will find. This is the secret behind effective free advertising, as your results will inevitably get better every day. To what degree depends on your effort.

How Often To Place Your Ads

This depends on whether you find a high-traffic free ad site. Sometimes, your ad can roll off the site in one hour or faster. Sometimes, it stays for weeks. Generally, however, you should post to your free ad sites once every day. Be aware, though, that if you post on a site where no one else is posting, multiple ads from you may appear a little silly. Therefore, it’s a good idea to check out a site before you post your ad a second time.

Finding Classified Ad Sites

You will find some classified ad sites through the SFI Dboard Resource Center, but it’s probably a good idea for you to search for more online sites on your own.

One major mistake people make is that they search for classified ad sites by doing an online search for “classified ad sites.”

For example, if you go to a search engine and search for “classified ad sites,” you will, no doubt, find a lot of ad sites. BUT is that what the people you are trying to reach (your target audience) do?

No! They search for a phrase like “work at home,” “home based business,” etc.

So, if you place ads on classified ad sites you found while searching for “classified ad sites,” your ads will be on pages your targeted visitors never find.

Put yourself in the shoes of someone who’s looking for a work-at-home opportunity. How would they go about searching for this topic on the Internet? Think of the phrases they might type in their favorite search engine’s search box. Now, type one of those phrases in the search box of the major search engines, and research the sites that show up in the results. Then, try those phrases with different search engines (Yahoo!, MSN, Google, Lycos, etc.).

When you’re conducting your research, go to EVERY site that comes up in the first 20 matches. Take notes or print out the results, especially the Yahoo! and Google results.

Finding classified ad sites in this way is a little harder and more time consuming, but it’s well worth the extra trouble!

Tracking Your Results

Effective tracking is why many SFI Affiliates are able to build profitable businesses. It’s also at this point that many marketers fail. You must have a personal Website to track your advertising effectively.

By adding a piece of HTML code to your Website, you will discover statistics about your visitors. The most important stats are how many visitors you have and from where they come. You will be able to find out the exact advertisement that attracted the person to come to your site. By placing advertising and tracking your results, you will find out where you should continue to place ads, and where you should stop wasting your time!

Yet another method of tracking your results are to imbed keycode numbers (anything from 1 to 9999) into your SFI Gateway URLs in your SFI advertisements. When an affiliate joins the SFI program, they will be listed in your Genealogy with the keycode number you assigned to that ad.

So, for example, if you run an ad and give your SFI Free Gateway URL for viewers to go to for more information, your URL would look like this:

http://www.moreinfo247.com/9291884/FREE

Now, let’s say that you assign a keycode number of 1000 for a specific ad. Your Gateway will then appear like this:

http://www.moreinfo247.com/9291884.1000/FREE

Anyone clicking that link and then joining the SFI program will then appear in your Genealogy report with the number “1000″ next to their name.

If you compare this type of tracking with that of offline advertising, which is very hard to track with statistics, Internet marketing is a playground for those of you who like to have control over what happens.

Here’s an example offline scenario: you open a new bookstore in your town and want to tell everyone about it. You place ads in different categories of newspapers and send out commercial mailings to mailboxes all over town. People start to visit your bookstore and business is OK. You figure that your advertising campaign worked, but have no idea WHAT aspect of the campaign actually brought the customers in. At this point, your only option is to start asking every visitor that came to your shop where they found out about it. This is hardly practical.

However, with Internet marketing, it’s a breeze!

Place ads during the most active hours on the day. Then, at the end of the day, log in and make notes of the Websites that gave you a positive result. If you repeat the procedures outlined in this article every day, you will soon have many Websites sending you visitors and your results will improve steadily, step by step, day by day.

SFI is the one of the oldest and most respected online business opportunities online. Join now buy clicking the banner below!

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Technorati Tags: advertising

All the products that you want to sell online are ready. You have already signed up with the Google Adsense program or with other affiliate marketing programs and you have already prepared the ad you want to post on your affiliate’s site. Your mind is now set to being the next most successful online businessman. But is there anything else that you might have forgotten to prepare? Maybe none. Beside website SEO , how about your landing pages? Are they all set for your business?

Landing pages are simply web pages where visitors are directed to whenever they click a result in a web search or whenever they click a web ad. For affiliate marketing, landing pages would refer to the web page where you, as a merchant, would want your potential customer to be directed after clicking your ad on your affiliate’s website. Landing pages are, at most times, nothing really different from other web pages in a particular website, especially if the said website is an e-commerce site. Some online businessmen would even use the homepage of their websites as the landing page for their ads. Are these businessmen making a big mistake? Or should you follow their method in creating landing pages for their ads?

Reason no. 1: It is the only way you earn conversions in an affiliate marketing program.

There are a variety of affiliate marketing programs today, but most of these programs let the merchant pay the affiliate in a pay per click basis. Basically, all you have to do is sign up with the program and submit your ad. The program owner would then distribute your ad to various affiliates who would then place your ad on their websites. Whenever your ad is clicked, a visitor would be directed to your landing page and you would have to pay the affiliate for his service.

As a merchant, you earn in an affiliate program through conversions—that is whenever a visitor that is directed to your site actually buys a product on your site. Without these conversions, you actually earn nothing from the program. Also, the more visitors that your affiliates have directed to your site, the larger would your expense be. And the only way that you can recover from these expenses is through conversions.

Now, you sure won’t get any conversion if you have posted an ad on your affiliate’s site without an actual landing page for the potential customer to be redirected into. It’s just like advertising a product without actually having a store to sell your product. Your advertisement may be enticing enough to encourage people to purchase a product, but without the landing page, how will they know how to purchase the product

It is therefore important to have landing pages for your ads because it is the only way for you to earn something in an affiliate program. Without landing pages, all you do is spend money paying your affiliates without actually getting anything in return.

Reason no. 2: Other web pages may just not be enough.

Many people make the mistake of making their website’s homepage as the landing page for their ads. The same is true for those who make use of other pages like a “contact us” page or a product page. Homepages are often designed to serve multiple users and contains a lot of links to other pages or to other websites. The same is with the other two pages mentioned. If you want to be successful in an affiliate program, we’re sure that you don’t want your landing page to cater to the needs of various people, most of which may not be really interested with your product.

When choosing a landing page, you must always have the customer directed into that page in mind. Therefore, your landing page must be relevant to the keywords and the contents you placed on your ad. It is also important that the landing page can induce your visitor to take action—that is to purchase your product or at least provide leads for potential customers.

Final Word

You probably entered into an affiliate marketing program with these things in mind: to save on advertising expenses and to gain more profit. But if you get into an affiliate marketing program without actually having a landing page, you’ll end up paying too much without getting anything in return. So if you still don’t have a landing page for your ads, you better start creating one now. And don’t get us wrong; it isn’t enough for you to have just a landing page—it should be a great landing page!

About the Author:
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Jeff Houdyschell provides proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Technorati Tags: affiliate marketing, website SEO, landing page, Landing page, affiliate marketing, affiliate marketing, advertising, landing page

Do you have concerns like: How much of my time is this going to take up? How long should each email be and how many emails should I send out in total? What if I no longer have anything relevant to say? Can I keep up the quality of my newsletter over a certain length of time?

The first thing that you must remember is to always offer some interesting and useful information. You will no longer have any subscribers if you do not. Next, you will want your newsletter to remain fairly short. These days, people are inundated with emails, so they will appreciate it if you send them something that they can quickly scan and then put to good use.

Put some thought into the best possible format for your emails. You will want a model that can be easily reproduced week after week. To make your job simplier, you can choose any one of the following newsletter writing tips as your standard format or you can combine them, whichever. The final choice is yours.

1. Tip of the Week

Come up with at least 24 tips on your main topic. You could brainstorm a specific topic and get enough content for at least 6 months of weekly newsletters. When you focus on your area of expertise this should not be a problem. You will find it best to do this by (a) explaining the problem and then (b) offering a tip that will solve the problem. The length of each email should be from 150-500 words.

2. Top Ten

This format is easy to create and it works. For example, if you are an expert in health and fitness you could give advice on the “Top Ten Health and Fitness Tips”,”Top Ten Tummy Flattening Techniques”, “Top Ten Weight Loss Tricks for 2007″. Be sure not to go over board with the word length, just a few sentences for each tip will be fine, not half the page.

3. Three Ways to…

Finding ten ways to do things can sometimes be a little challenging. A quick newsletter tip is to provide only three tips instead; it is much simpler and can be alternated with the “Top Ten” format.

4. Before and After

Just like the “Tip of the Week” format, this tip introduces a problem and then immediately provides a solution. The “before and after” format does however work better with case studies as this is one way of interacting directly with your clients.You can ask them to send in details of something in their possession that requires a makeover; such as a website page, an article, their wardrobe etc, and then you can present them with your solutions.

Or you can ask for “before and after” examples from your readers who have been able to do this themselves, and with their permission show them to your other subscribers. (If you are using text only format for your newsletter, then you can include a link to your website page which has the photos on it). This especially works well if your newsletter is related to health and fitness – the photos will motivate your readers when they see the changes of others through diet and exercise, even weight training.

5. Checklists

About the Author: Connie McKenzie is a full-time work at home mom who is dedicated to providing detailed information on various subjects including working from home. Discover how you can build a website and turn it into a profitable online business, watch the free video at => http://www.getqualityresults.com.

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Posted By Jeff Houdyschell providing proven income opportunities, ideas and information for the best work at home jobs, visit: http://www.eSmartJob.com

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Email marketing gets results but for the kind of results that marketers rave about it’s essential to develop targeted email marketing campaigns – campaigns that identify and reach the people most likely to respond.

Without effective targeting, your email campaign – any marketing, for that matter – will be a hit and miss affair resulting in low response rates and wasted marketing dollars. It will also be a complete waste of the key strength of email marketing: that it can be targeted more effectively than any other marketing.

It simply doesn’t make sense to broadcast to all and sundry when you can focus your efforts – and your dollars – on the people most likely to buy.

Identify your target markets

To identify your target markets, first break down or “segment” your market into groups of people likely to have similar needs and wants. Segmentation can be along any lines you like. For instance, by age group, gender, employment status, location, lifestyle, attitudes, concerns, ethnicity, skill level, and so on.

The idea is to recognise that there is no such thing as an “average” customer. Different types of people have different needs and wants. Consequently, some groups will find the particular (and ideally, unique) benefits of your products and services more appealing than others. These are your target markets.

Because email marketing can reach very specific types of people you can take segmentation to some lengths, for highly-targeted email marketing campaigns. There will almost always be an email list/newsletter to match.

However, target markets must remain large enough to justify the time and effort if not the expense (targeted email marketing is cheap) of a dedicated email campaign.

Ideally, you will hit on market segments that are a good size and also underserved by competitors – a niche marketing opportunity. This is why it is worthwhile spending some time on segmentation.

Create a targeted email marketing message

Having identified your target markets, don’t drop the ball with your message.

You will need to develop a separate email message or “creative” for each target market, focusing on their particular needs and wants, and how your particular products or services can fulfil them. Bring your “unique selling proposition” into play, to demonstrate how you can fulfil them better than your competitors.

It’s also important to speak your target market’s language. Use an appropriate style and tone, and words which have the greatest impact with that market. For example, “affordable,” “stylish,” “durable,” “easy-to-use,” “honest,” “fast.”

In short, create an email that is highly-relevant and therefore highly-interesting to your target market.

Write an effective subject line

There is plenty of advice available on writing marketing email subject lines. In summary, they should be straightforward, contain your business name, be both informative and relevant, and as short as possible. They should capture the essence of your email. For this reason they are best written after not before the message.

An excellent side-benefit of targeted email marketing is that it is much easier to write with specific types of people in mind than for mass audiences. Great news if like most people you hate writing promotional copy.

Select targeted email marketing lists

The next step in your targeted email marketing campaign is to find email lists that reach your target market. For most small and home businesses, the most affordable option will be email newsletters (ezines) with a subscriber profile matching your target market. Solo ads – emails sent to subscribers separately from the newsletter – are highly-affordable.

Most email newsletters are listed in directories, such as FindEzines, Zinester, EzineHub and the Directory of Ezines. (Search for “ezine directory”.)

Target the right time

With the key elements of your targeted email marketing campaign in place, there is one more factor to consider before you send: timing.

An advantage of email marketing is that campaigns can be timed to the minute. Think about your target market’s lifestyle to choose the best time to send. Ideally, it will be a time when they not only check their email but also have time to give it their attention.

For moms this might be late in the evening when the kids are in bed. For young professionals with an active social life, it might be lunchtime, when they are neither working or out on the town. Trust your common sense on this one. Statistics on the most popular email opening times are misleading.

Test your targeted email marketing campaign

My piece of final advice on targeted email marketing is to test your campaign. Ad testing is standard procedure for large companies. Thanks to the affordability of email, it’s an option for small businesses too.

Once you have perfected your targeted email marketing campaign you can invest in more expensive lists and roll out your campaign with confidence.

About the Author: Caroline Mackenzie’s articles provide practical advice and ideas for success in home business. She also owns http://LucentData.com, where members have access to a wide range of ebooks and software, including email marketing ebooks, to use or resell in their home business. Membership and downloads are still free.

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Perhaps the key to successfully spreading the word of your business home -
internet marketing, promotion sales, and even contests are only some of the
ways to do it – is to allocate a certain portion of your budget for one two
high power advertisements with online giants, and an equal chunk for placing
ads with a large number of affiliates who will place your ads on their
pages. The latter is just as effective as the former, especially considering
that many of the webmasters have their own loyal following of friends and
families who want to see their sites succeed.

By relying heavily on the smaller affiliates you will not only be able to
bring earnings from your business home, internet marketing promotion ideas
will actually put your name into the forefront of those who are looking for
your products!  After all, with small affiliates you will be able to work
together to generate powerful and highly creative marketing campaigns,
whereas your creativity will be seriously hampered with the corporate giants
who are far less flexible; therefore, smaller is indeed better!

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In the earlier days of advertising, business internet marketing took the
form of banner ads. Many of these banner ads sought to attract customers by being brighter and more colorful than the competition. This soon translated into neon green banner ads that would make your eyes ache. Soon this color war was not enough, and movement was added to the banners. Thus, banner ad advertising – business internet marketing at its worst in some cases – got a bad reputation and many a webmaster took down many of the more obnoxious ads. Clearly, this left merchants clamoring for other avenues of advertising their wares and services.

Those who were ad savvy toned down their banner ads to be tastefully
constructed and pleasing to the eye. Rather than going for shock value they enlisted the help of affiliates to spread the word about their products. Additionally, these internet entrepreneurs looked to other media to spread the word of their wares, and quickly these leaps of faith paid off. Print ads are now routinely taken out for online businesses, and in many cases a website takes the place of a telephone number. Savvy advertising – business internet marketing at its best – has once again reclaimed the world wide market place and made it a friendly place for consumers and a competitive environment for merchants.

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