| How "NOT TO" Promote your Business by Adam Buhler The internet is full of self proclaimed "Internet Marketers who are more than willing to fill your head full of traffic generating jargon, everyone seems to have their own unique theory. I would like to take a break from the norm and offer you A couple of tips on how not to promote your business. Many people fall victim to these "myths" when starting an online business. (I know I did!) 1) "Spamming" There are many forms of spamming flying around today, a few of the most common are: [Unsolicited Email Spamming]- Ever see your inbox overflowing with Garbage like "Make 5,000 a month, Guaranteed!". If you have then you are more than aware of what a waste of this is, these never make it anywhere but the recycle bin on my computer. [Chat Room Spamming]- This was one of my favorite time wasting activities as a newbie. I would log onto Yahoo chat with (what I thought) was a clever handle and proceed to toss my website address around until everyone had me on ignore! Anyone who uses Yahoo chat will undoubtedly agree with What a waste of time this is! [Forum Spamming]- Anyone ever see a discussion board with a post such as, "Make 0,000 with my online casino affiliate program". If you have, ever notice how many fewer hits such a thread has than a true post like "Search Engine Optimization" has? I think you get my drift. These are just a few examples of one of the biggest wastes of time in an online marketers life, bottom line... you won't make one red cent with lowly tactics like these. 2) "Traffic Exchange Programs" These are your average 1:1 click exchange programs offering you the opportunity to surf other peoples websites in exchange for them being sent to yours. Sounds great right? Let's check the facts: I recently conducted an experiment in which I spent one hour collecting clicks through one of the better known 1:1 exchange programs. For one hour of miserably repetitive clicking, I generated just over 100 credits, meaning my site received 100 hits as well. Sit back and collect my sales time? WRONG! After tracking the traffic to my site I was horrified by what I saw... In just over one hundred hits to my site the average length of every visitors stay was under 18 seconds! And from all of my drudgery, I managed ONE lousy clickthrough! Let's think about this for a moment, one click out of just over a hundred Hits is a clickthrough rate of less than 1%, now if you spent TEN hours Clicking your mouse for measly credits (you'd have more patience than me!) You would generate about 100 credits an hour for a grand total of just over 1000 hits. (1% of 1000=10) That's ten measly clickthroughs for over ten hours of wasted time, not to mention that only 0.5%-1% of those ten people will buy from you, which ends up in one big ZERO for your time. These are two major mistakes many online marketers never get past. After chalking up a big zero through their wasted efforts, they write Internet marketing off as a waste of time. --- Adam Buhler owns Affiliate Programs Directory: http://www.smokesoft.net and is the author of the weekly newsletter "Affiliate Secrets". A free copy of the ebook "Internet Cash Machines". Subscribes at: http://www.smokesoft.net/newsletter.html • More internet marketing articles by Adam Buhler
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