In the previous blog posts, popular strategies that will help you promote your site are listed. This article will delve deeper into the topic to bring you alternative and less explored ways to market your website.

·         Affiliate Programs – you can pay your affiliates to show your ads. You can set your own payment scheme; for example, you only need to pay when a customer actually clicks-through or if they buy something from your company. This can be an effective technique but the challenge lies in finding reliable affiliates.

·         Email newsletter advertising – advertisements can be displayed in newsletters of existing ezines. Believed to be moderately effective, it is a good way to promote your site if you are affiliated with a partner that has a large target customer base.

·         Networking –online communities such as blogs, forums, and even social networks can be a good advertising medium especially if you are a well-regarded member of these communities.

·         Viral Marketing – your site is promoted when you create free or “creative” content such as animation, text message, video, or photo that is so compelling that people cannot help but refer you to their friends and social network.

Popularity: 93% [?]

Last October 2007, Netcraft estimated that there is about 143 million websites in existence. This means, that there are literally billions of web pages vying for the visitor’s attention. But there is a ray of light for a webmaster in the midst of these challenges because only a few site owners actually promote their websites. In order to get the attention of a potential customer, you need to employ some of the strategies stated below. Take note that you will experience varying degrees of success in each:

·         Search engine optimization (SEO) – your site can rise up from above the web clutter if you carefully choose which keyword to target. Your keywords should be included in the title, the headings, the meta tag, the body text, and in your incoming links from social bookmarks, directories, etc.

·         Banner advertising – basically, you can make your banner show up on advertising networks. The bad news is, the click-through rate of this type of technique is actually less than 0.3.

·         Pay per click advertising (PPC) – text ads will show up on the search results when a searcher types on search terms related to your site. You only need to pay when a visitor clicks on the advertisement.

Popularity: 96% [?]

When the new Facebook platform was introduced last year, it was believed to the “next big thing” in social media. The media, small start-ups, and even large corporations all shared equal enthusiasm for its future potential. And this is not surprising since Facebook has an estimated 50 million users worldwide with most of its audience concentrated in North America.

The platform enables you to deliver your applications to millions of people instead of delivering it to our audience one by one. And it will not only be delivered, it will be injected to a massive network of users. However, despite all the carefully laid-out plans for the new platform, three major issues surfaced including:

1.       Business – if a publisher, the Wall Street Journal for example, develops a Facebook application, would this be profitable for them? It is very unlikely because there is little revenue to be derived from Facebook.

2.       Technical – should the applications be a “teaser” that directs members to the site or should it have full functionality?

3.       Provider cost – would Facebook derive revenue if it maintains the platform? As a business with high valuation, the company needs to maximize its profitability.

Unlike Apple, Facebook did not develop a structure for paid applications. Instead, the way to monetize the applications is through advertising.

Popularity: 91% [?]

Email marketing is a highly popular method in promoting your goods and services over the internet. However, the battle with email marketing begins even before your recipient opens the mail because there is always the issue of email delivery. Industry leaders are saying that the reputation of the sender is a very essential factor in determining whether the ISP will allow your mail to be delivered into the subscriber’s mailbox. Meanwhile, some experts also believe that reputation is the determining factors.

It is important for you to understand that there are actually two aspects involved in “reputation” namely

·         Recipient reputation – this is your track record with your subscribers. If you provide relevant and timely content for them at the right frequency, you will have a good recipient reputation.

·         ISP reputation – this is your track record in sending emails that actually exists; take note that there are “hard bounces” when your subscriber’s email address is no longer in existence and “soft bounces” which occurs when you are unable to temporarily deliver the email.

After you have taken note of the two kinds of reputation you need to be aware of, it is time for you to implement the right techniques for you to achieve effective email deliveries. One important factor is sending only content that are relevant because this will enable you to build a positive relationship with the subscribers.

Popularity: 23% [?]

If you are a blogger, I highly recommend you to try Story Sharing.

Anyone can create new account for free. After the registration you will enter your Adsense Publisher ID into your account. That’s all. You can start to blog and earn immediately.

Blogging with Story Sharing has many advantages. But the best one is that your blog posts will crawl by search engines instantly. That means you will start to get visitors instantly. You won’t need to wait for the new visitors. You won’t need to pay for promotion of your blog!

You will also have your own blog feed, your readers can leave comments and they can also contact you directly through your profile page.

Popularity: 73% [?]