There are a number of ways you can promote your blog or website without any cost but for this article we are going to focus on 5 methods that actually require a little expenditure on your part. As with most things in life, very little that is good, is free! For this reason we thought it was important to look at some of best ways to promote your site without spending too much money.
Site Sponsorship
If your blog or website includes specific or regular columns or events such as a weekly podcast, monthly newsletter or survey you may find that there are businesses or companies that would be prepared to sponsor the posts or 'events'.
This has the advantage of increasing monetizing options for the web developer as well as enabling advertisers to target very specific audiences with what might comparably be a reduced cost. As your blog or website draws more regular visitors this option becomes more realistic.
Invest In Direct Banner Ads
A number of well established websites sell banner ad space directly. Most sites that offer these opportunities charge based on a weekly or monthly plan fee. The benefit of a set fee is that you know the cost regardless of the number of clicks your banners or ads receive.
Banner ads can be a great way to generate traffic and create brand awareness. Visitors to the sites where you display your ads will associate the message on the banner with your website or blog. If they see the ad on two or three occasions on different sites they may become curious and decide to take a look for themselves at what the fuss is about.
The other advantage of a banner ad is association. Typically readers will perceive a level of endorsement from the websites you advertise on for your products or service. This is especially useful when you place your banner ads on sites that are well respected.
Purchase Sponsored Reviews
Particularly if you have a new website or blog, purchasing some sponsored reviews is an extremely effective method of promotion. Reviews will increase your traffic, create essential backlinks and help to lure subscribers to your RSS feed. Nothing beats word of mouth advertising, which is essentially what a sponsored review is.
There are two ways to approach purchasing a sponsored review. You can pay a smaller fee for a large volume of reviews on lesser known sites or you can pay a larger fee for a single review posted on a high volume, highly respected authority site in your niche. Sponsored reviews can be purchased form sites such as ReviewMe.com and SponsoredReviews.com.
AdWords Campaign
Google's AdWords/AdWense programs create billions of dollars in revenue each year for the Internet giant. There's a good reason for this, it actually works! AdWords is quite possibly the most efficient way you can generate new traffic and promote your blog or website.
The process is as simple as creating an account, adding as many keywords as you can think of that are relevant to your site and set a maximum pay-per-click rate to your campaign. We recommend starting out at the base value of $0.01 cents per click and adjusting your campaign over a period of time until you are achieving your desired results. Try raising your per-click rate once a week until you reach your goal.
StumbleUpon Ad Campaigns
This is a terrific new option for creating advertising campaigns to promote your blog or website. StumbleUpon is basically a social bookmarking website that allows users to find specific websites through the use of a toolbar. By clicking on "stumble" on the toolbar facility you are automatically directed to a random website that has proven popular with people who identify similar interests to you have rated positively. As a user you can rate any website you visit on the web with a positive or negative rating.
StumbleUpon also offers the option to create advertising campaigns enabling you to deliver your website directly to members or "stumblers". The cost is $0.05 per page delivered. Typically the websites that appear on StumbleUpon are of a high quality so there is a high likelihood that your site will achieve a percentage of regular visitors as a result of starting a campaign. The key to success with StumbleUpon is to provide high quality content. If you are offering visitors something unique and valuable your campaign is more likely to succeed.
To successfully promote your blog or website you need to provide quality content that engages with your visitors and keeps them coming back for more. If you have a new website and just starting your promotion campaign it can be extremely worthwhile investing a small amount of your budget on advertising. Relying on free traffic building techniques will work but a small investment in paid promotion will speed the process up.
Fraser is a Freelance Journalist, Author and CEO of Pro-Content Australia - providing professional online & offline content writing services worldwide.
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Fraser has published articles on gardening, landscaping, sports, leisure, travel, food, fashion, dating, health & fitness, crime, marketing, medical technology, publishing, film & TV, small business, franchising, finance, mortgages, real estate and many more popular topics.
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