Advertising Your Home Based Business

You should never have to pay to advertise your home based business. You can use Safelists or Traffic Exchanges which are all free services. Now... you can spend your money and pay... but for right now, let's just keep it FREE!

Let's take a look at the different types of advertising, both of which can be obtained for FREE:

SAFELISTS:

Basically, a safelist is a group of people all willing to receive each others promotions via email --in the hopes that their promotion will generate more business. In other words, safelists are many, many "marketers" that have agreed to receive each others email. The drawback is that everyone is trying to sell and no one wants to buy. Some do buy, however, and that's your market. You just need something that other "marketers" will want or need. Currently, there are many tens of thousands of members to various safelists, and some are more effective than others. Every single safelist member had to agree to receive your email. That makes these lists “safer” than simply mass-emailing (i.e. spam)

By definition then, that means that safelists are what is known as "opt-in". Opt-in is when:

• People actively choose to receive your message by signing up somehow
• People can opt-out or unsubscribe from the list at any time

The best type of opt-in lists are known as double opt-in lists. The difference is that after a person signs up for the list, they MUST reply to an email to be activated. This cuts down on programs spamming the list with false emails and also guarantees that someone DID actually want to sign up.

So how does opt-in email benefit you as the marketer?

It enables you to get your message out to thousands of potential customers every single day (in some cases) --without being accused of SPAM. SPAM is a big NO-NO... regardless of what anyone might tell you

TRAFFIC EXCHANGES:

A traffic exchange website receives website submissions from webmasters that join traffic exchange networks. The person who submitted the website then has to browse other member sites on the exchange program to earn credits, which enable their sites to be viewed by other members through the surf system. This increases the number of visitors to all the sites involved.

Exchanges enforce a certain credit ration, which illustrates the amount of websites the surfer must view in order to receive one hit through the program for their promoted website. Many sites offer the ability to upgrade one's membership level for a more equal credit ratio.

As the viewers are all website owners or affiliates, it is possible that some might find certain member sites interesting and thus make note of them on their own sites, sending more traffic their way. Most traffic programs also impose a time limit when members are browsing, ranging from 10 seconds to 60 seconds. Some incorporate the use of captcha to ensure user interaction.

Almost all traffic exchange programs are free, although many of them offer special features to paid members and offer credits for purchase. Almost all traffic exchange programs encourage users to build their own referral networks, which in turn increases the referrers' amount of credits.

The traffic generated in a traffic exchange can be leveraged by using a downline builder to assist the user in building a referral network in the many different traffic exchanges.

In practice, traffic exchange programs are generally used by small business owners or marketers who either want free advertising or use the exchange programs for low-budget advertisement campaigns.

Until next time I'll continue to try and Make Money for Us !!!!

Laurie