How to Advertise your Site Almost Free. Part I

Dear Web Collegues,

Intro

The internet: there are so many people claiming they got rich by selling online that you decided it was your turn. Good idea. Your site is up and running. Maybe have you invested in it's creation some dollars or at least a lot of time ? Anyway, here it is, nicely designed and opened to thousands of potential visitors.
You clicked with pride the "submit" button of Google. Totally relaxed, you told yourself that if your site was listed in today's major search engine (Google represents 80% of all searches), it wouldn't be long before you'd made some income. A week later, great news. Your site is included. That's exciting. Two weeks later, 3 weeks, 4 weeks... and ... nothing. No visitors. Your main page's counter remains desperatly fixed to zero. But there's still hope. You anticipated, in your business plan, the fact that you'd have to invest in advertising. No panic. It's not complicated using something like Google Adwords. You buy keywords. Your rank is then determined according to the amount you spent. That's truly fantastic. Let's make this short. A month later, you lost at least $300 (if not thousands of dollars), the keywords you bid on were more and more expensive, and you made very few sales or, worse, no sales at all.
What next ? Will you commit suicide ? Please don't, or at least read my articles before. lol. These are not miracle solutions but, again, be organized. Apply the tips every day. If you do so, you'll end up making big money online. Rome wasn't built in one day but it ended up dominating the world.

Ready ? Come on, follow me.

1. Your Emails Contact List

First of all, do not spam. In other words never
send unknown emails to people unwilling to receive them. You must :
- use email adresses you're sure about
- send emails to people who wish to receive them
Since you must comply with these 2 rules here's what to do first.
Check your contact list. Personal and or business list. There is, for sure, at least one person on earth who would enjoy visiting your site. Send these persons your email.
But, before we go any further, what should your email look like ? Do not include any graphics or html. No matter whether it's adressed to a relative or to a business relation, keep it short and simple. The reason is graphics and html increase the chances that your email is considered as a spam. If so, it might be transferred directly into the junk mailbox or not transferred at all by the servers supposed to transfer your email. Also, an average internet visitor needs 10 seconds to take a decision. So the shorter the better.

2. Find other email adresses
Remember, using other peole’s email without their consent is illegal. I insist but it's important. And not efficient at all. Consider these 2 solutions:

a. Collect emails on your site, aka the in-house list.
Use an autoresponder service which will help you manage sending automatic messages when people sign up to your mailing list. Here's an example: Mister John subscribes on your site by giving his first name and his email. The autoresponder sends him an automatic message saying "thank you for joining bla bla bla". On your side, you create 3 other messages with special promotions. Mister John will receive each of these message, once a week. It's very easy to configure and extremely efficient because you know Mister John is interested in what you offer.
Use AWeber's Autoresponder. It's extremely simple to use.
A little trick : when you write your automatic messages, put "Re:" at the beginning of your subject line. People always look at messages they think is a response to a mail they posted.

b. Opt-in emails
In this case, people accept to receive emails from you even if they've never been on your site aka your "downline". In return, you accept to receive email offers from other people, aka your "upline". It's a kind of email exchange agreement. So everybody wins.
How to set this up ? The main thing you should concentrate on is build your downline. These people are like you, selling something.
Go to ListDotCom. It's Free, quick and easy.
How does it work ? Let's say you have a downline of only one person and that same person finds two other persons for his own downline, the good news is you can send a message to all the downlines under yours. You can reach thousands of people who subscribed to receive emails. Amazing no ? It's not magic and will require some free promotion to work. But it's worth the effort.
If you'd like to get things go faster and start sending your emails right away there's a software named YourAdBlast which does all the work.

3. Your signature is worth gold
Check how many emails you send everyday. And how often you write online. Maybe it's worth thinking about making some benefits from your writings. A signature is made of 2 lines of text (don't write more) that you include at the end of your messages. Looks like this :
Save 90% on thousands of products
http://www.oatadil.com/
You can make it more visible by adding colors, using a nice font or the "*" symbol.
************************************
Save 90% on thousands of products
http://www.oatadil.com/
************************************
Be creative but, most of all, configure your email software or online service. And your signature will be automatically included in all your outgoing emails. Do the same when you write online. Leave your signature at the end of your text.
Part I Check List
- emailed your contact list ?
- included an autoresponder on your site ?
- sent opt-in mailing ?
- sent safelist mailing ?
- configured your signature ?
- Results after 1 week ? (more visitors ? more sales ?)

A last thing. I'd like to speak about motivation.
Your motivation. Here's a simple mental exercice you should do every day during 1 minute. Close your eyes and imagine something you'd really love to possess or to do. A red sports car, a beautiful house, great holidays, fabulous toys for your children. (If you find pictures of it, the effect will be even greater). Anything you want as long as it makes you dream. Now think that this dream is real, it's yours. It must be a strong exhilarating feeling. See yourself buying a splendid house because you've made so many efforts promoting your business. You're so happy about it. Your dream has come true. Stay like this 45 seconAnd start looking for pictures of your dream.ds. Open your eyes. And look at the pictures. Say yourself "I'm going to get it". And check your mouth. And you should feel a small smile. ;-)

Part II coming tomorrow.

To your success !

Christophe Tissier
PS you can use this article if you don't modify it.