Work From Home

There are countless Forums online these days for all possible niches. (And if you can’t find one in your niche, Eureka! You’ve hit the jackpot! Start the first forum there and it’s like inheriting an oil well.) Identifying all the popular forums on your market or niche is a very important thing that all marketers should do for any online marketing campaign. For the really big, active forums with over 500,000 posts, simply go search for them by your keywords at http://www.big-boards.com.

Finding smaller forums is a little more tricky. Since there are many different software packages that forums are based on, there is no one good search command to find them all, except for adding the word “forum” to your search query. Try googleing each of your top five keyword phrases, in quotes, with the word forum slapped on the end, outside of the quotes.

Once you’ve found them, the big question becomes how you market to them without becoming a “spammer.” You will rarely find a forum, unless it’s strictly a “marketers’ forum” that allows you to post a blatent ad inside of them without it being deleted. What you’ve got to do is network a little. Answer any questions you have the answer to first to build up a presence for yourself.

However, what you are really looking for on a forum is a question that someone else asks that leaves room for you to answer, with your business being part of the solution.

So if you sell sprockets, and you find a great engineering forum, starting a new thread about your great sprockets or even offering information about how a great new sprocket line could solve many of their engineering problems will quickly be deleted, and it might even get your whole account booted! On the other hand, if you take a somewhat passive role on ALL the Engineering forums, and wait for someone to ask about a sprocket-related issue, you’ll be the hero, not a spammer, for offering your educated advice.

The moral of this story is to only market on forums when it’s part of a solution to someone else’s question. In those situations, you can market as much as you want, and the outcome is a lasting link to your website tied to both name recognition & expertise.

Technorati : forum marketing, marketing, online marketing

I once again hesitate to mention a big-name PPC Engine because this is supposed to be a free resource report. However I’ll make an exception because I think you’ll want
to pay the $5 they need for you to open up a new account with when I spill the beans on AdCenter…

First of all, MSN launched AdCenter in 2006 and they’ve still got a long way to go in order to catch up with AdWords… Or even Yahoo’s Search Marketing program. MSN’s per-click prices are pretty low right now because of this, and it’s common to get #1 or #2 for a keyword at only $0.05 per click. Even in a tough IM2IM niche like ‘Home business,’ I’m still able to pull a few daily visitors with just the minimum bid of 5 cents. Of course that price may change at any time.

Secondly, and even more temptingly, (is that a word? It did not set my spell checker off - oh well…) AdCenter has had coupons out since the beginning, and they’ve been getting BIGGER in size! They are currently handing out $200 coupons to new sign-ups which would be a shame for you to miss out on. I went so far as to attempt to secure some for everyone here, but they just won’t hand out very many at a time. The next best thing I can do is tell you how to find your own: Just Google “MSN AdCenter Coupons” and you’ll be sure to find plenty of leads! (Hint: the $50 & $100 ones are all likely to be used up… Search for the bigger ones!)

Technorati : adcenter, msn, ppc

eBay? Free Advertising?
Ok, so technically an auction listings cost 35 cents… But one sale can easily make you a profit, and you’re allowed to sell nine of the same product in one auction at that price… So this is one exception I’m going to keep in this book because it’s really BETTER than free, all things considered.

So where does the Advertising part come in?
Simply place an information package of some kind, even if it’s just an article on your niche, and sell that infoproduct in an extremely cheap auction listing. Most people sell these things for 1 penny, although the difference between 1 cent and 35 cents really isn’t that much of a difference to the buyers looking for this information.

Naturally there are no other costs like shipping or insurance, because delivery is a simple digital download. Further advertising is up to you, and it is always a matter of just giving eBay some additional fees to make your listing stand out more. If your listing is profiting, try starting the next listing as a “Gallery item” for another 35 cents, and go up from there until you’ve reached a point of maximum returns.

Here’s the great part about this tactic: The winner of the listing’s email address is automatically sent to you via email, through eBay itself. Sell a bunch of those info packets, and you’ve built yourself one of your industry’s most targeted lists!

Don’t feel too left out if you haven’t mentally joined these two concepts together before now. Not too many people have, unless they bought the secret from someone on eBay themselves.

The fact is that eBay already has the lion’s share of traffic, and more importantly, of people in the purchasing mindset. Compare this to Google’s Traffic, which is composed of people in the “researching” mindset. It’s not hard to imagine why serious marketers prefer eBay’s traffic to Google’s Traffic!

Advertising on eBay is as simple as being there in the first place, using a few well-searched keywords. Finding those keywords isn’t too difficult either; all you really have to do is search for expired listings and sort by the price. This way you’ll easily see which auctions recently got the most money in your niche, and then all you have to do is model your campaign like theirs, listing your product under the same category!

Drawbacks?
Although the Delivery Time and the Quality of the traffic is world class, the Quantity is not infinite… It depends on your niche, of course, but the competition on eBay can be fierce as new auctions will be placed above older ones all the time. Still, with people happy to search keywords you’ve still got a good chance of being found even between the first day or the last few minutes of the auction.

Effectiveness in drawing a large amount of traffic all depends on how good your auction’s sales copy is. Luckily, you can model your auction off others that have done well in the past.

Make no mistake about it; selling infoproducts on eBay is a world-class list-building strategy. That’s about all there is to it, but most people overlook this very powerful way of building your list because it seems too awkward, or they don’t want to take the time to put an info-packet together.

If you sell a product online, then you’ve got to face the fact eventually that this is some of the most targeted, “buyer-frenzied” traffic that exists. If you’re not using this tactic, then you’ll not only be depriving your business of a constant stream of better-than-free advertising, but you’ll also be missing out on a large source of clients that you aren’t likely to be able to reach otherwise.

The fact is that everybody eBays nowadays. That’s why I can use eBay as a verb! In fact I’ve seen a statistic recently that showed $14 of every $100 spent online, worldwide, is spent through eBay now, and this number is still growing! It is clearly the single biggest mover of money on the planet.

People from ALL walks of life can be found there, right when they have their credit cards in hand looking to spend… I don’t even know of another source of traffic that comes close!

When used correctly, you can build up a niche market list on any topic with this technique, and reach an unprecedented 50% or more of that market over time.