Work From Home

Marketing on the web’s #1 Social networking site is a lot like how you remember High School; the rules are different, it’s all about competing in a Popularity contest!

In fact, you may notice that it seems the majority of MySpace members are pretty young… So why does everyone obsess about using MySpace to market with these days? Simply because they’ve already got the traffic there. MySpace.com is at this moment the world’s 6th most popular website according to Alexa.com. YouTube.com and it have been closely competing for the #5 spot for the last 5 months. Still, getting a website all about you on the #6 website worldwide is an opportunity you shouldn’t pass up.

Getting your own profile there is free, you can make it link to any off-site (no illegal) websites that you’d like, and of course your profile page should include some type of non-spammy-sounding content on your niche subject matter that other people may want to link to.

Since it’s easy to linkswap (they call it ‘inviting friends’) with other MySpace members, a full link campaign inside MySpace takes only minutes instead of months. Of course not everyone there will accept the invitation. You can search for link swap opportunities by simply popping your niche keywords into a MySpace search box and you’ll get all the matching member pages as results.

From there it’s just about having a nice page yourself that they’ll want to swap links with (accepting the invitation) and if you get enough MySpace ‘friends,’ your MySpace page can have a really impressive stream of traffic… Which of course you’ll want to have linked to your own primary website.

Although you won’t get any traffic worth mentioning if you don’t make a nice page and invite every friend in your niche there, one nice thing about it is that many MySpace members surf member pages randomly, so you’re almost sure to get a visit or two daily, even with a blank page. It won’t be very targeted, however, so don’t count on it to bring you much reward. Also, since it’s so much of a popularity contest, it can be difficult to convince individual members into accepting your invitation. Your best bet: Bribe them.

Technorati : make money with myspace, mysapce

There are free places online for people to actually download MP3s on any subject. Naturally, you can also upload them for free.

Many people are audio-centric and prefer to learn by listening on their iPods, usually so they can multitask or not be bored during a commute. Giving them free content is an excellent way for your name and relation to their favorite subject matter to be presented.

Much like how an article works, effective PodCasting depends on your content being interesting enough for them to want to download it, but at the same time, you must include your sales message and of course end it with a “Call to Action” that motivates the listener into following up in some way such as visiting your website.

It’s true that this rarely results in many links back to your site, and if your content is interesting enough, the best you can hope for is for fans to pass them around to each other by word of mouth… Certainly no benefit for link-building.

Still, there is a lot to be said for Brand Recognition. If you are marketing solely by advertising through PPC and SEO, then the fact of the matter is that you won’t be reaching a good portion of people out there that respond solely or much better to another form of contact.

Whereas you might not have ever reached the “Generation Y” crowd using traditional methods at all, something like PodCasting or YouTubing would get your foot in the door, and your Brand Name would be in a new niche. From there, the Gen Y individuals would look for the rest of your work by themselves if you’ve done your job right.

To get started in PodCasting, all you need is a Microphone on your computer (sometimes you can even use headphones plugged into the “Mic” input) and some free software that allows you to save & convert your voice into MP3 format.

Simply take an article or some interesting copy you’ve written and read it into the mic. Practice it first, work the bugs out. Once finished, you simply need to name it with some good keywords that are likely to get searched in your niche, and upload it to all the best free download sites. There are literally hundreds of Podcast Directories out there now, with the most popular one being http://www.podcast.net.

Don’t forget to offer your cast from your website, Squidoo lens, or MySpace pages as well. Perhaps as a bonus for signing up to your newsletter or even just as a simple link on your home page.

Multiple media formats containing your wisdom build professionalism. This is a great way to develop your diverse brand on your website.

Most people will agree publicly that they never click on banner ads. Then they go home and click on them without even knowing it. Banner ads today are all about creative placement which can work well when done right.

It’s true that they’ve lost their effectiveness significantly… In 1994, webmasters could EXPECT 5% or more clickthru rates for semi-targeted banner ads! We were in the infancy of marketing on the internet and back in those days we all thought that Advertising wouldn’t go very far online! How naive we all were…

But in 2000, Harvard University did an in-depth experiment on web surfing with the conclusion that we had trained ourselves to avoid looking at banner ads. Specifically, the strip across the top 10% of the screen was virtually invisible to us already.

Clickthru rates plummeted from 5% way down to 0.0005%, and I have no idea where they are today. The same old banner ads simply won’t ever work again.
So, why should we use them?

Advertisers have figured out how to make banner ads effective again. They simply move them around on the page, make them into different shapes, turn them vertical, or whatever else to vary them from one page to the next. They look different, and generally webmasters know to only place very targeted ads on their sites, because the more targeted the ads are to their content, the better the clickthru rate will be.

The method that allows you to get access to this form of advertising for free is called a Banner Exchange. Like a traffic exchange, these work by you exchanging impressions with other webmasters.

All you have to make is a single banner, (obviously the more, the better) and place it along with your website profile into one of the many Banner Exchange services. The drawback is that you have to find a site to display other people’s banners on your site… A catch that most sales websites can’t afford to live with. If you can find room on your website for such a banner, these do move some traffic around pretty well now that they’ve divided up all members sites into categories… That way you’ll only show ads on your site from other websites in your own general niche. And the more times you show that banner, the more times yours will be seen.

Overall, it’s an average traffic generation method, nothing too powerful. Perhaps you’ll have a use for this kind of traffic, but in most cases I’d say that you could do much better. If you’re interested, you can easily find a good exchange by googling: “Best Banner Exchange.” Often you’ll see Banner ad exchanges built into other services mentioned here such as traffic bars and surf exchanges.

Technorati : banner ads, banners