Recommended Free Promotional Tools

There's been several forms of advertising and promotion I've been using lately, all that have gotten a big "thumbs up" from me. Four in particular - InstantBuzz, BlogExplosion, Contests, and SEO.

While I don't normally care for traffic exchange programs (due to poor quality of sites and horrible conversion rates), there are 2 that have actually caught my eye.

Instant Buzz
InstantBuzz, which is not really a traffic exchange program, but an "ad exchange". Members are required to have a tool bar at the top of their windows, where a one line ad is displayed. Some ads have caught my eye, and I've clicked to check them out. When you open a new window, the ad changes and earns you credit. This is truely a "lazy man's promotion" that actually works. I've been promoting Mom's Ezine (our website that displays all our newsletters of interest to mothers) and have seen some visitors and subscribers.

Currently Instant Buzz is by invitation only, so if you are interested in checking out this tool please send me an email ( contact@momsmarketonline.com ). I only have a limited number of invites so if you are interested, act now! Oh and did I mention this was free?

Blog Explosion
This is another that's similar to a traffic exchange program, but instead of websites you are clicking through it's blogs. Quality blogs at that - no ad only blogs or blogs that have little interest to anyone. Sure you come accross some that don't have any interest to you personally, but they are to mass groups. I've been working with Blog Explosion for a few months now and I have to say I really like it. I love to read other blogs no matter what type they are (ok, not so much the political blogs, but that's just me!). You can sign up to BlogExplosion by clicking here.

Contests
Very simple yet effective means of advertising. I'm creeping up on 500 subscribers to my candle website newsletter after just over a month, and have gotten over 30 new subscribers so far to my recipe newsletter after one day. Running a contest on your site can be very easy and used to gain massive amounts of newsletter subscribers for a very low cost. Don't have a newsletter? Well what in the heck are you waiting for? Building a double opt-in newsletter for your website is the best way to keep your visitors comming back - and buying!

If you already have your newsletter set up and want to run a contest, check the post I made in November about where to submit your contest. In the month of November I added 300 new subscribers (starting from NOTHING) just from running a contest. ;)

SEO
Short for "search engine optimization", and something I learned well over a year ago. What a valuable resource that class turned out to be! Unfortunately there is a lot of mis-information on SEO and no straight forward answers to much of it. My suggestion - read as much CURRENT information as you can on optimizing your websites for the search engines. Everytime I build a new page to any website, I always optimize it for the search engines.


So that's it - those are the main things I've been working with for the past month and it's unreal how many sales and visitors each have brough me! Of course there are a few other methods I use, but those 4 are the big ones and take such little time. Perfect for those who have more important tasks!

Best wishes :)