Marketing on a Shoestring

Here is the deal. If you have a shoestring marketing method or tips that you like to use, write up a 300 to 600 word article and send it to stanpontiere@internetbizops.ws The winning entry will be published on my blog. At the end of your article, you get to put your signature along with a link to your website or blog. Only a couple of rules. No plugs or links can be included in the article only shoestring marketing tips or content. Second, we expect you to put a link to your content website and/or blog but you may not link to an affiliate sales page. You may ask “Whats in it for me?” Easy you get to prove your expertise in shoestring marketing, published forever on my blog and you should pick up some traffic by having your link being displayed here. Please leave separate contact information with your entry, email subject should be contest entry and then just simply email: stanpontiere@internetbizops.ws

On your blog and on your website one way to get repeat traffic is to run a contest. I have a website called “The Digital Photographer” and each month, I run a Digital Photo of the Month contest. If you are into digital photography, just hop on over to “The Digital Photographer” and click on the contest page and submit your best photographs. The winning photograph will be published at the first of each month, receive a certificate suitable for framing and be entered into a yearly contest with a cash prize. Not only that but if you are available for assignments, we will publish your contact information if you so desire.

In fact, I am now going to run a contest on this blog. Send in you best traffic tip and the winner will be published on this blog and also on my “Marketing on a Shoestring” website. You may ask, what is in it for me? Simple, at the end of your article, if you win, you will have a signature file that may contain links to any websites or blogs that you have. Please send all entries to:
stanpontiere@internetbizops.ws

I hope that you can see how this can help you get repeat traffic if you also run a contest on your blog or website. It is really simple. It costs you virtually nothing and anyone who enters will be returning to your site or blog to read or view the winning entry.

It really is a win/win situation, you get repeat traffic and the entrant get a chance to be published with links to their website or blog. Try it and see how it builds your traffic.

My photography website “The Digital Photographer” is holding a monthly digital photo contest. If you are into digital photography, please visit “The Digital Photographer” and click on the contest page. You will find the site loaded with solid content on how to create great digital photos.

You can spend all the money you want on Google Adwords and their competitors and all that you will get is short-term effects. Shoestring Marketing, on the other hand, will produce results that will last weeks, months or maybe even years. Advertising is not only expensive but it only works while you are forking out your hard-earned dollars. Shoestring marketing costs nearly nothing and builds long term trust and respect. The 5 top secrets that I mentioned earlier are not really secrets but the top 5 methods of marketing on a shoestring.

1. Build a list. You have heard time and time again that the money is in the list. That is not exactly true. The money is in the trust and respect you receive from producing a quality content filled newsletter. Most newsletters are nothing more than blatant advertising but if you give your readers solid content, you will build trust and respect and when you do promote a product, your readers are far more likely to buy from you. One note of caution, don’t go cheap when you pick an autoresponder. Go for the best. Not only do they have higher delivery rates, they also will keep you out of legal hassles. There are a lot of laws involved in email marketing and the FTC can be a real dragon. Many ISPs are so afraid of the FTC that at the slightest sign of a spam complaint, they will shut down your website. Being cheap with an autoresponder could be mighty expensive.

2. Article Marketing is absolutely the best in terms of building trust and respect for your expertise and it is truly a long run affair. Some articles will be picked up by other websites, blogs and social networks, months or even years after you originally wrote the article. The web has a voracious appetite for solid quality information and article marketing meets this need. Not only will this bring you trust and respect, it will build quality back-links. Quality back-links will always improve any Search Engine Optimization (SEO) that you may do.

3. Build a quality content rich website. Nothing is worse than writing great articles and then have the reader click on an Opt-in page. Certainly, you need an opt-in page but it should not be the site that they land on after reading one of your articles. Your readers are looking for content-not fluff. Certainly, you can put an opt-in page on your website, just don’t let it be the first thing that your article readers see.

4. YouTube and the other video sites can be a great method of producing quality traffic for your website. Although, you can’t meet your customers face to face, at least they can see you and hear you on the video sites. This is a great source of quality traffic. If your videos look professional, you will have much the same effect as article marketing.

5. Social networking. Almost everyone I know is on one of the social networking sites-Squidoo, MySpace or one of the myriad of others. For sheer volume of visitors, the social network sites cannot be beaten. There is one caveat (aside from your blog) the quality of visitor is not nearly as good as you will get from article marketing. Certainly, spend some time on the social networks, but not too much. You will get a ton of visitors but, not a lot of customers.

There are many other shoestring marketing methods and you should use them all. These five are the ones that you should concentrate upon.

Unlike Brick and Mortar businesses, where you can meet your customer face to face, you only have two basic options when it comes to internet marketing-your website and your newsletter. No, I am not forgetting about social networking, Youtube and the others. I am talking about your primary point of contact with your customers.

It is far easier in the Brick and Mortar world to build trust. On the net, it is far more difficult but, if you don’t work on building trust with your customers, your online business will fail. So, the question is how do you go about building trust with someone that you will probably never meet in person.

First thing that you must do is create a killer page. Put your picture on your site. Put your name, address, email address and a contact phone number on your contact page. You should also put a contact form on your contact page. This information should also appear in every newsletter that you put out and make sure that your readers understand that you truly want to hear from them. This way you are not just a faceless entity.

On your website, you should also put a bio page (About Me) giving your reader a glimpse into your personality, your background and what you intend to do with your website and newsletter. Again, this is a trust building issue and the more the reader knows about you, the more they are likely trust and respect you.

Make sure that your website is more than just a sales page. Your website and newsletter should always have solid fresh content on your niche. If you provide your readers with expert content, they are far more likely to trust you.

When it comes to the products you promote, make sure that they are products that you have either used yourself or at least have a copy of so that you can honestly represent that the product really does what it claims and that you can attest to that from first hand experience. I have several websites (they are all areas of personal interest) and every product I promote I have either used or have a copy of the product. A customer is far more likely to buy from you if they know that you are personally involved with the product. When you can tell the customer that you own the product and give them the personal results that you have had with the product.

Avoid Hype. The shortest way to lose a reader’s trust is to over-hype a product. If anything, a little understatement will go that extra mile in product promotion. Anyone who has been on the net for any period of time immediately sees hype for what it is and will quickly kill the trust that you are trying to build with your customer.

Another thing that I now like to do with my websites is to produce a Youtube video of myself talking about some of the content on my website and then embed the video on the website. As they can’t see you in person,at least they get to see you on the video. It gives them just one more reason to trust you and your expertise.

In closing, the main point with your website and newsletter is to use them to create mutual respect and trust between you and your readers. Give them the respect that they deserve and you will gain their respect.

Please do not be insulted, I was talking out-loud to myself. I just have to remember when I start writing an article to remember KISS. We all know that article marketing builds our reputation and trust between us and our readers. It also creates great back-links to our websites but is does you no good if the article does not get published. I have reviewed my previously published articles and found that the articles that get published the most have two common factors that seem to make it easier to get them published.

First, it needs a strong and unique Article Title. Just like when I used to work for newspapers, which had a whole desk of people that did nothing but write article headlines. You must put the same effort into your title (headline) to get people interested enough to at least read the first paragraph.

The second important thing is that the article must not be overly long or short. Newspapers style writing is probably the best approach to article writing. It has the major points in the first paragraph and the following paragraphs provide supporting information. It has been my experience with my articles that my most widely published articles run between 450 and 650 words. Shorter than 450 and you are not giving your reader sufficient content. Then, longer than 650 and the reader gets bored as you have filled the article with too much fluff.

Of course, these are not hard and fast rules, just a guideline as to what seems to work for me. In all honestly, when I look at some of the article available and find that they are 4 or 5 thousand words long, I rarely bother to read them. I am, in fact, on both sides of the fence. Not only do I write articles, but I also use other people’s articles on my websites. In some subject areas, I have found that there are many article writers who have done an excellent job of writing good solid content articles. In addition, if the article writer has achieved status in a given field, using their work can add trust from your readers. On some of my websites, I have found that using an expert author is sometime better that trying to prove that I am the end-all, top expert in the field. I am not and I am glad to give credit where credit is due. This is especially true in some of my niche sites.

As you may know, I am a big believer in Shoestring Marketing. But there are so many things that you can do that you have to make a decision as to how to spend your limited time. Certainly, advertising has it’s place but, Shoestring Marketing has much better long term results.

The problem is that some Shoestring methods produce a ton of traffic but it is not targeted on the other hand, some Shoestring methods produce a lesser traffic volume but it is quality traffic and if they like what they see, you will see much better repeat business.

Tops on my list of producing quality traffic is article writing. The people who read your articles and then click on your link are very likely to join your list and make many repeat visits to your blog.

Second place is shared by making entries to my own blog and also making forum comments. These people tend to also become repeat visitors.

YouTube can produce a lot of visitors of moderate quality. They may or may not become repeat customers but in sheer numbers, this is still an important method of Shoestring Marketing.

At the bottom of my list is Social Networking (Squidoo, MyFace, etc). This method of marketing will produce a ton of hits to your website and or blog but, they are typically one-time visitors. They will take whatever you might be offering for free and then be gone forever. They might even sign-up for your list but when you look at your stats, they have a very low open rate of your newsletter.

If you have your own product and affiliate program, this is one of the best ways of receiving quality traffic. They come to your sales page and the affiliate has already pre-sold them. The only problem with this method is that you must have produced a quality product and that does take time to produce.

All in all, you have to make a decision. You can spend your time on quality traffic or spend your time on creating a ton of poor quality traffic. My choice will always be go for quality and you can’t go wrong. Quality traffic is looking for help in building their business. The other way to go is to do things that produce a ton of traffic but, they are usually just freebie seekers.

To your marketing success

I shot an arrow into the air and where it landed I know not where. The fact of the matter is that, if you do not have a proper target, you are just as likely to shoot the neighbor’s cat or your own butt (even more likely) than achieve any target of consequence.

Of course, what I am talking about is goal setting. Most people are satisfied to go through life without setting down specific written goals for what they want to achieve in life. The may have some vague dream about what they want but, it remains just that-a dream. In the end they end up with an aimless life and will never rise above the level of mediocrity. When they finally lie down on their deathbed, they will only be able to look back on a life of unfulfilled dream and disapointment. If however, they take their dreams and set them down as specific written goals, they will have been open to all of the opportunities available to us and would have set specific strategies to achieve their goals.

These are the people who on their deathbed look back upon a life of fulfillment and the legacy that they have left behind. They will look back at a lifetime with no regrets.

It is easy to dream but it is only the goal setters that will achieve those dreams. One of my heroes is Tiger Woods. At the tender age of 8, he set his goal to break every golf record ever set and to become the world’s number one golfer. It took him 13 years of practice and work but by age 21, he achieved his goal. Most people may dream about being the best at something or being rich or being a rock star but without specific written goals, it remains just that-a dream and nothing more.

Dreams are only the starting point. If you believe in the Law of Attraction, thoughts become things but, only when you take the next step of writing down your dreams in goal form and then setting strategies to achieve those dream goals. It is the dreamers in life that are responsible for every great achievement of mankind but, only those who took the next step of writing down those dreams as goals.

One final note of proof. Just 3 percent of the world’s population have written goals but those 3 percent control 95 percent of the wealth in the world. When you are on you deathbed will you look back at a life of fulfillment or a life of unfulfilled dreams.

For more information on Success and self-fulfillment, please visit my Over the Rainbow website.

To our mutual Success
Stan Pontiere

I know that this is a bit out of the Shoestring Marketing genre but, I have been a self-help geek since high school-more than 40years ago.

There are few people in the world today who would dismiss “The Law of Attraction” as the basis for self-fulfillment in the modern world. There is, however, a missing key in the way that we implement this natural law.

First of all, it might better be called the law of resonance. Like does not attract like, like attracts a resonant reaction. But, that is just semantics. The fact of the matter is that thought becomes reality. What we think is what we get and if our sub-conscious is filled with positive thoughts our life will be filled with positive results and we can literally think wealth in our existence. On the other hand, “The Law of Attraction” is a two-way street. If our sub-conscious is filled with negative thoughts, our life will be filled with negative events.

Much of our sub-conscious is filled with the attitudes that have been forced upon us. From our parents saying no, don’t do that, peers and well meaning teachers telling us work hard, go to school and get a good job to TV commercials pumping us full of mindless banter. They were probably all well meaning but, this constant negative input has destroyed any real chance of being truly self-fulfilled.

Early on (during high school) I read the classic work on the “Law of Attraction”, Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” It put down a very sound case for “The Law” and I did find that it did start to turn my life around. However, I always thought there was more to this than simple visualization to make the necessary changes in my sub-conscious beliefs.

I always found that the simple visualization being taught by Hill and many of today’s top self-help gurus to be missing something. Simple visualization brings up conflicts between the conscious and sub-conscious mind. You may start out visualizing your ultimate goal but within a few minutes, the sub-conscious fights back bringing up all of the negative thoughts that have been ingrained over the years and with simple visualization, many people end up worse off than they were before attempting to institute “The Law of Attraction”.

Some years latter, while attending a meeting of the PPA (Profession Photographers of America) I turned to my friend Jack Haynes and as the lecture was extremely boring, we left for the local coffee shop. During our little sit-down, I mentioned how I was having trouble with “The Law” and visualization. It turned out that Jack was only a part-time press photographer because he loved the excitement of the work. His true calling in life was as a Clinical hypnotherapist. He explained that my problem with simple visualization was very common and that if I really wanted to make changes to my sub-conscious that hypnosis was the missing key.

He sat me down for the next 5 days and I went through a number of hypnosis sessions. Now, all of a sudden I was able to easily visualize my dreams and goals and my whole world was turned upside down (in a good way). The missing key to making “The Law” work for me was hypnosis. Within a week, I had quit my dead-end job with the local newspaper and suddenly found myself getting assignments from the Associated Press, the New York Times and both the Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Bulletin. I had suddenly become a hot commodity and often had to turn down work if it created a conflict of interest.

What was missing in visualization was the key of hypnosis. It speaks directly to the sub-conscious and there is no internal mind conflict.

Of course, consulting a clinical hypnotist can be rather expensive but, as an alternative, there are many extremely good hypnosis sessions available on recorded media (CDs, Tapes, and MP3s). Not only do they work very well, they are for the most part rather inexpensive. A note of caution, there are also a ton of subliminal products available and although they also may work very well, you can’t be sure of what you are getting. Many of the most expensive subliminal programs have been discovered to have no message at all. If you choose to try subliminals, try to get some feedback from someone who has had experience with the product you are considering.

Either way, If you really want the “Law of Attraction” to work for you rather than a against you, consider hypnosis as an alternative to simple visualization. It has made a world of difference for me.

For more information on success and self-help, please visit my success website at “Over the Rainbow”

Not only can success be habit forming, in order to become a success, you need to build some new habits.

I know that if you have been reading my articles, that you have a pretty good idea about how effective Shoestring Marketing can be but, if you don’t put this knowledge to use (take action) then you will have no success at all. The best method I know of creating success is by making the action step a habit.

The commonly held belief is that if you can do something for 21 days straight, it will become a habit. While you may have all of the knowledge in the world, if you don’t make taking action a habit, you will be no better off than if you had no knowledge at all.

There are many techniques to Shoestring Marketing. Take just one of them and turn it into a habit. For example, article marketing has been extremely effective for me. So, for the next 21 days, write and publish an article. Before you do anything else in the day, write your article. Don’t read your email, surf the web or anything else, just get right into writing and publishing your article.

At the end of 21 days, look back at the results of your article marketing. How many responsive hits has your website had? Google your name. How many results do you get back? I can tell you right now you will be shocked at the results. Not only that, having done this for 21 days, you have developed a new habit and will look forward to writing your articles.

After that 21 day period, you can then take on one of the other methods of Shoestring Marketing and watch as your success grows. You are not only developing the habit of applying the Shoestring Marketing methods, you are developing the habit of success.

Don’t wait until tomorrow, start your habit of success today. Like anything else in life, success is just a habit that you need to develop and taking action is the primary foundation for all success.