There are countless ways to advertise your website over the internet. Many of them cost money, but there are also many that don’t cost anything except a little of your time. There have been some extremely successful businesses that have been built with only a few dollars in their advertising budget. The following is a list of what I consider the top five ways to promote your business online and drive targeted traffic to your website.

1. Email joint ventures This is the absolute best way because it is quick, and easy and can get you tons of target traffic which can make you a lot of extra money.

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Ezine advertising is one of the most effective forms of advertising on the internet. There are literally hundreds of thousands of ezines and newsletters on the internet, each of which has one of three main purposes: to build a relationship with your subscriber database, to make money from advertising, or a combination of both. Since this chapter is on advertising, we’re concerned with the paid advertising component of newsletters and ezines.

The main advantage of ezines as advertising vehicles is that they are delivered to a very targeted group of readers. Usually, the quality of the subscribers will be higher in ezines that focus on single, very narrow topics such as crocheting or knitting. Ezine ads generally fall into one of three categories:

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Bum Marketing or the Bum Marketing Method is a practically fool proof variation of article marketing that allows you to earn money online from the commissions of affiliate products, sales of your own products, AdSense ads and so on.

Here’s how it works: You write keyword optimized articles about under-exposed niches, submit them to popular article websites, let the search engines pick them up, earn affiliate commissions, get opt-in signups or make money from selling your own products.

Bum Marketing was invented and popularized by Travis Sago of www.bummarketingmethod.com. Many people call Bum Marketing, Bum Marketing because it is supposed to be so easy that even a bum off the street can do it. I don’t disagree, however I think the real reason it is called Bum Marketing is because it is one of those extremely rare occasions where it doesn’t take money to make money.

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Creating your own information product is a must and a great add-on if you already own a small (or large) business. The rewards of creating your own product are a definite advantage. Not only do you get to share your own, or someone else’s expertise, but by doing so you get to help improve your customer’s quality of life. The best part is that you keep all the money you make – you don’t split it with anyone else, nor do you work for a commission. You get all the money, along with the recognition of having your own product that you created.

There are no real new or totally unique human needs or wants. They have been the same for a long time: money, self esteem, sex, health, relationships, beauty and greed. Your information should tap into one of these universal wants or needs:

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1. Use only interesting, original content.

2. Write timely posts- ones on topics people will be searching for right now.

3. Write timeless posts- ones with information that people will always be looking for.

4. Provide links to resources that your readers that will find useful or very interesting.

5. Write long blog posts.

6. Get readers to digg your posts.

7. Allow comments to your blog posts (make sure you moderate them).

8. Post comments on other blogs with a link back to your site.

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Multilevel marketing is no small thing, by the early nineties, more than 100 billion dollars worth of products and services had been moved because of it. Multilevel marketing (MLM), also known as “network” or “referral” marketing, offers you a commission for the products you sell and also for the sales of those you recruit or refer to the program. Multilevel marketing isn’t for everyone. If you’re not a natural networker, or even a little on the shy side, it probably isn’t the best choice for you.

Here’s how it works: After making an initial investment, you receive the marketing materials and/or products necessary to sell start selling. In many cases, the products are nutritional or healthcare related including vitamins and weight loss supplements. Every time you sell something you get a commission, as does the person who recruited or referred you. In addition to selling the product, you need to refer or recruit others to the program, and then you’ll earn money from what is sold by people you’ve recruited into the program. In fact, multilevel marketing probably puts more emphasis on the recruiting part than the selling part. The more people you bring into the program, the more money you’re likely to earn through their commissions.

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Do you remember the last time you picked up a book, read the first sentence, and before you knew what happened, an hour or two had passed? That’s killer copy- where one sentence pulls you into the next.

If you’re going to be spending money to advertise, it only makes sense that the copy in your ads is better than good, it needs to be great. Let me share a secret with you: It doesn’t cost you any more to run an ad with great copy, than it does to run an ad with adequate copy. Not to mention the fact that you can multiply your results by 2, 5 or 10 times. Great copy attracts customers like a magnet.

Clients and prospects respond to tangible evidence that indicates the quality of your product or service. When you mail a brochure, hand out presentation materials or refer someone to your web site, your copy acts as a sales person delivering a message and influencing perceptions about your business, product or service.

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Imagine if a few big companies dictated which sites loaded quickly and which ones didn’t? That’s exactly what Time Warner, Verizon, Bell South, AT&T and other communications giants are attempting to do. They’re in the process of lobbying congress to block laws that would prevent a two-tiered internet, with a fast lane for websites that can afford to pay and a slow lane for everyone else.

These telecom giants reason that since they provide the lines (copper, fiber optic or cable) that supply internet connections to consumers, they should profit from the data that flows through them. Here’s how it would work: Websites that pay a fee would be allocated the most bandwidth and thus load quickly, whereas websites that can’t afford to pay the toll, or simply won’t pay the toll, get whatever bandwidth is left over (i.e. the slow lane).

As internet marketers, it antes up the question: Would you pay? If you’re a larger company with deep pockets, and can afford to, you’d once again gain a competitive advantage over smaller online business owners that can’t afford to pay.

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Google recently incorporated into its search engine a Googlebomb-sniffing algorithm that somehow manages to identify and neutralize any concerted effort to skew search results for a word or phrase.

Google’s search engine originally worked according to a simple principle: web pages were ranked according to the number of links they received from other sites, with each link weighted to reflect a site’s popularity. That principle is still part of the equation, but Google’s software has become much more complicated over the years taking into account more than 100 factors in its algorithm.

According to Wikipedia, “a search for ‘miserable failure’ or ‘failure’ on September 29, 2006 brought up the official George W. Bush biography number one on Google, Yahoo! and MSN and number two on Ask.com.

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A few days ago Amazon released Amapedia ({Ama]zon + Wiki[pedia]) which is a Wiki community for sharing information about products.

So far as anyone can tell, Amazon hasn’t put any promotion into it yet and the site (http://amapedia.amazon.com) seems to be a little lacking in design and character.

What’s the point of the site? To offer Amazon users reviews on products so they can make a more informed buying decision- or more importantly, ultimately buy more products Amazon. Amazon is currently describing Amapedia as the “next generation of Amazon.com’s Product Wiki feature.”

In theory it seems like a good idea and depending on how much it is used by Amazon users and how they plan on integrating it will their current review system it may very well become “the” place to go fro reliable reviews on the web and then again it may not.

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