A is for Advertising Online

Earn a profit when you send out your promotional gifts

Have you ever considered how to cut down your marketing expenditure? Have you been thinking about not sending promotional items this year? What an error that could be! Do send them - just make sure that they make money for you, before you even buy them!

Most people when looking at promotional items look at pens, diaries and the likes. These are superb and easy to distribute, but usually have only sufficient printing space for your message. With the current financial difficulties you need to be thinking beyond the obvious. How can you make your promotional items work for you, before you distribute them? How can you make sure that you cover the outlay by the time you distribute them?

Most promotional items work along the lines of reminding your clients of you so they are more likely to come back to you next year or more likely to refer you to their contacts. Fine, but how can you put a price on this income when business everywhere is struggling?

Quite simply, earn money to distribute your own marketing products. Not a huge profit, just enough to cover the production and distribution costs. Don’t be greedy and people will be happy to work with you and effectively your marketing gifts are free.

The way to do this is to sell advertising space on your gifts. So here I’m not talking promotional gifts with small print areas, I’m talking larger, but still cheap, items with with a print space. We’re looking at calendars, mouse mats and clothing.

Clothing is fine to litter with plenty of other logos if you are giving the products out at an event and calendars can cost that little bit more, so personally mouse mats are my favourite here. It’s amazingly simple to have a go. Across the top of the mouse mat display your details and contact details then split the rest of the mat into 2. Most of the remaining space is used to display a calendar or photos of your products - this gives the mouse mat a purpose - a reason for the recipient to keep it and use it.

Then the remainder of the area is available for a few adverts or a list of recommended other suppliers. This space is sufficient to show a few logos or a dozen or more website addresses. Depending which you want, charge a small amount per advert space and fill it up with adverts. The more mats you are giving out the better it is for the advertisers - the more your advert is being seen. You can even give them one when they are made so they feel they have got something for their cash!

But, why would people want to pay to be on your mouse mats? Well, it works on a couple of levels. First, you know the recipients and they are your customers. Therefore, they will see these adverts not as adverts, but as referrals. Also, because they are your customers, you know something about them. For example, a web designer might know they are giving the mouse mats to small businesses. Therefore accountants, printers and the likes might be of interest as well to their customers.

This is the important knowledge that makes this idea brilliant - you know what your average customer is interested in - so think about what other businesses might also want to target your customers.

Grab free information in the topic of free traffic - your individual knowledge pack.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Key questions to ask you next site Search Engine Optimisation company

Many website owners see the services of an SEO company as an easy way to a load of long term affordable web promotion. If you are about to appoint a company to help you Search Engine Optimisation your site, then you are entitled to know what they are going to do. After all, you are probably paying quite a lot of money for these services. But what are the right questions to ask?

Most Search Engine Optimisation companies will start with the site review and make the changes. As long as that’s carried out, there’s not much to ask about. Where most of the money is spent is in the long term on link building and that’s where some dirty work can come into play from the less reputable companies.

Ask your proposed SEO company what type of link building they will be include posting to blogs and article writing. If they are posting to blogs, ask who’s blogs. Make sure they are not just leaving spammy comments on blogs. If article writing, who is writing the content and how much effort do they put into checking the articles are published with the links in place? You both have a vested interest in making sure this is done properly. Ask to see some examples of these for previous customers and if they say they can’t because of confidentiality, be suspicious.

Some Search Engine Optimisation companies will depend mainly or totally on some form of website link exchanges. This is where you must be wary. You should ask how they find sites who are willing to put the links on their site. There will be two answers, either they are paid links or they are reciprocal links.

If they are a paid links, then they should be responsible for making sure that the website link stays live for the agreed duration. The time to worry is if they are reciprocal links. If you are not having the link placed in your web site, where is the link going and how are they finding these websites?

This is where some sneaky work can come in to play. Some SEO companies have lists of website that accept automated link exchanges. These third party web site think they are reciprocal linking to your website, but eventually notice large numbers of inbound links from the same useless directory with outgoing links to different website. All you are actually paying for is for them to submit your links via an automated script. Quite often they don’t even bother to submit you to the category pages within the website’s links directory. Not only does this mean you aren’t on a themed page, but it is also wrecking the site owner’s links directory.

So how can you spot those experts with dubious links building against those with better reciprocal link building? Again, ask them for some examples of where they have placed links for customers and ask them where they provide the reciprocal link back. Again, be wary of those companies not willing to tell you - they are probably hiding something.

Once you know where they place links to other sites, have a look around the website. Does it have a home page? Is the website listed in search engines? If not, then there’s a dubious practice or two in their outgoing links. Are there lots of near identical pages on this site of theirs? Have a look on the sites that are linked to and see if you can spot where their customers’ links are. Are they all on the same page or are they categorized?

Be very concerned about how your paid Search Engine Optimisation expert runs a link building campaign for your website, otherwise it could be a very expensive way to get a lot of ignored links. And if you are looking for more tips to get more traffic to website, then don’t forget to check out the blog!

Find competent information about free traffic - welcome to your individual knowledge base.

How do you start when you are wanting for an affordable web designer?

In these hard times more and more companies are relying on the internet for some extra traffic. Where should you be starting and what sort of website designer should you approach? Keith, who offers Southport website design services, takes a look at this.

Many small companies might attempt a facebook page or start off by selling small amounts of items on Ebay, but for others, these aren’t ‘professional’ enough and even those that experiment with these quick and easy methods find that they out grow them and want to try a full of web site that is professionally built.

There are many small businesses that try the next step themselves – using an off the shelf tool to create a site. But for most people, the site built this way does not look as good as the competitor’s. The web site does not work as well as their competitor’s – the search engines being unable to visit the web site as easily as they would a website written by hand. And the results from the visitors flowing into the web site are poor.

Don’t get put off by these factors. There are many web designers out there and there is almost certainly one for you! But where do you start? A small shop, wanting a basic site, maybe selling or maybe just giving more information, might well be best working with one of the number of freelance web designers that make their services available on the market. Being freelance, they can usually work closely with you without costing an arm and a leg and offer an affordable web site design service.

At the other end of the spectrum, if you have a huge budget to spend then you probably need to approach a large web site design company with a myriad of graphic designers and all sorts of support staff. They will be able to offer you far more, but because the company has many levels of staff to pay for, from salesmen to legal team to personnel department, the project is going to cost far more to complete.

What then should you be asking when you approach a website designer? Well, for a start, it is useful to know what you want out of the website. Will you be selling stock? Will you just be using it as a contact point? Tell them that first – it might make the web site too big or too small for them to handle. If you want to sell stock on the website ask to see a recent E-Commerce site that they have built themselves. And when they show you an example web site, make sure that the website has a link back to them as the site designer! If not, then it is possible that they are showing you someone else’s website. That’s not always the case, but most proud web site designers will put their own link back from the site. Be suspicious if not!

Find realistic hints for Free Traffic System - this is your individual guide.

Free Traffic System is the new age of article marketing: it has its advantages and does not have its disadvantages.

The advantages of both article marketing and Free Traffic System are obvious - Google and other search engines welcome and will always welcome the creation of new, useful, non-duplicate content and that is why search engines look favorably upon the backlinks generated this way.

Due to this “benevolent attitude” from search engines towards links built via article marketing thousands of people are successfully using article marketing for years to improve their positions in search engines for the necessary keywords.

BUT, unfortunately article marketing has some serious disadvantages, let’s have a look at them:

- when others republish your article they can delete your backlinks from article

This is a real problem. After you have submitted your article to one of the major article directories - you lose control over this article. Today lots of people are using different automatic tools to “harvest” these directories for content and republish its articles on their sites.

The problem is that more and more people started to steal your content from article directories and automatically DELETE your backlinks from the resource box. OR they steal just a tiny portion of your content (1st paragraph of your article, for example) and give a backlink to the article directory. This is great for article directory, but not for you!

With Free Traffic System you are guaranteed that pages where your content is republished will remain with YOUR backlinks. Those blogs who break this rule and touch your links (modify them/make them invisible/delete them) will be deleted from the Free Traffic System and lose access to quality content.

Duplicate Content Problems

You see, when one and the same article is republished Google quickly “understands” this is a duplicate content and “sees” that a big portion of your backlinks is built from duplicate content pages. This is not dangerous and Google will not punish you for doing that, but it is rumored that Google seriously lowers the SEO value of backlinks built from duplicate content pages.

With Free Traffic System you have all tools necessary to make each of your articles be non-duplicate, even if the article is republished on 20, 40, 100 or even more blogs. With the help of simple procedures - that will take extra 5 minutes per article - you will create dozens or even hundreds of READABLE and CONCISE versions of article title and body. It is all in your hands: if you decide to spend 5 minutes and use the diversification tools provided by Free Traffic System, then each of the articles republished will be unique for Google and other search engines. And this will instantly increase the value of your backlinks.

Explore these are other advantages of building one way links with the new level of article marketing - claim your free registration at Free Traffic System.

Grab realistic experiences in the topic of free traffic - your personal tips store.

Look At The Broad Choice Of Promotional Gifts From The World Of Golf

If you are in need of a quality gift to give away, then a logo golf bag can be an wonderful gift to be thinking about. Not only do these have a huge printing area to utilise for your business’ details or message, they are seen as a quality high end item that will really make your customers know just how much you value them. They are certain to be put into action by your very lucky recipients and in doing so this means that they will be displaying their gift to their friends, playing partners and those passing them as they play.

Not only that, but they make your details highly noticeable. Most golfers are used to seeing golf bags printed with their manufacturer’s logo. On the rare occasion that a bag is printed with a player’s name, it is seen as special and meaningful. In being different to the norm, it is also subconsciously eye catching. Golfers who would normally not see a manufacturer’s logo on a golf bag will, without realising, notice that the logo on the bag in front of them isn’t a standard logo and automatically take it in.

This means that the golfers watching your customer are seeing and absorbing your details without intending to. It’s something out of place that captures their attention. And by having a bag that is emblazoned with a logo that most people are not used to noticing, your customer is made to feel special. Why else would they have a logo on their bag that is not regularly seen around golf courses!

What could be better promotional golf items to give to customers – something that flatters the ego whilst showing off your organisation’s details!

It is the time again when businesses are left to choose what promotional business gifts they are going to be giving to their customers and prospective customers. Often, this sort of task will be delegated to a poor person, who is given a small budget to work to, told how many items are needed and expected to get the items ready in time, on budget and looking superb.

So where are you going to begin with this trawl through the myriad of golfing items on the market? It really depends on your company’s budget per item. If you are working to a restrictive budget then there is a good selection of low cost items that you customers will truly be pleased to be given. But if you have a significant budget to work with, the choice becomes even greater and that, I suppose, is where the difficulties start. Just where do you start your selection?

For the low end budget, the standard golf item would be the promotional golf balls. These are a brilliant idea for those arranging the items, not least for their flexibility. If you are on a tight budget then you can just send a sleeve of 3 of the cheaper brand name balls to your recipients. If you have a larger budget, or are wanting to impress your recipients, then a box of 12 high end brand balls can be given instead. Do you want a bit of both? Well that’s also easy, just choose which brand (or brands) to have printed up and for those you want to provide higher priced gifts for give a full box, whereas those customers that aren’t so important get a sleeve of balls - just simply by splitting down the box into its 4 sleeves.

Other budget golf items abound as well. There are the printed golf tees, which can be supplied either on their own, boxed or in tee bars, with ball marker and divot repair tool included.

Get timely suggestions about free traffic - welcome to your individual tips store.