We started our online adventure about 4 years ago when we were looking to use the internet as a tool to sell products. At that time there was great fan fare with email marketing and the ability to reach millions for a lower cost than banner or PPC advertising. It was about this time that that the CANN Spam act was put into place which placed severe penalties on those spamming users. The key to successful email marketing was getting the permission from the end user, or permission marketing. But how do you go about getting their permission if they do not event know how to reach your site. Many have been successful in using free giveaways or newsletters on a particular topic to collect and validate email addresses of potential customers. Companies like GY8.net and Machinimatrix.com provide great access to many users and they are actually white listed in services like AOL. White listed basically means that the emails sent with this newsletter won’t get bounced back.
One of the other forms of online marketing that we have been successful at has been growing Page rank and seach engine ranking. For some keywords you can buy text links and this can help increase your position in search engines. We have approached this avenue but we have also found that by adding content to our blog and finding interesting companies to write about has also helped to increase our rankings. The other key thing that we have found to be beneficial is writing nice articles with links back to our site and submit those articles to various submission sites. This has been a great way to attract new customers. There are many ways to increase your rankings and customers, but if you do not provide a compelling story or reason for them to explore your blog or webpage then you have missed the opportunity to make the most out of your marketing dollars.
