A lot of people, especially those who are new to running a website or blog, are intimidated by advertising and the potential costs associated with it. The fact of the matter is, we are all experts in advertising to some extent. We all pretty much grew up with ads in our faces and this gives us the best training we could possibly need from a standpoint of what works and what does not work in advertising. But that doesn’t necessarily help with the costs. And it certainly doesn’t help us get a feel for just how much money we should invest in advertising.
Before you can really set a budget, however, you need to determine what your goals are. If you are looking for slow steady growth then you can generally set a budget that is reasonably priced and targeted to your specific audience. It really isn’t just about how much money you spend. Sure, you could spend a fortune buying the top banner spot on Yahoo and I’m sure you’d get plenty of traffic for it, but how targeted would that traffic be and how long would it last once the ad comes down?
Some may argue with me on this but I really do not believe that you have to spend very much money at all if you’re looking for a slow and steady growth for your site. Blogging happens to be one of the simplest, and cheapest, ways to spread the word about your website or product. With an RSS feed that gets fed out to numerous sites you are sure to quickly get visitors - especially if you post often and keep your posts interesting. The only cost to you is in the time spent in writing your posts, etc.
Link building is another great way to get free advertising. Believe it or not, but there are still plenty of websites out there that are willing to do link exchanges with you. Many even have automated processes for this. The key here, however, is to make sure that you do a link exchange with sites that are related to your content. Google and other search engines like links of this nature. The best way to get going on a link building campaign is to go to Alexa.com and look at the traffic stats for your #1 competitor. When the site info comes up, check out their “Sites Linking In” and you now have your laundry list of sites that you need to contact in order to do a link exchange with. Scan their pages first and look for a link on their site that tells you how you can link exchange with them. If they don’t have that, contact them another way (email, etc) and make sure you personalize the email, it will increase your chance of getting a response.
Another great way to generate some free traffic to your site is by putting your website link in forum posts, blog comments and even in social networking sites such as Myspace, etc. There is no shame in telling your Myspace contacts that you have a new blog or webpage for them to check out and it can really spread. I even showcased MyBlogLog.com in the previous post which is definitely a site you will want to join.
The old adage “it takes money to make money” is not always the case when it comes to advertising. The fact is that in today’s viral marketing world, you have many options that don’t even have to cost you a dime. So use them!
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August 30th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
My budget started at nothing. But like they say, you got to spend a little to make a little. So now my budget is about $100 a month starting out. I will grow this a little in the future. I think its one of those things that will really help you get over the hump. Although if you write a great article that should get Dugg or slashdoted then you can forget about having to spend any money initially and your traffic will just grow organically due to the link backs and having high traffic volume. Just hope your hosting can handle it.