CREATING YOUR WEBSITE'S PROMOTIONAL

CREATING YOUR WEBSITE'S PROMOTIONAL

STRATEGY

By Shelley Lowery

Creating a successful Internet presence involves much more than

designing a great web site or having the "perfect" product. Listing

your website with the Search Engines is your first step, however, you

must not solely depend upon the Search Engines to bring you traffic.

You must design a complete promotional strategy and work it every

day.

A good way to organize your promotions is to set up a webpage, for

your personal use, that will contain your complete strategy. This page

should be stored on your hard drive and not uploaded to your server.

Your page should contain four sections.

- Daily Promotions

- Weekly Promotions

- Monthly Promotions

- Miscellaneous Promotions

Each of these four sections should contain the appropriate

information for each of your promotional resources such as, website

name, user ID, password (if applicable) and hyperlinked web

addresses for each website you plan to use for your promotions. This

will enable you to open your webpage each day and visit each daily

promotional link you have listed.

Your daily promotions should include posting your ads to a list of free

classified ad and free for all sites. In addition, visit some popular

discussion boards. Although you may not advertise on discussion

boards, you can include your signature file with your post.

There are several websites that will enable you to submit your

classified ads and links to an entire network of sites with just one

form. Here is a list of resources to get you started:

Yahoo Classifieds

http://classifieds.yahoo.com/

AdlandPro Networked Classifieds 5000+

http://www.web-source.net/adlandpro.htm

Web Sitings Networked Classifieds 40,000+

http://www.websitings.com/classads/sites/source.htm

Epage Networked Classifieds 16,000+

http://www.web-source.net/classifieds.htm

SmallBizFFA 35,000+

http://www.smallbizffa.net/ffa.pl?35984

FFA Network 10,000+

http://www.ffanet.com/submit.htm

Free Submission 9,500+

http://hbb.nu/freesubmit/

MGA web 5,000+

http://www.mgaweb.com/submit/mgacat.asp

Link Place 3,000+

http://www.linkplace.com/

Link Station 8,000+

http://global.gr/mtools/linkstation/

USubmit 9,500+

http://www.usubmit.com/

Wizard 8,000+

http://wizardsoftheweb.com/partners/wizard/links.shtml

URL Submitter 183,500+

http://urlsubmitter.com/url.shtml

For a complete listing of some of the top discussion boards, visit:

http://www.web-source.net/web/Discussion_Forums/

Your weekly promotions should consist of placing a paid ezine

advertisement and/or arranging ad swaps with fellow publishers. Visit

the Free Directory of Ezines for all the information you'll need to place

and/or swap ads with over 700 ezines. http:/

/www.netmastersolutions.com/

To organize your ad placements and swaps, place the publication

names, publisher names, ad dates and hyperlinked web addresses

within your weekly promotions list.

Your monthly promotions should include writing an article in the area

of your expertise, Search Engine submissions, promotional

exchanges with similar websites and offline promotions.

Writing Articles:

Writing articles that may be freely published with your bylines is one of

the best promotional methods online. Your article may be published in

hundreds of ezines, on websites or even in magazines. To learn more

about writing articles for publication, read the article entitled, "Write

For Publicity." http://www.web-source.net/write.htm

To organize your monthly promotions, place the names and

hyperlinked web addresses for each of your promotional resources

within your monthly promotions section.

Article Announcement Lists:

Article Announce

Subscribe: mailto:article_announce-subscribe@egroups.com

http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

PublishInYours

Subscribe: mailto:PublishInYours-subscribe@egroups.com

http://www.egroups.com/group/PublishInYours

Articles Archive

Subscribe: mailto:articles_archives-subscribe@egroups.com

http://www.egroups.com/group/articles_archives

Free Content

Subscribe: mailto:Free-Content-subscribe@egroups.com

http://www.egroups.com/group/Free-Content

Article Submission Sites:

ideaMarketers - http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Free Content - http://www.certificate.net/wwio/ideas.shtml

Ezine Articles - http://www.ezinearticles.com/add_url.htm

Search Engines:

Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com/

AltaVista - http://www.altavista.com/av/content/addurl.htm/

Hotbot - http://www.hotbot.com/addurl.asp/

Lycos - http://www.lycos.com/addasite.html/

Excite - http://www.excite.com/info/add_url/

InfoSeek - http://infoseek.go.com/AddUrl?pg=SubmitUrl.html/

WebCrawler - http://www.webcrawler.com/info/add_url/

NorthernLight - http://www.northernlight.com/docs/regurl_help.html/

Promotional Exchanges:

To set up some promotional exchanges with similar websites, visit a

Search Engine and type in a keyword that best describes your

website. Visit some websites that are similar to yours, but not in

competition. Contact the webmaster to discuss your promotional

exchange. This may be a link exchange, joint venture, or whatever you

both decide.

Your miscellaneous promotions will include; running a press release,

joining traffic generating programs, buying promotional products and

advertising in newspapers, magazines, etc.

Press Release:

CanadaOne provides a free interactive press release builder.

http://www.canadaone.com/promote/pressrelease.html

Gebbie Press provides over 10,000 links to print and electronic

media on the Internet. http://www.gebbieinc.com/

Dr. Kevin Nunley will write your press release and send it to 5,000

media. http://coldfusion.affiliateshop.com/Link3.cfm?AID=004436

Gap Enterprises will enable you to send your press release to over

7,600 media. You write your press release or they'll write it for you.

http://www.gapent.com/pr/

Traffic Generating Programs:

Join some traffic generating programs to build a network of websites

all linking to your website. http://www.web-source.net/web/

Mega_Traffic_Generators/

Promotional Products:

IDit Plates - Put your web address on your vehicle. IDit Plates are a

great way to continuously promote your web site. They look like

chrome and blend in well with your vehicle. http://www.iditplates.net/

new/2711/index.html

Magnetic Signs - Full size magnetic signs for your vehicle. Get a

customized sign that magnetically adheres to each side of your

vehicle, advertising your website. http://www.magneticsigns.com/

iPrint - Professional printing over the Internet.

http://www.iprint.com/cgi-shl/index.cgi?shop=5072

PromoCity - Add your logo to any of over 500 promotional items.

http://www.promocity.com/

Offline Promotions:

Place ads in newspapers, magazines, on the radio, TV, etc.,

Visit these links for complete listings:

NewsDirectory Newspapers

http://www.ecola.com/news/press/

Newspapers Online

http://www.newspapers.com/

Commercial Magazine Publishers

http://www.writelinks.com/resources/pub/Pubs-mags.htm

Once you've created your promotional webpage, open it up in your

browser and add it to your favorite places or bookmark it for easy

daily access. Set up a specific day for your weekly and monthly

promotions and perform your miscellaneous promotions as needed.

Once you've implemented your promotional strategy and continuously

work it each day, you'll be amazed with the results of your efforts.

Consistency will be the key to driving massive traffic to your site.

About the Author

Shelley Lowery is the Webmistress of Web Source - Your Guide to

Professional Website Design and Development. Join The Syndicator,

our new, free article syndication program and display complete

articles w/photographs on your website that are automatically updated

each week. http://www.web-source.net

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