LowRiskIncomes.com - Low Cost Advertising

Specifically, you want "targeted hits". Targeted hits are someone who visits your site because they were "already looking" for what your site has to offer. A hit that is not targeted is someone who visited your site "for the heck of it" and has no particular interest in its content or what you're selling. You don't want to pay for these type of hits.

One of the best places on the Internet to get targeted hits is from search engines. Getting listed in the "traditional" search engines can be tricky, and it's a challenge to get a position for "keywords" where you'll be found. In other words, you may finally get listed in Google after waiting for a month, but your chosen keywords "cellular phone" put you at #247 in the listings (which pretty much means that no one will find you).

For a beginner, I would suggest focusing on the pay-per-click search engines I have listed below.

If you want to know how to optimize a website for traditional search engine listings, read my search engine optimization page.

The solution to this is the newer style of search engine, the pay-per-click (ppc) search engine. In these search engines you "bid" for your position, and pay for each click. Yes, it costs money, but its much more direct, and well worth it, if your website or page performs well.

Here is a list of the best pay-per-click search engines (in order of preference):

	Google is the new king of traffic on the Internet now (even surpassing Yahoo). Their Adwords system is unique and allows you to advertise immediately. The quality of their traffic and partners is excellent. Affiliate marketers must put "Affiliate" or "Aff." at the end of the ad description. Google is no longer accepting casino affiliate or casino ads in Adwords. This is unfortunate since casino affiliate programs are probably the most profitable on the Internet right now. Minimum bid: .05 Startup: $25 (Up to 500 hits)
Searchfeed.com	Searchfeed has a massive distribution network which delivers millions of pay-per-click ad views each day. Their interface is excellent and easy-to-use. They also offer search distribution opportunities to webmasters with quality sites. Searchfeed.com minimizes keyword abuse with their proprietary TrafficAnalyst system. The quality of their traffic and partners is very good. Minimum bid: .01 Startup: $25 (Up to 2500 hits)
7Search.com	Their interface is excellent and easy-to-use, and they've recently improved their user interface. 7search eliminates keyword abuse by monitoring all of their partners constantly and will email you a notification of a refund in the event of any questionable traffic. 7search requires new advertisers to OWN at least one domain name that they advertise (i.e. your first advertisement can't be for an affiliate link). The quality of their traffic and partners is excellent. Minimum bid: .01 Startup: $25 (Up to 2500 hits)
GoClick.com	Their interface is excellent and easy-to-use. You can setup sub-accounts to better manage your links. They've recently added more bid management tools that help you to get more traffic and better control of your bids. Goclick eliminates keyword abuse by monitoring all of their partners constantly and will give you an internal notification of a refund within your account in the event of any questionable traffic. The quality of their traffic and partners is very good. Minimum bid: .01 Startup: $10 (Up to 1000 hits)
Findwhat.com	FindWhat is currently the 2nd largest traditional pay-per-click search engine after Overture. Their interface is easy-to-use (but be careful to check your Pending Bids with mass submission of keywords). In the last 6-8 months, Findwhat has not been very responsive when I questioned them about some of their traffic. I continue to use them and benefit from the majority of their traffic, but I would monitor often-searched keywords closely and watch for "surges in hits" that aren't related to your bidding position. Affiliate marketers must put "Affiliate" at the end of the ad description. Minimum bid: .05 Startup: $25 (Up to 500 hits)
Overture.com	If you're wondering why Overture is farther down on this list (and they're the largest traditional pay-per-click and partnered with Yahoo), its because Overture has a ten cent minimum bid, which is rather expensive when testing new ads for profitability. The top bids are also very high in Overture, due to the number of large corporate advertisers. Overture also has the toughest editorial department in the business, and will rake every submitted ad with a fine-toothed comb. Read their requirements well! I recommend an Overture account, AFTER you've proven your ad to be profitable in a less-expensive ppc search engine and can justify a ten cent or higher bid. They are well worth the extra money and pain for a profitable ad because only they can get you at the top of Yahoo. The quality of their traffic and partners is excellent. Affiliate marketers must put "Affiliate" at the end of the ad description. Overture is no longer accepting casino affiliate or casino ads. Minimum bid: .10 Startup: $50 (Up to 500 hits)
Lycos Insite Adbuyer	Their interface is excellent and easy-to-use (they utilize a system created by FindWhat). Be careful to check your Pending Bids with mass submission of keywords. The quality of their traffic and partners is very good. Affiliate marketers must put "Affiliate" in the ad. Lycos Adbuyer does not accept casino affiliate or casino ads. Minimum bid: .05 Startup: $50 (Up to 1000 hits)

The following are large pay-per-clicks that I DO NOT RECOMMEND under any circumstances:

Search123

Epilot

For "traditional" search engine submission, read my search engine optimization page.

For now, here are search engines/directories that you can submit to for free:
AltaVista
AllTheWeb
EntireWeb
ThisIsOurYear
Dmoz.org (however, not friendly to affiliate sites)

Be sure to have a fully-working website to submit, and read their rules well before submitting your website.

Here are other advertising solutions that are relatively inexpensive:

Software that delivers the most effective affiliate program / keyword combinations for profitability

How to Earn Thousands Writing Google AdWords Part-Time.

Email 96 Million Targeted Opt-ins a Month (No Spam)

Free Advertising - Free Classified Ads

TrafficSwarm

TrafficSwarm may be the best free Internet advertising source that you can use to promote any website or link.

They have a network of over 145,000 member/websites that will display your advertisement with your website link over and over.

You start with a number of free credits and can earn credits easily simply by visiting other websites.

You'll receive targeted traffic where people CHOOSE to click on your advertisement, not "fake" or "computer-generated" traffic.

You can earn even more credits by setting your home page to your TrafficSwarm link.

They also reward you for referrals and give you more credits for them.

Your account can be upgraded to double most of your credits and award you with thousands of credits each month.

If you really want to begin developing an income and a steady stream of traffic, I URGE YOU to join this free system. I'm already seeing nice results from my TrafficSwarm account and have had my advertisements displayed thousands of times for hundreds of hits.

Free Pay-per-click Search Engines

I knew that if I wanted results, the search engines were the best place for my advertisements. I knew that those "free mass submission" services didn't work, and that the pay-per-click engines would be the best place for an ad with a link to my website. There are many small pay-per-click search engines that will give you a FREE account balance so that you can try out their services and get free hits. You can usually bid yourself to #1 spots pretty easily. They don't have as much traffic as the big search engines, but having many of these accounts will accumulate the hits. I probably got about 50 referrals from search engines like these:

Kanoodle.com is a larger pay-per-click engine, who also gives away a $5 starting account.

ISPHelper.com
JustSearching.com
FindPinoy.com
CoolFetch.com
SearchFar.com
Seek2Win.com
SeekNow.net

Keyword ideas: free money, get paid to take surveys, get paid, free, getpaid, make free money, paid surveys, free surveys

The more targeted keywords you can think of, the better you'll do.

Tips:

Keep your bids low enough to conserve your balance, but high enough to get you near the top listings. It may be a free account, but overbidding can run it out quickly.

Look for free pay-per-click accounts that have a "CatchAll" feature. Most people won't turn down a chance at "free money" and a catchall is a good way to get extra hits.

Look for free pay-per-click accounts that have a "Featured" listing on the home page. Bidding on the word featured can get you on the homepage for a reasonable cost sometimes.

Manually submitting listings is fine, but when you get more serious, use their "Mass Keyword Submission" feature. I keep a Word document that contains everything (title, url, description, keyword, bid) for HUNDREDS of keywords for SurveySavvy and other affiliates. Most of these small ppcs are made by Smartsearch, and have the same input features. This makes it easy to cart keywords from ppc to ppc. It takes some practice, but you'll figure it out.

More FREE Advertising Sources

Free Classifieds from USfreeads! Posts free classifid ads on the Internet (or enhance them for a few dollars).
AdlandPro - a large multi-faceted advertising source, whose account can be upgraded for even more effectiveness.
ViralSlideIns.com - The latest advertising craze. Allows you to advertise with Slide-in ads which are more effective than popup windows. 5000 free points for signing up.
BannersGoMLM.com ** - Banner exchange that gives a $15 bonus credit and more credits for referrals
ILoveHits.com - Set your home page to them and it brings visitors to your own page
ClickThru.com - Brings visitors to your page as you visit other websites
Increaser.com - Brings visitors to your page as you visit other websites
Textwords.com ** - For each click of advertising-words-of-text on your page, you get visitors
EBannerX.com ** - Banner exchange

** - to participate you need your own personal webpage or website. You couldn't promote a pre-generated page, like one from Cognigen or SurveySavvy using this system.

If you need a button or banner for any of the services above, you can easily create a basic one at Animation Online.

If you need a button or banner for the services above, you can easily create a basic one at Animation Online.

Click here for more Marketing options

Click here for more Web Promotion options

Envision it: The way that the Internet works, you only need about 2% of the people who visit your website to take an action to be successful.

Creating your listings (and a discussion about Keywords)

Your advertising listings in the search engines will have a major impact on your success. Here are some tips for doing this:

Scout your competitor listings first. This will give you a "feel" for how yours could be.

Create a title that emphasizes the main selling point of your product.

Capitalize the title the way that you would a book title (ex. Lord of the Rings)

Use a description that briefly touches on the main selling points of your product.

Check your spelling and grammar. Use a word processor like Word if necessary.

You can put the price of your product in your description if it is one of your products strong points. The price being evident will also prevent clicks from being wasted on "freebie seekers".

List as many targeted keywords as you can. You can use tools like Overture's to find combinations of base keywords.

Try to add more targeted keywords each week.

Avoid off-topic non-targeted keywords. They will waste your advertising dollars.

Common misspellings of words can actually make good keywords to bid on due to lower bids.

Bidding

When you're testing a product/page, you'll have no idea how high to bid, in order to attempt to return a profit. I recommend starting off slow, testing the waters, and setting 10 cents as your highest bid starting out. By highest, I mean that 10 cents should be considered your "high" bid. The other bids could be much lower. Averaging about 5 cents per hit should be your goal when testing a new product/page.

The next step, Get Paid, discusses this further.

Advertising a Storefront

If you�re going to be marketing a storefront or a website with numerous products, you have to assess the �world that you�re marketing in�. I�ll explain.

When you market one thing at a time, your competitors will be �smaller�, individuals like you, independent reps, or small companies most of the time. When you market AS �An Internet Mall with Numerous Products� your competitors are giants in the industry: Walmarts, BestBuy, Amazon.com, etc. etc. Billion dollar companies with tens of thousands of products, advertising budgets in the millions, and bells and whistles all over their websites that literally make your head spin. Do you really want to market yourself as a company that is every bit as good as them and can compete with them on all levels? If so, you better be prepared to fork out millions or to have your little storefront get �sized up� as being completely inferior, lacking in numerous ways, and inadequate in comparison to the big guys. This is not to scare or depress you, this is to help make you successful by competing in a different way.

I�ve had success with my storefront by marketing one-product-at-a-time and by working on one-customer-at-a-time. There are various books at the bookstore that will tell you the same thing. You have to find products at your storefront that are unique in some way or have a unique selling point (the price, the overall quality, can't find it anywhere else, etc.). Then you can single out the individual pages that promote them and market those individual products specifically. For example, if your storefront sells items that are �As Seen on TV�, you can create search engine listings for those products alone, describing their best points, and you can target the name or description of the product as keywords to list under. This is an example of one way to get customers to your storefront with a specific product they have in mind, and this will also introduce your storefront to them, with the chance that they�ll buy other products.

Another option for avoiding direct competition with the Walmarts of the world, is to specialize in a particular line of products. For example, if you want to specialize in Internet-based, communications, or technology products, Cognigen is an example of a specialized high-tech storefront with an incredible amount of power. Specializing levels the playing field some because customers feel a sense of security by buying from a storefront that is specialized in a particular area.

If you�re convinced that you have good advertising ideas for how to market your storefront AS �A Big Mall with Numerous Products�, then more power to you! I�m not saying �not to� if this is what you want to do. I�m just trying to prepare you for the jungle that is Internet Retailing. Do you remember the last time you went to Walmarts or BestBuy and your tires ran over that beetle in the parking lot? Probably not! Well, that bug could be your storefront!

Reystar Search -- Search Engine, Advertising and Web Site Promotion Resources
Search Engine offering convenient multiple search engine results, webmaster and marketing resources, affiliate programs and great internet offers.