Marketing Your Website on an Aglet

Marketing your website is vital to its success. Having a site that no-one really knows about is like having a lemonade stand at the South Pole, hardly a visitor and chances are they don’t want what you are offering.

From where I sit, there seem to be three basic ways to market your site. Each of them will cost you either time, money or effort.

Firstly, there is the “pay-for-this-and-get-ten-times-your-money-back� type of marketing that is quite widely available. Only problem is you usually have to pay first. Not too many (I can count on one hand with at least 4 fingers left over) will let you use their system/software/idea/whatever, and pay for it out of the profits you make. Now, I don’t blame them for wanting their money. They are, after all, in business.

But what if you don’t have that sort of money just lying around? What if, after all the essentials are paid for, you don’t have any significant spare cash? Many of the marketing gurus who offer these products are of the mindset that if you can’t afford,, say, $25 per month for their product which will make you a fortune in sales, you are just not serious.

But that $25 per month is not all there is. What about Internet access; what about hosting costs, etc. etc. etc. Then, of course, there are all the other commitments to programs you have taken on in the past, with little, if anything, to show for them. It all adds up and when you are starting from scratch it’s quite possible that an extra $25 per month is more than your budget will allow.

Secondly, there is the “join-these-seven-hundred-and-fifty-exchanges-under-me� type of marketing that is also promoted across the internet. Link exchanges, traffic exchanges, banner exchanges are all in the mix. It all sounds nice in theory but what tends to happen is that you spend a large portion of the time you are on the ‘net, waiting ten seconds, then click, waiting ten seconds, then click, ad nauseum. But at least they are free!!!

And what do you get in return? Granted, people will visit your site. But their whole purpose in visiting your site is to earn credit so that people will visit their site. Are they interested in what you have to offer? Not very often. You might as well try selling ice creams at your South Pole lemonade stand for all the business you are likely to get.

Thirdly, there is the “write-lots-of-articles-and-get-yourself-known-as-an-expert� strategy. This is one I admit, I use with quite reasonable results. Only the other day I was checking the visitor stats on one of my newly published sites and was pleasantly surprised by the traffic I am receiving from this strategy. I see two problems, however.

Problem no.1:What if you are not a writer? You can either pay someone to write for you, which takes us back to the money issue or if you use this strategy throw something together yourself that doesn’t appeal to anyone and becomes a rather fruitless exercise. There, is of course some middle ground, but one of the main reasons for articles is to have people come to respect your expertise. That, by my reckoning suggests you need to present something people will want to read and act on if it is to achieve that desired goal.

Problem no2: What if you are a writer? I am. I spend a great deal of my time writing in the area of my passion. However, to receive the degree of recognition that attracts significant traffic and the resultant purchase of my product in viable quantities, I’m told I need to produce in the vicinity of 1000 articles!!! My question then becomes, what’s left over for me to produce saleable items. (which in my case are e-books) Why would someone pay for my product when, with little effort they would be able to get the same information for free?

Aristotle said, “There is always another option� and I believe he is right! I want to be able to market my website on an aglet.

An aglet is the small metal tip on the ends of shoe strings. Aglet marketing, then, is about promoting your website on the tip of a shoestring! Explore the possibilities at http://www.aglet-marketing.blogspot.com. Graham Hunt is also founder and Thinker-in-Residence of The Ultimate Success Center who produce http://www.the-ultimate-success-site.com