Advertising Your Site

"Shouldn't you also pursue traditional promotional opportunities?" Anita said.

"Such as?" I asked.

"Such as getting profiled in the local newspaper or getting a radio interview."

"Absolutely," I said. "Everything helps. But those things rarely happen for niche topicsnewspapers and radio stations want topics that interest a broad cross-section of their audience. Still, it's certainly worth a try once your site's established."

"You mentioned one other thingadvertising your site," said Claude, "which sounded kind of bizarre to me. The costs would just eat into your profits."

"Not if you do it right," I said. "The key is to make more money from the extra traffic than you're paying to get the traffic. As long as you do that, you'll be ahead."

"So you want us to sign up for AdWords?" Stef asked.

"Not necessarily," I answered. "AdWords is the obvious choice, yes, and you already know how it works thanks to our previous session on keyword valuation. In fact, we even went as far as setting up a fake ad campaignremember that?" They all nodded. "But AdWords isn't the only choice. You can sign up for link-exchange programs. You can buy banner ads. Don't worrythere are lots of ways to spend your advertising budget! I'd start with AdWords, though. It's a proven advertising vehicleStef's already benefiting from it, after alland it doesn't cost much to try out."

"But how likely is it that we'll make more money from buying ads that are similar to the ones we're already showing?" Claude said. "Wouldn't they cost us the same or even more?"

"Probably," I admitted. "It depends on what you're trying to accomplish. If you just want to build awareness and get some more eyeballs viewing your site, something like AdWords works well. If you want to generate direct revenue from the ads, you need to do one of two things: either use low-cost keywords to target pages with high-paying keywords, or use affiliate and referral programs that pay you money whenever someone buys a product or service because of you."