Advertising
Advertising has always been a bit of a trial for me. My ads don't work very well. That's why I eventually embraced Secrets of the Big Dogs, a program which showed me how to reach 600,000 people a month. (When you have a "sample market" that large, and the right marketing tools, it's much easier to develop ads that WORK.)
However you choose to advertise, there are some things that I believe are important.
First, it is imperative that you see advertising as a conceptual process - one that begins with the question "What do my customers want, and how can I give it to them?" and ends with sales.
When you prepare an ad, you need to see it as the beginning of a learning experience. If you are methodical and persistent about evaluating your effort, you will eventually produce effective copy.
I recommend that you maintain a database for your ads (Your word processor will do). When you produce an ad, create a unique redirection code that will only be used for that ad and no other. Once the ad has been posted, keep track of how many responses it generated, and include the number in the same file where you keep the ad.
Pay careful attention to what your competition is doing - you can learn a lot by watching the pros.
Do not delete the ad when you decide to change it. Make a copy, and change the copy. You will want to be able to compare each ad and response as you continue to develop your campaign.
When you change the ad, change the redirection code. That will tell you how their response rates compare.
Keep doing this until your ads produce the response rate you need to produce sales. When they do, you will know why, and the next ad you produce will be even better.
The problem with most Internet advertising is obvious. Even if it works, it stops the minute you stop doing it. Digital ad copy does not lie around in a doctor's office or in the nation's bathrooms, selling for you months after publication. When it's gone, hey, it's gone!
The most effective advertising is self-replicating! That is why viral marketing is rapidly becoming a household word.
Viral Marketing: When you give away a product or service of such inherent value that it markets itself. In other words, it's easy to get and easy to give.
If there is but one "secret" to making money on the net, you've just learned it. The rest is window dressing.
Blast4Traffic claims that its clients can email 70 million targeted opt-in prospects on a monthly basis, using their server-side one click mailer. I haven't tried this system yet, and would appreciate hearing from anyone who has.
They offer a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Optin Maverick is an outstanding product, which allows you to put popovers or popunders on ANY website. The system can even be used to add your personal popup/under to sites like CNN.com! This means that every single affiliate link you use in your advertising can carry it's own popup/under for any other site you want to promote.
Lightning Pop-Up offers the opportunity to instantly turn any autoresponder into an Opt-In Email list. The product will instantly create unlimited Opt-In Lighting-style Pop-Up's and Subscribe Boxes that automatically distribute leads to any responder, List Server or Email address. It will also instantly generate unlimited Pop-Up's on Entry, Pop-Up's on Exit, Pop-Unders, Frameset Pages and Redirect Pages "on-the-fly".
I use this product on two of my websites. It was remarkably simple to install, and worked flawlessly, right "out of the box." I recommend it.