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As a business owner you probably look at advertising as an expense. What if I could show you a way to turn that expense into a money maker for your business! This idea isn’t new, in fact you see it everyday. People walking around advertising for products and services. You may be doing it yourself. I am talking about customized apparel and advertising products. Yes, those t-shirts, hats, cups, mugs, mouse pads and hundreds of other items that we have laying around all over the place.
These advertising products are everywhere. I bet you have some right now. I also think someone in your household has actually PAID good money for some of them. How many shirts, hats, mouse pads, coffee mugs do you see laying around with advertisements for brand names on them. Advertising the GAP, Abercrombie, Nike, Ford. Your business can do it too. Here’s how:
Start by selecting a few products to have your logo printed or embroidered on. Things that your customers might find useful. This is the key really, the customer, not you, has to find the item useful. That is why you see so many pieces of clothing used for this walking advertisement. Next have some of these items printed up and place them for sale within your store. It is that simple. As the items sell, you are getting free advertising.
Here is an example:
Let’s start with a set of shirts (T-shirt and Polo), a hat and a coffee mug. I am going to use my business costs for these items as an example, your supplier may be different. There are two basic methods to get your logo onto these items. For clothing you can have it either embroidered or printed. Printing can be screen printed, direct to garment, digital heat transfer or sublimation printing. I am not going to go into the differences here. If you have ever had any type of advertising apparel made you may already know the difference. I prefer digital heat transfer or sublimation. Sublimation only works on polyester products while digital heat transfer works on cotton products. Cotton being the least expensive that is what I will use as an example. Depending on the quantity, hats are a great give away, but don’t always sell well. Face it everyone has hats and unless it is a really good price, why buy more. But this is for advertising so why not have a few of them laying around for sale. I buy blank hats by the dozen and they can costs as little as $1.25 each. Then you have to have them printed on. Total cost may be as little as $2.50 depending on the quantity ordered. Price them for under $5 and I bet you will sell them. Even if you sell them for $3 a piece, you make a profit and the customer is advertising for you for free. T-shirts and polo shirts probably cost a little more for printed logo. Embroidery cost a little more, I think my price is about $5 a shirt on polo shirts plus the cost of the shirt. As you can see, this is not as expensive as some people think. Double the cost and put them up for sale. For really good customers, you can offer a discount 
I work with campgrounds and this is becoming a great way for them to make extra money. They are starting to produce a whole line of branded items for sale in their stores. I have a plumber who gives away stuff to all of his new customers. We practice what we preach so to speak with giveaway hats at the Chamber of Commerce meetings, when we are camping, and when we go to trade shows. I even manage to sell a few every now and then.
So the next time you are walking or driving around, look at all the paid for advertising around you, from the back of vehicles, on the people walking by and in the store windows. Then think how you could be using this as a way to increase your business and reduce your advertising costs.
Raymond Laubert is owner of Laubert Enterprises, which does business as Camping Embroidery. Camping Embroidery offers embroidery and digital printing services to campground owners, campers, clubs and organizations for fund raising opportunities and small businesses who want to be able to order small quantities. Camping Embroidery’s website is http://www.campingembroidery.com and for fund raising please visit Zero 2 Won at http://www.zero2won.com.
Banner advertising is on just about every web site you visit today. Banners are a form of advertising. This advertising is used to help pay for the site and help make the owner money. Regardless of the type of business or web site you have, you can use banners to help increase your income. The advertising revenue generated from banners falls into 3 groups: Pay Per Impression (PPI), Pay Per Click (PPC), and Pay Per Sale/Lead (PPS).
Pay Per Impression
With PPI banner advertising you are paid each time your advertiser’s banner is shown on your web pages. A term CPM is often used with banner advertising. It means cost per thousand, which basically means you will be paid $x.xx for every 1000 banners displayed to the visitors of your web site This is the easiest method to earn money with as every time someone visits your web site you get paid. However, this is not used very much and is very easily abused. If you have a 1000 visitors per day and are paid $5 per thousand then you make $150 per month. As an advertiser you do NOT want to use PPI. It would be like paying the newspaper or phone company money every time they said someone opened the newspaper or phonebook.
Pay Per Click
With PPC banner, you are paid more than with PPI but only when the visitor actually clicks on the banner rather then just seeing it. With PPI you many be paid $5.00 CPM (per thousand) and with PPC you could be paid $5 per click. However, not as many will click on the banner. Banner design has a lot to do with what we call the conversion rate. That is basically how effective is the banner. Conversion rates for banners are usually less than 1%. A very good banner may have a 5% conversion rate. Remember that is a passive income stream. It is working around the clock and requires no work on your part. So, if you have 1000 people a day coming to your web site and you have a 1% conversion rate with a payment of 50 cents per click, you could be earning $150 a month just for having the banner there. As an advertiser this is a little better than PPI.
At least now the visitor is on your web site and you have a chance to gather information about them and possibly sell them your product or service.
Pay Per Sale/Lead
PPS banner advertising using pays the highest dollars of these three methods, but only generates income when the advertiser makes a sale to someone visiting from your web site It will have the lowest conversion rate of the three. PPS banners only work well for the web site owner if the advertiser does a good job with the banner design (creating a desire to click), selling (presenting information), and closing (getting the sale). None of these do you control directly. Selecting PPS advertisers for your site should be well thought out. As an advertiser, this is the preferred type of banner advertising.
Where to find advertisers
I think the best place to find people that want to place banner ads on your site will be the affiliate programs. This is also a good place for you to advertise that you would like to place banners on others sites as well. Read the pages carefully. Banners can be expensive if you don’t generate any sales.
If you have friends or business associates that you do business with you can ask them if they would like to place a banner on your site
or if you could place a banner on theirs. These exchanges become more and more popular as your site becomes more popular as well.
A new source for banner ads is from the major search engines. Google Adwords are probably the best known new source for advertising on pay per basis. This works both ways. You can pay to have your ad/banner placed on others sites as well as have other web site ads placed on your site. When your ad is displayed and someone clicks on it they will visit your site and you pay Google for the visit. When you allow Google to place ads on your site and someone clicks the ad, you get paid.
In the resource section of rd-webhosting.com you will find more information on using banners to market your website.
Depending on the products, services or information you are selling auto responders may be able to automate a good portion of your web site business. An auto responder is a piece of software that checks email for certain words or phrases and responds according to your wishes. For example, you may have received a newsletter by sending an email to me with Subscribe as the subject.
My auto responder sees that email come in and has a set of actions defined that when the subject has subscribe in it that it will email back to you our newsletter. Another thing th at the auto responders can do is following up with your customers
at predetermined times with a predetermined letter. This is good for driving traffic to your site after they have visited and left their email address such as to subscribe to a newsletter or download a free chapter of an e-book or other information you have made available. For my training business I send up to 4 different emails to each person that request my guide to increase their income. Each email introduces them to other benefits and services that are available. Some of the emails will offer a discount or free training class as an incentive to sign up for a class. All of it done without me having to get involved. Auto responders can be installed on your computer or used via the Internet. Some are free and others you have to pay either by the email address or based on the number of responses you want to program it to respond to. Here are some links to auto responders on the web as well as a software package with a trial version you can use yourself. Promasoft: This is the one we use with our servers. I highly recommend. They have a trial version that is a full version. It places a header in the outgoing email, so you will want to register once you have it up and running. I think it is a great program. GetResponse: This is also a great program, although, this one is a subscription service. It can be a less expensive way to try out an auto responder. They do offer a free account as well.
What can your own E-zine or E-book do for your business or web site? How about:
- Sell more products or services. An e-zine/e-book can incre ase your credibility, making it e
asier to sell your product or service as well as those of others in which you have a stake.
- Attract more affiliates to help sell your products or services. This form of advertising is viral in it approach. E-zines and e-books get passed from person to person. Creating more interest which makes people want to jump on board and become part of that success.
- Establish yourself as an expert in your field, creating more ‘believability’ and trust. People don’t buy from strangers. With you e-zine or e-book you become better known to them. When the time comes they need or want your products or services, there’s no question who they’ll buy them from — YOU!
- Show your visitors and clients everything you can really do for them, maximizing your sales efforts.
- Build a base of customers who are ready to hire you, buy from you, evangelize for you and create more fans for you.
- Effortlessly spread the word about your business via “viral marketing.”
- Create new revenue streams from selling ad space and recommending other products that you’re an affiliate of. See our affiliate page for more information.
- Become a recognized publisher. Have others writing your articles, advertisers paying for exposure in your publication.
Here is an IMPORTANT point, capture the email addresses of your Web site visitors, gaining permission to market to them over and over again and multiple chances closing the sale. Not to mention the sales of other products or services.
Keep in touch with all of your customers, prospects, and associates — on a regular basis.
Simple tips for creating e-zines and e-books
Package your knowledge on a regular basis into tips and articles that can be reprinted in other publications for tons of additional exposure and traffic. There are thousands of e-books and e-zines in publication today. Most are specialized in a particular segment of the web or interest. When you find an e-book/ezine that reaches the people that may be interested in your product or service. Contact them to see if they take outside articles. If they do, send them an article or two that you may have written. Include information on your business and your web site If they publish your article, your name and web site will be listed. This is a great way of getting free advertising and traffic to your site.
Another way to get articles for your e-books is to find someone to write them for you. Much like the process above but in this case you are
the one publishing the material. Use your web site, chat rooms, forums etc to advertise for articles.
Save thousands of dollars printing and postage by producing your newsletter online instead of printing it. Adobe Writer is a good program for your e-books and any email program can be used for e-zines.
Ok, you have a product or service you want to sell; you need to let people know about that product or service and you don’t have much money to spend. Imagine a place that gets over 3 million customers that are ready, able, willing and looking to buy everyday. It is a Super Mall!
Ask any businessperson what they would pay to be in a mall that got 3 million visitors a day. You can see the dollar signs light up in their eyes… both in terms of cost and sales potential. Remember my goal from earlier in the course when we talked about business planning? I need to have 4200 visitors a month come to my web site in order to sell 420 copies according to my business plan. Well E-Bay gets 3 million visitors a day!
Do you think that might be a place that I would want to advertise my books or my web site? You bet! In fact I have sold quite a few of my other books on E-Bay as well as bottles, baseball cards, clothing, computers, software, training, video and much more. So can you.
Let’s take my Weekend Chef’s guides and see how I can sell them on E-Bay, Yahoo Auctions, or MSN Auctions. First I need an account. This is simple, but does vary based on which you are signing up with. Follow the instructions (at the end of this page is an excellent course on how to really make money on auctions, but this will get you started). Once you have an account, we now need to place something for sale. Think of the auction site as your web site As such we need to create a web page that offers you product/service for sale. I use a software package call Auction Wizard 2000. They have an excellent program that allows you to try it for 60 days before you have to register. It is so easy to use as well. Using Auction Wizard, I can create an auction page and automatically post it and re-post as needed to any of the supported auctions. No special knowledge of html is required. Simple fill-in the blanks and add any pictures or graphics and I’m done. It also will track the sales, send emails to successful bidders, track inventory and so much more. If you are thinking of doing auctions, this is one piece of software to take a hard look at.
Back to selling my guides and building my business. Within the auction listing, I can place a link to my site, offer a free download of some chapters of the book, of course, I will need your email before you can download. Remember that I need to keep you coming back. Be careful here, E-Bay does not like you selling outside of their auction so make sure the visitor is not allowed to buy from your site at that link. Well, now we have given something away for free (a chapter of the book), we have the visitors email address, and we hopefully will get a bid on the product/service. If not, we have the email to follow up. What has it cost us? Each item up for auction on E-Bay cost, are you ready for this, 30 cents to list it plus a small percentage of the selling cost. If I list my Weekend Chef’s Guide to Sushi on E-Bay with a starting price of say $1 it will cost me a total of about 30 cents for the week. 30 cents to reach millions of potential customers a day. If I sell the book, I will have recovered my 30 cents and started building my customer email list as well.
Now I could write a series on using auctions, but this page is just how to use auctions to market your business. You can sell items and make a profit or you can just list items and build a customer database to market too later. Either way Auctions make a great way to market your business.
I have on my website a couple more tips on using auctions as well at rd-webhosting.com or visit my eBay store for other e-books that are available from time to time.