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Marketing Your Site |
Just as it was important for you to link to all the pages on your site from each of your own pages, the more links you have to your site from others, the more hits your site is going to get. After you have submitted your site to search engines, you can take the initiative to increase your hits for free or for a small fee.
Creating reciprical links, where you link to a site and they link back to yours, is one of the easiest ways to market your site. As you created your site, you no doubt stumbled across sites related to yours. If the site doesn't have an affiliate program, find the webmaster's contact information and write to ask to set up reciprical links. Supply the site with your site's logo, a link to your home page, and a description of your site. Not all sites are open to reciprical linking because they feel it takes away their own customer base, but this concern is unfounded. If you built a good site, the site should stand on its own. Reciprical linking also goes hand in hand with customer service. Perhaps your site doesn't have exactly what your customer was looking for. By helping them by sending them to a site that better serves their needs, in the future, when they do need what you offer, they will remember your site and return to you.
You've seen banners advertising sites at the tops of numerous pages. Banners can be gif or jpg files, java applets, flash/shockwave ads, image maps, or any number of things. The most frequently used size is 468x60 pixels.
If you can find a content related banner/link exchange program, these are free and will reach the most appropriate audience. The best way to find these is through an online search or going through related sites and seeing if they have any banner exchanges set up.
If you can't find any of these, there are also general banner/link exchange programs some free, and some requiring you pay a small fee. A few of these are listed below (an expanded list is available through Clickz.com):
If you are feeling ambitious, setting up your own affiliate program can become quite profitable. As discussed in the become an affiliate section of this site, there are three different types of programs: pay-per click, pay-per lead, and pay-per sale. The most popular pay-per-click program is Google AdWords. For pay-per lead and pay-per sale, Commission Junction (www.cj.com) or LinkShare (www.linkshare.com) are the most useful for helping you track and find new affiliates. If you'd prefer, you can also purchase software and run an affiliate program on your own.
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