by John Soares

Time is your most important commodity. You need to know the best ways to promote your website in order to save you time, money, and frustration. This article outlines many questionable promotion methods and why you should not use them. Also, you will find out what promotion methods you should use to get the quickest possible results. In other words, hits and possibly sales on your website!

Do not spend your hard earned dollars on:

--Services that claim they will submit your site to 1000's of search engines, directories, etc. How do you really know they are doing this?

--Services that claim they will send your ad to 1000's of targeted email addresses. How do you know they actually sent your ad? How do you know what type of list they used if they did?

--Paid classified ads. I have done this, and have yet to see any results. I know my ads are good. I almost never peruse classified ads myself, though.

--Services that will send you CD's with "clean" email addresses. How do you know where they got these from? You do not need flames writing you back.

--Unknown pay per click services. I used one of these services. I paid $300.00, and have received nothing in return to date. Do not waste your money.

--Banners. This is the first thing I tried, and I got about a 0.50% click thru rate. Pretty miserable!

--Offline advertising. I tried putting an ad in an offline entrepreneur's magazine once. I have yet to see the magazine! The same goes for those services that will put your classified ad in thousands of newspapers. How do you know they actually did so without tear sheets from all of them, which they will NOT send you? Forget it.

--MLM's or affiliate websites that make you buy something or charge you the famous "one-time fee" for joining. Forget it! NEVER JOIN ANY PROGRAM WHERE YOU HAVE TO PAY A FEE UPFRONT! You will never make any money!

Do spend your money on:

--Ezine advertising in targeted ezines.

--Well-known Internet entrepreneurs that have been around awhile. I am not sure if it's OK to mention names, but IMC is well worth the $250.00 required to join. There is a gold mine of practical information that you cannot find anywhere else. I could have saved about $1000 if I had found them earlier!

--A professional writer, if you need help writing your free reports, ads, website copy, etc. I did this and it was well worth the money.

Do not spend your time on:

--Most of the search engines. Yahoo is difficult but important. It takes a long time because Yahoo uses the Hotbot inktomi database. Hotbot lists your entry in 60 days! Keep trying though, since Yahoo accounts for about 50% of search traffic. Forget MSN, AOLNetFind, Northern Light, Excite, and especially Lycos. They simply take too long to index your site. By the time they do, your site will have changed. Also, the rules keep changing; it's like shooting at a moving target. My first foray on the internet was selling Amazon books(I still do). Back then, I thought search engines were the only way to promote your site! Do not make the same mistake!

--Free for all sites. Your entry can last from 15 minutes to 1 day! Your email will overflow with acknowledgments. Then you go to the sites to verify your listing and are usually not able to find it! This has been my experience 9 out of 10 times.

--Free classified sites. I still do this, because I bought the software for about $100. Do know that an automated classified ad can place your ad in any location it chooses, which may have NOTHING to do with what you are selling! Also, the software may say that your ad has "been confirmed." Instead, you find that the your headline was too long or your ad is in the wrong section. Do not waste time and money for this type of software. I did, to my regret.

--Automated search engine submission. I used submission software until I found out that most search engines ignore automated search engine submissions. What a waste of TIME and MONEY!

--Any bulk email or email software. I have tried them all and all seem very hard to use. Besides, this is not the best way to promote your site! Do not take the chance of losing your reputation before you have even made a good name for yourself. I tried this on just a few hundred names and received 20 or so hate mails. You do not need this headache.

--Discussion groups or newsgroups. I keep hearing that this is a good place to promote your site, as long as you have something viable to say to the others. These groups have too many rules. Forget it...most of them are doing the same thing as you...trying to sell their items. Some do not even want you to use signature files! Do not waste your time.

--Email groups. I have seen these just recently. You can send your ad to each of the groups' members, and nobody can cry "spam." Same problem here...most of these guys simply send you a reply back trying to promote their products. They could not give a damn about yours.

Do spend your time on:

--Submitting your site to Infoseek and Alta Vista. These search engines have always indexed my sites in a timely fashion, usually one or two days. Keep trying at Yahoo, but forget the others. By the way, be sure to resubmit your site whenever you make major changes. On my two sites, this is at least monthly, since I publish my newsletters and announce my free cash giveaway winner at the end of the month. By the way, both Alta Vista and Infoseek will automatically index ALL your pages. This is great if you have a newsletter; think of all the keywords that are being indexed!

--Writing articles like this one and then submitting them to interested ezines. There is probably no better way to promote yourself in a subtle fashion.

--Subscribing to ezines in your field and asking for ad exchanges and/or rates. You can also tell them you have some articles for them. Be sure you want to publish your article or place your ad in a particular ezine before you do it.

--Reading articles by entrepreneurs whom you know and trust.

--Rewriting your classified ads and/or free reports, especially if they are not pulling. Seek out advice if you are need it.

--Writing free reports about your products that you will send to interested potential clients who answer your ad.

--Remember to write "thank-you" notes to anyone who has subscribed to your newsletter. Be sure to personalize it. Nothing turns me off more than autoresponders!

Do you notice there is a lot more don'ts than do's? I have tried everything, so I have first hand experience with all the don'ts. I hate to see other Internet entrepreneurs wasting their time and money. It is extremely important that you promote your website in the most effective way possible. Please save yourself your precious time, your hard-earned money, and worst of all, frustration!