Article Surfing Archive

I saw a question on a forum the other day that reminded me of when I first started my home business ten years ago. A guy wanted to advertise his business offline and didn't have much money, he was asking for suggestions.

When I started out I was seriously broke, thought I was going to lose my house. I found biz ops an area that was often called 'the poor man's business' and in an act of desperation started my own home business.

I bought a couple of information products but then realised that I couldn't afford to buy enough stamps, envelopes and photocopies to put together a big enough mailshot to earn anything. The act of buying the information products got my details on mailing lists and biz op magazines and adsheets turned up in my mail.

Being a careful Yorkshire lass I realised that cheap subscriptions to the magazines would get me free monthly ads and that the adsheets were cheap enough to place my learning ads on. I also saw lots of adverts for free ad placements so used my few stamps and envelopes for whatever freebies I could get.

The free and cheap adverts got me more sales and follow up sales than I would have ever got if I'd spent my money on mailshots. They also taught me how to advertise and it wasn't long before others were copying my headlines.

The most important thing was that I figured out very quickly that getting my name known would increase my sales. It's a fact that people are more likely to buy from a name that they know, and if you deal honestly your good reputation will be built up as your name gets known.

Within a few months I launched my own quirky little adsheet. As soon as the idea was finalised I sent copies off to all of the magazine editors. That got me more free advertising in the form of excellent reviews.

I then published my own home business guide and got more wow reviews from the magazine editors and more free advertising. The buyers advertised it for me on commission so their sales cost me nothing to promote.

Six of the editors asked me to write regular articles for them and I decided to write monthly for the best magazine with the widest circulation. Guess what? I chose to get free full page advertising instead of cash for my articles.

I wrote for that magazine for 18 months and then quit to write articles for my own magazine. Yes I published a magazine and got lots of free advertising; all paid for by my advertisers and subscribers.

Somewhere along the way I started a leaflet design service and as at the bottom of every leaflet I was able to place 'Designed by Patricia Jones and my telephone number' I got more free advertising. It reached a point where a large percentage of the biz op mailshots and magazines in the UK had something with my name on.

When I think back I paid very little for my advertising for the 5 years that I had a mail order business. My creativity earned me masses of free advertising, but that wouldn't have happened to such an extent if I hadn't sent copies of everything new that I did for the magazine editors to review.

I'll stress again that getting your name known is important. Even if I was advertising a website I always added my name to the advert and that created more interest. If you can write reasonably well submit articles to magazines, it really is worthwhile. If you have any ideas for new products act upon them, they might just work and they might just get you lots of free advertising.

Now I'm doing it all again on the Internet, betcha it won't cost me much now that I've found article marketing!

Seriously though, everything that I did offline can be emulated in some form or another online with patience and perseverance. You can get free adverts on lots of sites on the internet, and build up your link presence. Drop into forums and join in the discussions.

You can publish your own ebooks at little or no cost. Instead of submitting articles to magazines there are article directories. Article Marketing is a great free way to boost your promotions.

I guess that instead of leaflets you could design websites, but to gain from the same power of duplication you would need to have a cracking idea that masses of people would want to promote.

For anyone who has ideas the Internet is a great place to test them out and at little or no cost, just try to make the ideas a little different to help you grab more attention. Whatever you do shout about it from the rooftops ' success is standing out from the crowd!